Who’s been the major immigrant group to the USA in this ATL ?
You’re written about an earlier group of Italian and Flemish , are we going to see Dutch immigrants coming in bulk now?
And from what’s been hinted about Russia’s future, are we going to see a large number of Russians immigrants heading to the USA about 30 years earlier than OTL?
There have already been a lot more Dutch immigrating than IOTL, along with the Italians in the late 1810s. The biggest groups are still Germans, British, and Irish. There will be Russians immigrating sooner, along with a lot of Poles (spoiler—this particular rebellion isn't going to succeed).
You know what I haven't talked about much? The U.S. Supreme Court…
The question thus presented is of great importance, but not of great difficulty. The Constitution was ordained and established for the federal government of the United States, and not for the government of the individual States[1]…
Hugh Garland, arguing for the prosecution in Missouri v. Rankin
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. And yet, in the state of Missouri—and in many other states of the Union, sadly—my client is not free to say these words. Nor am I, nor my opposing counsel, nor indeed anyone in this room. Not even Your Honors are free to speak such words in Missouri if a Negro happens to be listening…
Lysander Spooner[2], arguing for the defense in Missouri v. Rankin
December 6, 1839
U.S. Capitol
The vote was done. The seven men in the conference room off the Supreme Court Chamber[3] took a moment to look at each other, no one speaking.
Chief Justice Samuel Smith[4] looked at Baldwin. “Who will write the dissent?”
“I volunteer,” said McKinley. Catron and Baldwin both nodded. Of the three dissenters, 59-year-old John McKinley from Alabama was the least conflicted in his mind—he supported both slavery and states’ rights, and although no slaveholders were personally involved in
Missouri v. Rankin, the defendant in the case was a free white man and none of the Negroes he had taught were slaves, everyone knew what the case was really about.
In jurisdictional disputes between the federal and state governments, 59-year-old Henry Baldwin from Connecticut typically advocated for the state. More to the point, while he had once called slavery “abhorrent to all of our ideas of natural right and justice,” in his years on the Supreme Court he had never yet ruled against slavery or the interests of slaveholders, and that included today. John Catron, on the other hand, was a champion of federal power, but he was also from Tennessee and a supporter of slavery, and apparently that was the deciding factor here.
“Very well,” said Smith. “I will write the majority opinion myself tonight.” Justices McLean, Story, and Thompson all looked a little disappointed at this. Joseph Story, from Massachusetts, was sixty and had a hatred of slavery that often came into conflict with his strong support for property rights. But the meetings in question had been held on private property, so there had never been any doubt that he would find for the defendant. The 54-year-old New Jerseyan John McLean was much the same—he’d never yet missed a chance to rule against slavery. If a slave let so much as a toe over the border into a free state, McLean would find a reason to free him.[5] Naturally, he had sided with the defendant. And 71-year-old Smith Thompson, who had once served in the J.Q. Adams administration, was in a fine rage against the Berrien administration for its treatment of the Cherokees.[6]
Any of them would have been only too happy to lay down the law in this matter.
Entirely too happy, as far as Smith was concerned—this decision would change everything about the relationship between Washington and the states, and would have to be written with the greatest of care. Smith had the caution of a man who had come to the field of law and the judiciary rather later in life than usual. He was already composing the decision in his mind.
Smith gripped his cane and, slowly and carefully, rose from his chair. At twenty-four, he had not only swum a mill-pond during the retreat from Brooklyn, but had helped ferry some of his men across. Now he was eighty-seven, an age not many men ever lived to see, and did not dare fall down even on a carpeted floor. Pain wracked his chest as he rose, but it had wracked his chest a lot over the last few years, so he ignored it.
John Catron extended his arm. Catron was both the youngest and newest justice on the Supreme Court—he was fifty-three years old and had been appointed in 1837. He was easily young enough to be one of Smith’s surviving sons, and despite their disagreements, Smith had no objection to accepting his help out of the chamber.
The older Smith got—and these days, that was saying a great deal—the more conflicted and skeptical he became on slavery. He’d been born in Pennsylvania, where slavery was forbidden, but had spent much of his life as a slaveowner in Maryland. But his business affairs had been mostly in the field of commerce, and the Stabler boys showed how little slavery was needed there.
That, of course, raised the question of what happened to Negroes if—or, Smith suspected, when—slavery was ended. Given the choice, Smith would have liked to have seen the whole population restored to the continent of Africa[7], but that was not practical at all. As it was, the Negroes of Missouri—and other states—occupied a peculiar status, half slave and half free. Out of sheer eagerness to hold them to that status, the legislature of Missouri had trampled on the rights of white men. Was there any way at all to restrict black men’s rights without affecting white men’s?
Luckily, I need not go quite that far in my decision. It is the authorities in Jefferson City that have gone too far, and they must be told so.
In his day, Smith had done great things and terrible things for freedom—fighting in some of the key battles of the Revolution, but also helping to drive Loyalists out of Maryland.
I did not do all that so that we might grow our own tyrants here. He thought of the preamble to the Constitution—“secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
Perhaps I could begin with a reference to that.
On December 7, 1839, the eighty-year-old Margaret Smith awoke to find that her husband, Chief Justice Samuel Smith, had passed away in his sleep. Stacked neatly on the desk in his study was his last act—the majority opinion in Rankin v. Missouri, which declared that the protection of the First Amendment extended to all free persons. “The very purpose of government is to protect the rights of its citizens,” he wrote in the decision that stunned the nation…
Andrea Fessler, The Waves From Sinepuxent
[1] This is a very slight rewording of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall’s OTL decision in
Barron v. Baltimore, in which the Court unanimously found that the Fifth Amendment, and by extension the entire Bill of Rights, conferred no protection against actions by state governments. (The court actually saw this as kind of a no-brainer. Not to belabor the obvious, but TTL’s United States is becoming a very different place.)
[2] Francis B. Murdoch was Rankin’s attorney in Missouri, but he’s fallen ill, so the eccentric 31-year-old Lysander Spooner had to argue the case before the Supreme Court.
[3] Throughout the 19th century, the Supreme Court didn’t have its own building and met in its own chamber in the Capitol.
[4] Another guy who really should get his own TL. Seriously,
read his bio. Soldier in two wars, businessman, politician—he did it all. IOTL he was never on the Supreme Court, but was mayor of Baltimore as late as 1838, and died in April of 1839 at the age of 86. ITTL he owes his position as Chief Justice as much to his formidable CV as his knowledge of law.
[5] IOTL, McLean dissented from
Dred Scott v. Sandford.
[6] IOTL he advocated for the Cherokees in
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831).
[7] IOTL he was involved in the Maryland State Colonization Society.
