Reply #63: Dred Scott also sanctioned Northern states exclusions of Free Negros [View All]

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The denial of citizenship to any freed African based on inherent inferiority was important to many non-slave states in ways that most narratives overlook. If Scott were deemed a US citizen with rights before the Federal courts, then it would flow that many laws North and South restricting rights and asserting non-citizenship based on ones race or prior status (e.g. immigration into a state, right to vote) could now be challenged in the Federal courts.

The entire justification in DS for denying US citizenship for anyone of African descent has horribly flawed and claimed as fact in support things which were obviously false. My immediate question when first studying this ruling was what about the status of Blacks who had never been slaves and had who full rights when the Constitution was ratified. NC, for example, initially made no legal distinction between free men based on race until 1830 when the qualification to vote was whites-only. Free blacks otherwise had the same rights as free whites in NC until 1860.

For many in the North, about the only think worse than the evil of slavery in the South was the prospect of their states being overwhelmed by large numbers of newly freed slaves with full rights as citizens.