Dred Scott Case Analysis

The Dread Scott decision exacerbated the debate over slavery by declaring that blacks cannot be citizens and that Congress does not have the power to prohibit slavery in the territories, which further divided the North and the South. The decision also deeply affected politics, and was one of the causes of the Civil War. In 1846, African slave Dred Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that he resided in the free states of Illinois and the Wisconsin/Minnesota territory to serve his owner. In 1854, Scott appealed his case to the Supreme Court, seeking to reverse the District court’s decision declaring him still a slave. In 1856, the case began, however the freedom of Dred Scott was not the only issue the court addressed, they also had to decide can blacks be citizens, the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, and can Congress prohibit slavery in federal territories. A year later the Supreme Court handed down its decision, “they dismissed the case of due to lack of

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