Maryland State Archives

Movie Amistad See websites re: http://www.amistad.org/, including sites critical of the movie

Cases: Roger B. Taney At the March term, 1819, of the Frederick County Court, successfully defended Jacob Gruber, a Methodist minister, who was indicted for inciting slaves to the disturbance of the peace of the state. He defended Gruber on the grounds that he had a right to talk about the Declaration of Indepenence to any audience. For images of Rev. Martin's version of the trial see http://www.loc.gov, American Memory Project.

Samuel Green [user name: aaco password: aaco#]

1) review the Green Case to determine what Maryland Law governed Green's Conviction and the reasoning behind his conviction. Was he convicted for owning a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin?  If so, did that mean that anyone owning a copy could be sent to prison as Green was?  (username: aaco  password: aaco#)

2) readings for the debate over the Dred Scott Case (1857)
 

a) read and be prepared to comment on Abraham Lincoln's view as expressed in his senatoral election debate with Stephen Douglas  on June 26, 1857:

And now as to the Dred Scott decision. That decision declares two propositions—first, that a Negro cannot sue in the U.S. Courts; and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in the Territories. It was made by a divided court—dividing differently on the different points. Judge Douglas does not discuss the merits of the decision; and, in that respect, I shall follow his example, believing I could no more improve on McLean and Curtis, than he could on Taney.

He denounces all who question the correctness of that decision, as offering violent resistance to it. But who resists it? Who has, in spite of the decision, declared Dred Scott free, and resisted the authority of his master over him?

Judicial decisions have two uses—first, to absolutely determine the case decided, and secondly, to indicate to the public how other similar cases will be decided when they arise. For the latter use, they are called "precedents" and "authorities."

We believe, as much as Judge Douglas, (perhaps more) in obedience to, and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it, has often over-ruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it to over-rule this. We offer no resistance to it. ... (Source: http://www.freemaninstitute.com/lincoln.htm)

b) read and be prepared to comment on Abraham Lincoln's view of the law as expressed in a speech he gave in 1838 (username: aaco  password: aaco#)
 

c)be prepared to debate the Dred Scott Decision from your reading in Bogen  (read pages 57-102).    Note that at least one scholar feels that the neglected party in Dred Scott is his wife, Harriet.

Your assignments for the debate are:
 

Mr. Bell, Ms. Davidson,  and Ms. Kerr:  the Taney Opinion, 57-84; Justice Daniels concurring opinion, 85-87

Ms. Lancaster and Ms. Cho:  Justice Curtis's dissent,  88-102; Justice McLean's dissent, 87-88

Mr. Bell should take the voice of Taney in the debate, arguing  from his perspective.

Ms. Davidson should take the  voice of Justice Daniels in the debate, arguing his point of view in  the context of the majority opinions.

Ms. Kerr should take the voice of Taney in the debate, arguing from his perspective.

Ms. Lancaster should take the voice of Justice Curtis, arguing from his point of view.

Ms. Cho should take the voice of Justice McLean arguing from his point of view.

In preparing for your debate, visit and  utilize the following web sites:

http://library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott/

http://history.furman.edu/~benson/docs/dsmenu.htm (what was the public reaction to Dred Scott? See also the reaction in Maryland Newspapers)

and any other site in a google search on "Dred Scott" that you might find helpful.   The full decision and dissents ares to be found in Lexis and at: http://www.tourolaw.edu/patch/Scott/

In addition to the substance of the arguments in the debate, explore why it was that the individual justices took the postions they did.  Search for biographical information on your assigned justice with google.com.
 
 

See instructions for a research trip to the National Archives in Philadelphia.

Class discussion will begin by returning to the Dred Scott case. Paul S. Boyer provides a convenient summary of the case in The Oxford Companion to American History, 2001, pp. 693, 694, where he points out that Scott was freed first by the lower court in Missouri on the grounds that he had become free by living in Illinois and in Wisconsin territory (now Minnesota). The Missouri Supreme Court reversed the lower court in 1854. Scott then took his case to the Federal District Court under the clause in Article 3, Section 2 of the U. S. Constitution that allows a citizen of one state to sue a citizen of another in federal court. The lower Federal Court ruled that on the merits of the case, Scott was still a slave. Scott appealed to the Supreme Court. Taney, writing for the majority denied citizenship to Scott on the grounds that he never was and never could be a citizen of any state because of his race, and that the Congress could not bestow citizenship on blacks as was done for certain areas under the Missouri Compromise.

Be prepared to summarize the arguments of each of the justices, placing them in the context of their careers and the newspaper reaction of the day.

The justices and their terms of service on the Taney Court at the time of Scott v. Sandford, are:

John McLean, 1830-61

James Moore Wayne, 1835-1867

R. B. Taney, 1836-1865. C.J.

John Catron, 1837-1865

Peter Vivian Daniel, 1842-1860

Samuel Nelson, 1845-1872

Robert C. Grier, 1846-1870

Benjamin Curtis, 1851-1857

John Campbell, 1853-1861

The full text of the opinions and short biographies of each justice can be found at the Cornell Law School web site.

Read the national accounts of the opinions, and determine how the accounts are the same or differ from what was reported in the Maryland newspapers.

Note that Taney's views on race are drawn directly from the Maryland experience. It could be argued that they are reflective of those who supported the Southern position and form the basis for understanding concepts of race and the law that were to be embedded in our current State Constitution by the Constitutional Convention of 1867.

