by: Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t Perspective
The building with the white columns was once the place where slaves were auctioned off in St. Louis. (Photo: Reuters)
Whether you're Democrat, Republican or Mugwump, you look at Tuesday night's remarkable election results and the nationwide reaction and can't help but wonder at how far our young country has come - and, at the same time, how long it's taken.
You probably saw those photos of the big Obama rally in St. Louis, Missouri, a couple of weeks ago - 100,000 people attended. If you looked closer, in the background, you could see an old building with a copper dome turned green with age.
That used to be the courthouse. Slaves were auctioned from its steps, and in 1846 - 162 years ago - Dred Scott and his wife, two slaves, went there to appeal to the court for their freedom, arguing that they had lived in states and territories in which slavery had been outlawed and so should be let go.
They were, briefly, but soon were returned to slavery. When their appeal reached the United States Supreme Court in 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney refused to free them. He ruled that slaves did not have the rights of citizens because Dred Scott and his wife were, quote, "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
Seventeen years later, January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and in November of that year, 145 years ago this month, he traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where the battlefield was still freshly soaked in the blood of North and South, to assure all Americans that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
And yet, more than a century would pass before we would come anywhere near making his words true.
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