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Difficulty: Very hardIdeological and Legal Debates over Slavery

"It has been often asserted that the Constitution was made exclusively by and for the white race. It has already been shown that in five of the thirteen original States, free colored persons then possessed the elective franchise, and were among those by whom the Constitution was ordained and established. We have no power to import into the Constitution any practical rule, or decision, which we may think needed, to make it contain what the people who ordained and established it would have thought it proper to insert... To exercise this power to make new Constitution, is to take away the liberties of the people..."
— Justice Benjamin R. Curtis, dissent in *Dred Scott v. Sandford*, 1857

The legal evidence cited by Curtis regarding the voting rights of free African Americans at the time of the founding was most directly intended to refute which of the following arguments?

  1. The assertion that the authors of the Constitution never intended for African Americans to hold citizenship under the federal government.Answer
  2. B
    The argument that immediate tariff policies, rather than the expansion of slavery, were the primary source of sectional division between the North and South.
  3. C
    The claim that enslaved labor in the South was legally equivalent to Northern white indentured servitude and thus protected under contract law.
  4. D
    The doctrine of popular sovereignty, which claimed that the federal executive branch held the ultimate authority to determine the legal status of slavery in new states.

Answer

The assertion that the authors of the Constitution never intended for African Americans to hold citizenship under the federal government.
The correct option is correct because Justice Curtis's dissent directly refutes Chief Justice Taney's majority opinion in *Dred Scott v. Sandford*, which claimed that African Americans could not be citizens because they were not considered citizens at the time of the Constitution's drafting. By presenting historical evidence that free African Americans held voting rights in five of the original thirteen states during ratification, Curtis demonstrated that they were indeed part of the sovereign body that established the Constitution.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the stimulus to identify the core argument and historical evidence presented by the author.
Justice Curtis argues that free African Americans had voting rights in five of the original thirteen states during the ratification of the Constitution, making them part of the people who ordained and established it.
To understand the specific legal point Curtis is trying to prove.
2
Relate the author's argument to the legal context of the *Dred Scott v. Sandford* (1857) decision.
Chief Justice Taney's majority opinion ruled that African Americans could not be citizens because they were not part of the political community at the nation's founding.
To determine what pro-slavery argument Curtis's evidence was meant to challenge.
3
Evaluate the options to identify which pro-slavery claim is directly contradicted by Curtis's evidence.
Curtis's historical proof that free African Americans voted to ordain the Constitution directly refutes the claim that the Founders never intended them to be citizens.
To select the correct option that matches the historical and legal debate.

Key Concept

Ideological and constitutional debates over citizenship and slavery in the Dred Scott decision.
Estimated Time:3m 0s
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Topics

Ideological and Legal Debates over Slavery

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