ABSTRACT
In 1861 Congress passed and referred to the states an amendment to the United States (US) Constitution guaranteeing that Congress could never abolish slavery. Delegate George Mason made that anti-slavery remark because he wanted to end the importation of new slaves from Africa. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, the peg-legged draftsman of the Constitution, called slavery a “nefarious institution, the curse of heaven on the states where it prevails.” Slavery haunted the Constitution like an original sin. It would drag constitutional history through some of its ugliest moments and would precipitate the Constitution’s biggest crisis — the Civil War. In the Dred Scott decision of 1857, slavery and the Supreme Court dragged the US Constitution to one of its all-time lows of immorality and inequality. Roger Taney, a Maryland native whose political sympathies were with slave owners, ruled that Congress lacked constitutional power to prohibit slavery in the territories.
