Slavery's Big Victory.

In the 1857 Bred Scott case, the Supreme Court sowed the seeds of war

Dred Scott wanted his freedom. Like millions of other black slaves, the St. Louis, Missouri, resident had been treated as a piece of property, like a mule or a wagon. Now his quest for something better had taken him to the U.S. Supreme Court, and he awaited its decision.

The date was March 6, 1857. The nation was embroiled in a hot debate over the spread of slavery, an institution basic to the economy of Southern states. On March 4, the new President, James Buchanan, had said in his inaugural address that this debate was "approaching its end." Wrong--it was nearing the brink of civil war. And what the Court said about Bred Scott would help to push it there.

Slavery had been a divisive issue since the earliest days of the growing Republic. In the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Congress had prohibited slavery in the area that is now Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise had cooled tempers between North and South by admitting Missouri to the nation as a slave state while banning slavery in a huge chunk of the land gained from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

Dred Scott was born in Virginia around 1800. Records are few, but a Maryland slave's account hints at what his early life must have been like:

We lodged in log huts and on the bare ground. Wooden floors were an unknown luxury. In a single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women, and children.... Our beds were collections of straw and old rags, thrown down in the corners and boxed in with boards, a single blanket the only covering.

In 1833, Scott's owners sold him to a U.S. Army surgeon, John Emerson, of St. Louis, Missouri. Emerson took Scott with him when he was posted to Illinois, a "free" state that banned slavery, and to Minnesota, then part of the free territory of Wisconsin.

In the North, Scott could have left slavery at any time. But as an illiterate slave in isolated Army outposts, he probably didn't know that. Instead, he returned to Missouri with Emerson in 1840. When Emerson died in 1843, Scott, his wife, and two daughters became the property of the doctor's wife, Irene. In 1846, encouraged by his first owner's son, Scott sued in state court to win his family's freedom.

His case seemed strong. Legal precedents held that slaves living in the North became free for life. In 1852, however, Scott's case ended up in Missouri's pro-slavery Supreme Court, which tossed aside precedents and denied Scott his freedom. Missouri's Chief Justice made it sound as if he were doing Scott a favor:

We are almost persuaded that the introduction of slavery amongst us was, in the providence of God, ... a means of placing that unhappy [black] race within the pale of civilized nations.

By this time, the Scotts were owned by Irene Emerson's brother, John Sanford, in New York. Because Sanford lived in a different state, Scott's lawyers could file a new suit in federal court.

Appeals in the Dred Scott case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in February 1856. For months, the Justices heard arguments and deliberated. Was Scott now free, because he had lived in a free state and a free territory? Was he even a citizen with the right to sue in federal court?

The Court could have given a narrow answer simply by upholding or reversing Missouri's Supreme Court. But the five Southern Justices --including Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (TAW-ney) of Maryland--wanted to settle the slavery issue for good. Two pro-slavery Northerners joined in a sweeping 7-2 decision written by Taney himself. For Scott, it wasn't good news.

Taney argued that having lived in a free state did not make Scott free. He added that blacks--even free ones--could not be citizens, justifying his view by noting that when the Constitution had been written, blacks had long been

regarded 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....

Shocking as these racist views sound today, the real bombshell was what Taney said next. He argued that slaves were property, protected by the "due process" clause of the Fifth Amendment, and that therefore Congress had no power to interfere with slavery in any federal territories. That meant that the Missouri Compromise, which had helped keep the peace for decades, had been unconstitutional all along! Justice Benjamin Curtis of Massachusetts, one of the Court's two dissenters, pointed out in vain that the Founding Fathers themselves had passed laws, such as the Northwest Ordinance, forbidding slavery in the territories.

Pro-slavery Southerners naturally saw the Dred Scott decision as a triumph. Virginia's Richmond Enquirer boasted:

... abolitionism [the drive to abolish slavery] has been staggered and stunned. Another supporting pillar has been added to our institutions.

But Northerners were appalled. A New York Times editorial noted with horror that "slavery is no longer local; it is national." It predicted that the ruling

will sink deep into the public heart, and germinate there as a seed of discord and contest and disaster hereafter. They mistake the temper of the men of this Republic, who believe that they will ever accept Slavery as the fixed and permanent law of the American Union.

The decision's legal effect was slight, because the Missouri Compromise had already been superseded by other laws. But it galvanized sentiment in the North behind the new Republican Party, whose whole purpose was to stop the spread of slavery. And the 1860 victory of that party's presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, triggered the Civil War. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued during the conflict, spelled slavery's doom. After the war ended in 1865, the states adopted the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and gave full citizenship--in theory--to blacks.

Those Amendments made the Dred Scott decision a dead issue, but Scott himself never lived to see that day. He and his family were bought by a friend shortly after the Court's ruling, and set free in May 1857. Scott enjoyed just over a year of freedom before dying of tuberculosis on September 17, 1858.

Slavery's Big Victory

FOCUS' Dred Scott Case Inflames a Nation and Helps Bring on the Civil War

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision of 1857, specifically why the Court strengthened slavery and how that paved the way for the Civil War, only four years later.

Discussion Questions:

* In what ways might U.S. history have changed if the Court had set Dred Scott free? (Identify two or more.)

* Suppose you are writing the script for a movie about the Scott case. What might Roger Taney and Benjamin Curtis say in an argument about the case? (Write six or more sentences.)

* Why did it matter so much whether new states were "slave" or "free"?

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

Before Reading: Note that as antiquated as the Court's racist language sounds, racism remained rooted in the U.S. long after Taney's comments. (The 1964 Civil Rights Act guaranteeing blacks equal treatment in public facilities did not become law until 107 years after Dred Scott.)

Critical Thinking: A key question, even today, is whether the Supreme Court can be swayed by the political tone of the times. Direct students to Chief Justice Taney's comment that from the time of the Constitution blacks had been regarded as inferior. Is that a legal opinion or an observation of social circumstances?

Next, you might have students examine the Fifth Amendment. Was Taney grasping for any way to secure slavery when he seized upon the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against the seizure of property?

Next, address the dissenting opinion of Justice Benjamin Curtis. Did Taney and other majority Justices not understand the Northwest Ordinance's prohibition against slavery in the territories? Didn't that and other laws Curtis referred to permit the surrender of "property" (slaves) in free territories?

Writing Exercise: You might have students pretend it's 1857 and write an opinion explaining why the Northwest Ordinance and other laws barring slavery in the territories should not be discarded.

Web Watch: For more on the impact of the Dred Scott decision, log on to http ://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/E/dred_scott/ scottxx.htm. See "The Road to Civil War."