Dred Scott v. Sandford: The Decision and its Implications
For Americans living in the years prior to the Civil War, slavery and the question of its containment, abolition, or perpetuation became the central political importance. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed unanimously by Congress with the intention to outline the statehood admission process, essentially outlawed slavery in newly admitted territories, establishing the Ohio River as the boundary line between free states and slave states (“Northwest Ordinances”). While the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 did not give a definitive ruling on the slavery issue, it created the conditions for the balancing act to be had between free and slave states. In 1819, the United States consisted of eleven slave states and eleven free states; however, Missouri’s later request for statehood threatened to upset the balance, leading to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, in which Missouri was admitted as a slave state as Maine became a free state (“The Missouri Compromise”). The compromise also included a provision that established a new imaginary boundary line between free and slave states, which remained in place until the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The inconsistent legal status of slavery on a state-to-state basis led to confusion regarding the status of slaves traveling with their owners to free states, leading to slaves, like Dred Scott in Dred Scott v. Sandford, suing for their freedom. Scott was the slave of an army surgeon, and he had been taken from Missouri to posts in Illinois and Minnesota during the 1830s before returning back to Missouri. Since the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had declared the area in the Midwest, including Minnesota, free, Scott petitioned for his freedom on the ...
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...smen who were largely apathetic towards slavery; however, after the Dred Scott ruling, a new fledging political party was created with abolition included as a part of its platform. The radical nature of the Dred Scott decision drove many people who were previously undecided about the issue of slavery to join abolitionist forces, creating a new political opponent for Southern Democrats.
In virtually every aspect of American politics, Dred Scott case ignited and re-entrenched the regionalism present throughout the time. Dred Scott v. Sandford upset the delicate peace that had been achieved in Congress in the form of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and fueled resentment and anger between those in the North and the South. The Dred Scott decision was the driving force behind the final events leading up to the Civil War, eliminating the chance for a lasting compromise.
The Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court in March 1857 was one of the major steps
Many newspapers in the South praised the decision and started defending it against the Northern papers that condemned it. One such article from the Richmond Enquirer said, “A prize, for which the athletes of the nation have often wrestled in the halls of Congress, has been awarded at last, by the proper umpire, to those who have justly won it. The nation has achieved a triumph, sectionalism has been rebuked, and abolitionism has been staggered and stunned.” Since the South thought that the decision settled the question of slavery, they didn’t publish nearly as many articles and editorials as the North did. Most of the stuff they did publish was praising the decision and condemning the Northerners as “rebels” for not submitting to the ruling as the law of the land. Is was not just the North and South that had a reaction to the Dred Scott decision, people in the West had an opinion on the
Around the 1850’s, tension between the Northern states and the Southern states was rising. The issue of slavery was a conflict that greatly contributed to this tension. The Northern and Southern people had very different views on slavery. Most of the Northern people thought that slavery was wrong, while the Southern people thought that slavery was justified. During this time, a court case filed by a black slave against his white slave master occurred and it widened the gap between them even more. The idea of a black man suing for his freedom was ridiculous to most of the Southern people. My second paragraph is about Dred Scott’s life. It will mostly be about his life before the case. The third paragraph will be information about the case in court. It will include many facts from the trials. The fourth paragraph will tell of the United States Supreme Court decision and its effects. It will also include people’s reactions to the final decision.
Additionally, the majority of states had conflicts between slavery in their territory, one of them dealt with missouri. Missouri applied for admission into the Union as a slave state; this became a problem because missouri ruined the balance for free slaves and slave states. The northern states wanted to ban slavery from occurring in missouri because the unbalanced situation it put towards the other states. In response, the southern states declared how congress doesn’t have the power to ban slavery in missouri. However, Henry Clay offers a solution, the missouri compromise of 1820. Missouri admitted as slave state and Maine becomes a free slave state. Slavery is banned in Louisiana creating a 36 30 line in missouri’s southern border; this maintained the balance in the U.S senate.
...ry as inhumane and against universal suffrage. Both abolitionists agreed that compromise was not probable and slave labor was morally wrong. Thus, its expansion must be halted. Similarly the Southern Democrats, although their ideology was the opposite, were not willing to compromise on the issue of the expansion of slavery. Southern Democrat, James Henry Hammond, believed that slavery was necessary for the economic growth of the nation and without it, the North would also perish. Furthermore, the Constitutional Convention of South Carolina agreed secession was unavoidable when Abraham Lincoln was appointed into office. Therefore, initiated the beginning of an inevitable confrontation between the North and the South. These two exceptionally strict and uncompromising ideologies regarding slavery led to one of the most controversial and bloody wars in American history.