In acknowledging the attitude of Taney towards blacks when he wrote that they were not included under the word "citizens" in the Constitution and were "so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect," it is also important to remember that he would confront a President who suspended habeus corpus, incarcerating citizens without benefit of the courts. Despite his erroneous perceptions of race, Taney would write persuasively on the legal rights of the private citizen in ex parte Merryman, an argument which survives his personal views on race and continues to have broad support in legal circles and the community at large.

Class will conclude with a discussion of the reading in Bogen, pp. 103-119, with emphasis on how the law and attitudes towards race in Maryland pushed the state in the direction of segregation and wide ranging restrictive covenants, both written and unwritten.

Visit the Maryland State Archives document packet relating to the celebration of the ratification of the 15th amendment as the context for battles for equal rights and justice that loomed ahead. Pay particular attention to the reporting of the speech of Frederick Douglass at http://msa.maryland.gov/dtroy/project/index.html.

Bogen: Race and the Law in the First Third of the Twentieth Century - The Rise of Segregation Laws, pp. 119-126; Power, Garrett "Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances of 1910-1913" Md. L. Rev. 289(1983).

Please review the research site relating to lynching in Maryland and be prepared to address the issue of lynching as an important aspect of Race and the Law in Maryland. Note the number of lynchings that have been identified so far. They exceed the official estimate used by Dr. Brugger cited below.

Because this is a work in progress, most of the biographies are not accessible. Search for Snowden and review his case which we interpret as a lynching sanctioned by the law. Do you agree?

According to http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm,

Dr. Arthur Raper was commissioned in 1930 to produce a report on lynching. He discovered that "3,724 people were lynched in the United States from 1889 through to 1930. Over four-fifths of these were Negroes, less than one-sixth of whom were accused of rape. Practically all of the lynchers were native whites. The fact that a number of the victims were tortured, mutilated, dragged, or burned suggests the presence of sadistic tendencies among the lynchers. Of the tens of thousands of lynchers and onlookers, only 49 were indicted and only 4 have been sentenced."

In his Maryland, A Middle Temperament, 1634-1980, Robert Brugger points out:

The race control issue exposed the old fracture in Maryland between whites who lived amidst blacks and those who did not. Manners and mores in Southern Maryland and on the Eastern Shore kept the races sharply separate. As in the old days, whites there took a paternal, sometimes patronizing, view of the Negro. They treated politely, even kindly, the black who "kept his place." They could be quickly harsh with one who did not; Princess Anne natives, for example, ostracized John Wilson, a Wilmington Methodist churchman, because on his visits to the Negro academy he shook hands with blacks, ate with them, and called black men mister. Between 1889 and 1918 the 17 lynchings that took place in Maryland numbered no more than in Nebraska (there were 78 in Virginia, 368 in Georgia). But in 15 instances blacks were victims, often for an alleged assault on a white woman, and in 12 they took place on the Shore [i.e. Eastern Shore] or in the counties of Southern Maryland. ... (p422)

... it took only a black suspected of a heinous crime to put match to gasoline. One explosion occurred in December 1931 at Salisbury, wher Mack Williams had been accused of murdering his white employer. A mob broke into the hospital where he lay and lynched him. Many Marylanders joined [Governor] Ritchie in condemning this crime, but the local newspaper spoke of "outraged feeling" and "heroic methods"; hard up for support, townsmen also portrayed Williams ahs having been under the influence of communists. In November 1933 another lynching took place a few miles below Salisbury, in Princess Anne. About five thousand men thrust authorities aside and lynched a Negro who stood accused of attacking an elderly white woman. After hanging him, the mob tor apart and burned the body. In this case Attorney General William Preston Lane, Jr., an army veteran and son of a Hagerstown newspaper publisher, learned the names of the ringleaders, who were Wicomicans, and pressed the State's attorney for action. When nothing happened Ritchie sent five hundred troops of the 5th Maryland, led by General Reckord, to Salibury to serve warrants on the suspected mob leaders. Though Reckord captured four of the nine men on Lane's list (several were "on vacation" in Virginia), a mob gathered to taunt the militiamen. Local firemen, called on to cool off the mob, turned their hoses on the troops instead. Later a Wicomico judge released the suspects before they could be taken to Baltimore for trial. ..." pp. 508-509.

text of email sent to: lgibson@law.umaryland.edu, donbell0975@yahoo.com, jincho99@hotmail.com, mdavid25@yahoo.com, jennifer.lang@gte.net, tfidelis@erols.com on 10/8.

The Reading Assignments for October 15 will be posted on the site shortly. Please be sure to read the Document Packet, From Segregation to Integration, http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/stagser/s1259/121/1844/html/0000.html

Mr. Bell:

There are biographical materials on Howard at:

http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/013900/013931/html/13931sources.html

Be sure to enter in the whole url in your browser.

You may need the user name: aaco and the password: aaco# to access the documents. Review the documents before you call Karen Hare. Your trip to the Archives should focus on sorting out Howard's legal practice, as a great deal of the biographical material has already been placed on the web site.

Further note to all:

The reading assignment from Bogen is pp126-139.

Bogen, pp. 139-148

Document Packet Civil Rights in Maryland

Supreme Court Briefs are available at http://curiae.law.yale.edu/. This is a work in progress and uses carefully developed criteria for what briefs are scanned and made available first. See the site for details.

Mr. Bell's presentation on Myers v Anderson.

Bogen, pp. 148-160.

Vote!

Presentation by Ms. Kerr on Williams v. Zimmerman

Presentation by Ms. Cho on Kerr v Enoch Pratt Free Library

Ms. Lancaster on Mills v Board of Education

Final paper and appendix (pdf file)

Presentation by Ms. Davidson on Boyer v Garrett

Review Document Packet "Is Baltimore Burning?" for discussion in class