When circumstances look dire, in an era when the federal government is seeking to deny fundamental constitutional rights to legal residents of the United States, as we celebrate Juneteenth it is important to remember formerly enslaved abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ response to the Supreme Court’s 7-2 majority decision against plaintiff Dred Scott in Dred Scott v. Sandford.
Speaking for the court majority, Chief Justice Roger Taney asserted that Scott was not a citizen of the United States under the Constitution and was not entitled to legal redress because Africans were “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
Douglass delivered his speech at the annual meeting of the American Abolition Society in New York City two months later on May 14, 1857. He opened, “While four millions of our fellow countrymen are in chains — while men, women, and children are bought and sold on the auction-block with horses, sheep, and swine — while the remorseless slave—whip draws the warm blood of our common humanity — it is meet that we assemble as we have done to-day, and lift up our hearts and voices in earnest denunciation of the vile and shocking abomination.”
Douglass next responded to the “Eminent men, North and South, in Church and State” who “tell us that the omens are all against us. Emancipation, they tell us, is a wild, delusive idea” and “that slavery never reposed upon a firmer basis than now . . . We are now told, in tones of lofty exultation, that the day is lost — all lost — and that we might as well give up the struggle. The highest authority has spoken . . . This infamous decision of the Slaveholding wing of the Supreme Court maintains that slaves are within the contemplation of the Constitution of the United States, property; that slaves are property in the same sense that horses, sheep, and swine are property” and “that colored persons of African descent have no rights that white men are bound to respect; that colored men of African descent are not and cannot be citizens of the United States.”
Douglass denounced the Supreme Court decision as the “judicial incarnation of wolfishness . . . Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot perform impossibilities. He cannot bale out the ocean, annihilate the firm old earth, or pluck the silvery star of liberty from our Northern sky . . . He cannot change the essential nature of things — making evil good, and good evil. Happily for the whole human family, their rights have been defined, declared, and decided in a court higher than the Supreme Court.”
Douglass demanded to know where Taney got the legal authorization for the decision. “Neither in the preamble nor in the body of the Constitution is there a single mention of the term slave or slave holder, slave master or slave state, neither is there any reference to the color, or the physical peculiarities of any part of the people of the United States. Neither is there anything in the Constitution standing alone, which would imply the existence of slavery in this country.”
The Preamble to the Constitution reads “We, the people” — not we, the white people — not we, the citizens, or the legal voters — not we, the privileged class, and excluding all other classes but we, the people; not we, the horses and cattle, but we the people — the men and women, the human inhabitants of the United States, do ordain and establish this Constitution.”
In the speech Douglass asked what the Constitution actually says. Nowhere does it sanction slavery. But it does ensure “that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law and “the right of the people to be secure in their persons and papers, and houses.” It does declare that its purpose is “to secure the blessing of liberty.”
Douglass did not lose hope in the possibility that slavery and injustice would end. “In one point of view, we, the abolitionists and colored people, should meet this decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears, in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the downfall and complete overthrow of the whole slave system. The whole history of the anti-slavery movement is studded with proof that all measures devised and executed with a view to ally and diminish the anti-slavery agitation, have only served to increase, intensify, and embolden that agitation.”
Of course Douglass was right. Rather than the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford settling forever the future of slavery, four years later the nation was plunged into civil war, six years later Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and eight years later the 13th amendment to the Constitution ended slavery in the United States.
Douglass concluded his response to Chief Justice Taney, “all I ask of the American people is, that they live up to the Constitution, adopt its principles, imbibe its spirit, and enforce its provisions. When this is done, the wounds of my bleeding people will be healed, the chain will no longer rust on their ankles, their backs will no longer be torn by the bloody lash, and liberty, the glorious birthright of our common humanity, will become the inheritance of all the inhabitants of this highly favored country.”
