According to your precious federal law:
Slavery was legal
A black male was 3/5 a man
Jim crow was legal...
in germany, less than 100 years ago,the holocaust, was legal.

Nuremberg  1946; the number one legal defence?  "I was following orders"!

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Ben Franklin

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." -Thomas Jefferson

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations... - James Madison   

And finally,
"Guard against Impostures of pretend patriotism." - George Washington