Ded Scott V. Sandford Case Study

In the mid to late 1800’s, America was a hard place to live in if you were a person of color. Slavery was still legal in the south during the 1800’s and was practised in the majority of the states. While slavery was legal in the South, it was outlawed in the North. With this being the case, a separation between slave states and non slave states, there needed to be a border to separate the two. This means that once this line was crossed, ideally, a slave would no longer be a slave. If he was not freed, there would be some sort of Consequence However, this was not the case when it came to the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. Dred Scott was a slave from Missouri who was owned by Dr. John Emerson, a surgeon in the U.S. army. Prior to the civil war

territories. The Court viewed slaves as property, and the Fifth Amendment forbids Congress from taking property away from individuals without just compensation. This meant that sense Scott was seen as property, he could not be freed by the Court. The decision of the Dred Scott v. Sandford increased rising tensions between the Northern and southern states. Even though the Missouri Compromise had already been repealed before the case, the decision still appeared to validate the Southern states version of national power, and to fortify pro-slavery Southerners to expand slavery across nation. In conclusion, “antislavery forces were outraged by the decision, empowering the newly formed Republican Party and helping fuel violence between slave owners and abolitionists on the frontier. Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction Congress passed, and the states ratified, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, all of which directly overturned the Dred Scott decision.” Today all U.S. citizens can bring cases to federal court. Without the Dred Scott case, the may have never been