Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Recognizing that it is a put-up case, the U.S. Supreme Court dismisses the Dred Scott appeal for want of a genuine case or controversy.  State and Federal courts in free states consistently rule that a state may determine the citizenship status of its own residents.  Slaves escape to the North and West in increasing numbers while many poor whites move to former Mexican lands, leading to a profound labor shortage in the South.  The abolitionist cause remains marginal in the North; no Republican Party forms.  Attempts by Southern states to seal their borders fail as smallholder majorities take control of North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, which become free states.  Where the attempts to seal the borders turn into civil strife in Arkansas, Missouri, Indian Territory, and Kansas, Federal troops suppress the violence.  Maryland and Florida see the handwriting and free their last few slaves.  Rapidly industrializing Atlanta, Savannah, Birmingham, Jackson, Biloxi, New Orleans, and Galveston, gaining political clout vs. the latifundia in their respective states and cramped by a labor shortage assuaged only by increasing immigration, demand state abolition of slavery and succeed.  Virginia holds out, even as its actual slave population disappears, until Governor Robert Lee pushes abolition through the Assembly.  Attempts at Jim Crow legislation fail with the adoption of the 13th Amendment, that the right to bear arms in defense of self, family, state, and nation is an individual right that cannot be denied on account of race, religion, or national origin.