>>> Shane Mage
A very odd statement from a sometime professor of constitutional law.
The "at least 20 years" pertained only to the *importation* of slaves:
the slave trade was protected by the "founders" and over the next 70 years it expanded steadily and was exported wholesale into Mexico (how
many Americans know that the Alamo [the piratical Texas "revolution"]
was about nothing else but the expansion of slavery in the 1830's into
territory where it had been outlawed by Mexican law?) The founders established a constitution under which slaves were tradeable chattels--
property--as Chief Justice Taney infamously, but absolutely correctly,
established in the Dredd Scott decision.
^^^^^ CB: Maybe but Taney, went further than what you say above. He declared that all Blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States and that all Blacks "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.The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all of the country's territories.That goes farther than allowing ownership of slaves. All that wasn't in the Constitution. Constitution doesn't say anything that can reasonably be interpreted as all Blacks can be enslaved or that only Blacks can be enslaved; or that Congress can make no law outlawing slavery in a territory. Or that all Whites can treat all Blacks like slaves. Says nothing about no citizenship for Blacks.