Rhetorical Analysis Of Dred Scott

After considering a suit from Dred Scott, a slave who lived in the free territory of Illinois, the Supreme Court in 1857 rejected Scott’s appeal for diversity jurisdiction and barred citizenship to people of African descent. Additionally, the Court deemed the Missouri Compromise, a law balancing free and slave states, unconstitutional. Although Taney cites history, miscegenation laws, and traditional views of race, his arguments ultimately rely on pathos-filled appeals to the core demographic of the Court’s ruling, white Southern slaveholders.
Speaker/Ethos
Justice Roger Taney, the speaker, writes for a 7-2 majority and argues that Dred Scott’s race denied him standing to sue, a right reserved for US citizens. The Court voided not only Scott’s

Taney evokes an emotional response by referencing the perceived beliefs of the Founding Fathers and miscegenation laws. Slave owning families comprised 30.3% of the population in Southern states in 1850 (“Statistics of Slaves”), and Taney’s argument galvanizes support by appealing to the audience’s patriotism. Citing the Declaration of Independence elicits loyalty, and because citizens equate the Founders with intelligence, morality, and wisdom, the audience relates to the emotional weight of Taney’s argument. In fact, Taney employs jingoism to exploit nationalism and strengthen the Court’s ruling (“Jingoism”). Additionally, Taney references miscegenation laws to elicit the audience’s feelings of racial superiority. Not only did intermarriage violate social norms, according to the Court, it was, “unnatural and immoral, and punished as crimes” (Dred Scott v. Sandford). Although the 13th (1865) and 14th (1868) amendments invalidated Dred Scott v. Sandford, interracial marriage remained a taboo, controversial subject. In fact, only after the Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia was legislation preventing intermarriage deemed unconstitutional (“Looking Back At the Landmark Case, Loving v. Virginia”). Appealing to prohibitive legislation illustrates the Court’s view of racial division and the pitfalls of granting citizenship to black Americans. Taney’s examples