1. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857) Precipitator of the Civil War

2. Lord Mansfield

3. Dred Scott

4. Chief Justice Roger Taney

5. Facts Dred Scott was born a slave in Virginia about 1800. His owner, Peter Blow, moved to St. Louis in 1830 and sold him to a doctor in the U. S. Army, John Emerson. In 1834 Emerson took Scott with him when he was transferred to Illinois, a state that had entered the union as a free state under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The rule in both English and American common law was “once free, always free.” This was a judge-made rule.

6. Somerset’s Case 1772 "Mansfield was a judge renowned for the quickness and depth of his understanding of complex legal matters and for the strict impartiality of his judical conduct. Perhaps his most famous judgement was in 1772 in the case of James Somersett. Somersett had been brought to England as a slave, had then escaped, but was recaptured and was awaiting shipment to Jamaica. Mansfield's judgement was that slavery was so odious that nothing but positive law could support it. No such law being found to exist, Mansfield concluded there was no legal backing for slavery and that no black people could be removed from England against their wishes. This judgement was a key stage in the process leading to the abolition of slavery.”

7. Facts (2) In 1836 Scott accompanied Dr. Emerson to Ft. Snelling, located in the portion of the Louisiana Territory from which Congress had banned slavery in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Emerson and Scott returned to Missouri in 1838. In 1846, following Emerson’s death, Scott sued in state court to prove that he, his wife, and their two daughters were legally entitled to their freedom because they had resided in a free state and a free territory. In 1850 a jury of twelve white men found him to be free, but the Supreme Court of Missouri, hearing the case on appeal, held in 1852 that Scott was still a slave. The judges pointed to the intemperance of the Northern abolitionists in their attacks on the South as the basis for their decision.

8. Facts (3) In 1854 Dred Scott sued for his freedom in the United States Circuit Court in St. Louis. Scott, as a citizen of Missouri, sued his owner John F. A. Sanford, a citizen of New York. Federal judge Robert Wells, agreeing with the Missouri Supreme Court, decided that Scott was still a slave even though he had lived in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Louisiana. Scott then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in the spring of 1856 but, instead of issuing a decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney asked for reargument of the issues in December. In November, Democrat James Buchanan was elected President.

9. Facts (4) In his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1857, President Buchanan alluded to the fact that the Supreme Court would soon decide the slavery question and asked the country to accept the Court’s resolution. Taney announced the Court’s decision two days later, on March 4, 1857. There were six Southern and three Northern justices on the Court.

10. Supreme Court Holdings The Court voted 7-2 that Scott was still a slave. Justice Robert Grier, a Democrat from Pennsylvania and friend of President Buchanan, joined the six Southern justices. For the first time in the Court’s history, each of the nine justices wrote a separate opinion. Taney gave three reasons for the Court’s holding:

11. Taney’s Reasoning 1.Taney ruled that the question of whether residency in a free state emancipated a slave was to be left to the courts of the state where the slave brought suit for his or her freedom. He thus supported the Missouri Supreme Court’s rejection of the long-standing rule in England and the United States of “once free, always free.”

12. Taney’s Reasoning (2) 2. Taney further held that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories because slave owners had a right under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to carry their property into federal territory, land held by the United States in trust for all Americans, Southerners and Northerners. He read the Constitution as “distinctly and expressly” affirming the right of property in slaves, even though the document nowhere uses the terms “slave” or “slavery.” The Missouri Compromise, therefore, was in Taney’s view an abuse of Congress’s legislative power. This was only the second time in history that the Supreme Court had declared an act of Congress unconstitutional.

13. Taney’s Reasoning (3) 3. Finally, Taney proclaimed that because whites had founded the United States for the benefit of whites, persons of African descent, whether free or slave, could never become citizens of the United States. He argued that the drafters of the Constitution had viewed them as “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.”

14. Consequences Opposition to the Court’s decision was immediate and widespread in the North. The Republican Party, formed in 1854 to oppose the extension of slavery, received new support and became the second national political party, replacing the Whigs.

15. Consequences (2) In an 1858 debate with Republican Senate candidate, Abraham Lincoln, in Illinois, Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas admitted that his doctrine of “popular sovereignty” was contradictory to the Court’s holding that slave- owners had a right to bring their human property into all the federal territories. This “Freeport Doctrine” split the Democratic Party into two factions, Northern and Southern. The “Jayhawks,” antislavery settlers in Kansas Territory ignored the Court’s decision and continued to use force to drive out pro-slavery settlers and Missouri “border ruffians.” Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861.

16. Consequences (3) In November 1860, the two Democratic candidates, Stephen Douglas and John Breckenridge, split the Democratic vote, allowing Republican nominee, Abraham Lincoln, to win with 180 electoral votes. South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, precipitating the Civil War, which began one month following Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861.

17. Consequences (4) The Supreme Court lost much of its prestige and authority. Republicans, who controlled both Congress and the Presidency during the Civil War (1861-1865) and Reconstruction (1865-1877), further weakened the Court by altering the number of justices three times between 1863 and 1869. Congress proposed three constitutional amendments to overturn the Dred Scott decision that were ratified between 1865 and 1868. –The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. –The 14th Amendment made blacks citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside. –The 15th Amendment gave blacks the right to vote in state and federal elections.

18. Fears That Motivated the Supreme Court’s Decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) The U. S. Congress would pass a law, similar to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and Missouri Compromise of 1820, banning slavery from the western territories. –Because the population of the Northern states was growing much more rapidly than that of the Southern states, anti-slavery members will soon dominate the U. S. House of Representatives. –Unless half of all new states are admitted to the Union with slavery, anti-slavery members will soon dominate the U. S. Senate.

19. Fears (2) The U. S. Congress would propose a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Free blacks would migrate to the South and claim to be citizens of the United States. They will agitate the slaves and persuade them to revolt against their masters. Unless slavery expands into the West, slave breeders in the Upper South will lose the market for their slaves.

20. Fears (3) If slavery cannot expand, it will die and the slaves will be emancipated. One-third of the population of the South consists of blacks, whose ancestors came from Africa. Emancipation will lead to civil and political rights for blacks. Equality of blacks and whites will lead to racial mixing and the end of the Anglo- Saxon race and its superior civilization.