The economic condition of ex-slaves after the Civil War was just as uncertain; many had left former masters and roamed the highways. Amid the post Civil War chaos, various political groups were scrambling to further their agendas. First, Southern Democrats, a party comprised of leaders of the confederacy and other wealthy Southern whites, sought to end what they perceived as Northern domination of the South. They also sought to institute Black Codes, by limiting the rights of Blacks to move, vote, travel, and change jobs,3 which like slavery, would provide an adequate and cheap labor supply for plantations. Second, Moderate Republicans wanted to pursue a policy of reconciliation between North and South, but at the same time ensure slavery was abolished.4 Third, Radical Republicans, comprised of Northern politicians, were strongly opposed to slavery, unsympathetic to the South, wanted to protect newly free slaves, and keep their majority in Congress.5 The fourth political element, at the same time, was the repression of the North.
Correspondly, the senate passed the Missouri Compromise in February 1820, which allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state and Maine to enter as a free state, making the free and slave states balanced once again. Another amendment was passed to prohibit slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern border of Missouri. This event envisioned a possible threat to the relationship between the North and South. Moreover, the United States began to believe in a manifest destiny, a god-given right to expand its territory until it had absorbed all of North America, including Canada and Mexico.... ...
Dredd Scott decision was handed down by the Supreme Court in 1857(Johnson). In the simplest terms this decision stripped US citizenship from any Negro, living in any state of existence, free or slave. Also Dredd Scott deemed the Missouri Compromise Unconstitutional (which is one cause of the South succeeding in 1863.)
... road that could lead only to disaster. Dred Scott might well have been the point of no return”(186). The decision to have Scott remain a slave was claimed with reasons of not being a U.S. citizen with the right to sue and for not being a freed slave to begin with. The North and South were so divided on the issue of slavery that the Dred Scott case was the match that set fire to the already established idea of an explosion of a civil war.
...om’s Cabin in 1852, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859, and the outcome of the Presidential Election of 1860—created conditions where Southerners felt the need to secede from the United States (they felt that their “way of life” was being threatened), as well as created conditions where the Northerners decided to go to war against the Southern Confederacy in order to maintain the Union. It is not surprising, however, that the Civil War occurred; since the Industrial Revolution, the Industrial North had always been different than the Agricultural South. If each region paid more attention to resolving the issues that separated them, instead of trying to prove themselves right, they could have stopped the bloodiest battle in American history (even though this is using hindsight knowledge).
In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act to create new territories. Stephen Douglass wrote the act in an effort to attract the transcontinental railroad to his home city of Chicago. Douglass needed Kansas, and Nebraska, to become official territories to make it happen. Douglass believed the act would help Chicago economically, and aid his hopes of becoming president by ending The Missouri Compromise. Popular sovereignty replaced geographic restrictions as the decided factor on the issue of slavery. The opportunity to move slavery further north galvanized the south, and outraged the n...
In 1857, the Dred Scott vs. Sanford case went before a pro-slavery United States Supreme Court. Scott claimed that he had lived as a slave in free state and territory. The high court’s decision was that he was a slave and that the law assuring that slavery would not be allowed in the new territories of the United States was unconstitutional. Because of the court’s decision, it helped accelerate the Civil War. Because of the Supreme Court’s decision, the Northerners tha...
Slavery was one of the factors that played a key role in the causes of the Civil War. The Missouri Compromise was a debate began as to whether Maine and Missouri would enter the Union as free or slave states. To be fair to the rule of the Mason-Dixon Line, Maine was admitted as a free state, and Missouri, even though it was also in the north, would enter as a slave state. The Compromise of 1850 dealt with whether California, Utah, and New Mexico would be slave or free. California was admitted as a free state, but since it made the ratio of slave to free states unequal, " it also stated that the territories of New Mexico and Utah would determine for themselves whether to become slave or free states."(Wise) The Kansas-Nebraska Act decided that any territory that became a state would have the right to vote on whether it would be slave or free, which made Northerners angry because it changed the terms of the Missouri Compromise. The constant flux of the issue of slavery grew during the years leading up to the war, as the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1859, and the Kansas-Nebraska act con...
In the years leading to the Civil War, there were many events that sparked wide spread controversy and severely divided the nation. Dred Scott an African American slave whose owner brought him from a slave state to a state that outlawed slavery where he attempted to sue for his freedom. In the year 1854, a mere 6 years before the start of the war, the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford handed down one of its most controversial rulings to date. Known as the Dred Scott Decision, the Supreme Court lead by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney issued a 7 to 2 decision, rendered that Africans whether they were free or slaves were not citizens and that they had no legality to sue in Federal court.
...ers mobilized in 1860 behind moderate Abraham Lincoln because he was most likely to carry the doubtful western states. In 1857, the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision ended the Congressional compromise for Popular Sovereignty in Kansas. According to the court, slavery in the territories was a property right of any settler, regardless of the majority there. Chief Justice Taney's decision said that slaves were, "...so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The decision overturned the Missouri Compromise, which banned slavery in territory north of the 36°30' parallel.