A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court announced on March 6, 1857, that added fuel to the bitter sectional controversy over slavery and pushed the nation further along the road to civil war. The opinions of a majority of the justices covered three main points: 1) Negroes were not citizens and therefore could not sue in the federal courts; 2) A slave's residence on free soil did not make him a freeman upon his return to slave territory; 3) the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had forbidden slavery in that part of the Louisiana Purchase (except Missouri)... was an unconstitutional exercise of congressional power.

The case centred around the status of an illiterate Negro slave, Dred Scott, who had been purchased in 1833 by a U.S. Army surgeon, John Emerson, then stationed at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, Mo. The next year, Emerson took him from Missouri, which was a slave state, to Rock Island in Illinois, which was a free state. Emerson later took him to Ft. Snelling in the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1838 Emerson returned to St. Louis with Dred Scott, who had meanwhile taken a wife and become the father of a child.

In 1846, with the help of anti-slavery lawyers, Scott sued for his own and his family's freedom in the Missouri state courts on the ground that his residence in a free state and a free territory had made him a freeman. The lower court upheld his claim but the Missouri Supreme Court ruled against him and the case was eventually taken into the federal courts. Scott's owner by this time, Emerson having died, was a citizen of another state, John F. A. Sanford of New York, the brother of Emerson's widow. (Sanford's name was incorrectly spelled in the official record as "Sandford," and the case is usually cited as Dred Scott v. Sandford.) Scott claimed that as a citizen of the state of Missouri he was entitled to sue a citizen of another state in the federal courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard argument on the case in February 1856 and then, because of disagreement among the justices, heard the case again in December of the same year. The justices were well aware of the political implications of the case, for 1856 was a presidential election year, the first in which the new Republican Party took part. The Republicans opposed the extension of slavery into the Western territories while the Southern Democrats insisted that slaveholders should be allowed to take their property wherever they wished. Two years earlier, in 1854, Congress had passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act providing that the residents of the territories would decide the slavery issue for themselves, the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Civil war had broken out in Kansas in the spring of 1856 between the proslavery and antislavery factions.

A majority of the justices at first planned to rule simply that residence in free territory did not make a slave a freeman after he returned to slave territory, relying on a decision in a similar case in 1850. But when two justices, John McLean and Benjamin Curtis, revealed their intention to write dissenting opinions in which they would defend the validity of the Missouri Compromise, the majority also decided to discuss the case in broader terms. The justices hoped that an authoritative decision by the Supreme Court would help to take the issue out of the realm of partisan politics. Two of the justices actually corresponded with President-elect James Buchanan about the case and thus enabled him in his inaugural address on March 4 to urge acceptance of whatever decision the Court should hand down. This correspondence was a violation of judicial ethics but did not amount to a conspiracy as some have charged.

Each member of the Court wrote a separate opinion so the printed record of the case covers more than 200 pages. It is difficult to determine exactly what the Court decided. Most of the justices agreed wholly or in part with the opinion written by the chief justice, Roger B. Taney, and his opinion is usually referred to as the opinion of the Court. Taney declared that Dred Scott was not entitled to sue in the federal courts because he was not a citizen as that term was understood at the time the Constitution was adopted. He contended that in 1788 neither slaves nor free Negroes had been classed as citizens. The case might have been dismissed on this narrow ground, but Taney went on to make further observations. It was these observations that stirred up violent reactions throughout the country and have been the subject of controversy among constitutional historians ever since.

Taney asserted that Dred Scott had not become a freeman by virtue of his residence in territory declared free by the Missouri Compromise because in passing that legislation Congress had exceeded its constitutional powers. (The Missouri Compromise was no longer on the statute books as it had been repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but it had been in effect while Dred Scott lived in the Wisconsin Territory.) According to Taney, Congress had no power to forbid slavery in the territories for two reasons: 1) the Constitution gave it only very limited power to legislate for the territories; and 2) slaves were property, and property owners were protected by the due process of law clause of the 5th Amendment to the Constitution. This decision was the first since Marbury v. Madison (1803) in which the Supreme Court had declared an act of Congress unconstitutional.

Justice Curtis, who was joined in dissent by Justice McLean, wrote a stong opinion contending that, in the past, free Negroes had been recognized as citizens by some of the states, that Congress was authorized by the Constitution to forbid slavery in the territories, and that the Missouri Compromise had not been unconstitutional. He further argued that Taney had exceeded his authority by discussing the merits of Scott's claim after deciding that Scott had no right to sue in the federal courts.

The Dred Scott decision dealt a serious blow to the antislavery forces that had hoped to keep slavery out of the territories, and particularly to Sen. Stephen A. Douglas' doctrine of popular sovereignty. If the Congress of the United States lacked authority to forbid slavery in a territory, how could a lesser body, the territory itself, do so? Douglas answered this question in his so-called "Freeport Doctrine" during the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858. He declared that slavery could not exist in any territory without local police regulations to protect it. The people of a territory could bar slavery, if they wished, by refusing to enact such regulations. This interpretation angered the Southern Democrats and helped to split the party into Northern and Southern wings, thus leading to the election of the Republican presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860.

Dred Scott did not live to see the full consequences of his famous case. Soon after the announcement of the Court's decision, he was set free by his owner and earned a living as a hotel porter in St. Louis until his death on Sept. 17, 1858. After the American Civil War ended, some of the questions at issue in the Dred Scott case were settled by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that freed the slaves and the 14th Amendment that made them citizens of the United States and of their state of residence.

(H.C.T.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY- Stanley Cutler (ed.), The Dred Scott Decision: Law or Politics? (1967); Vincent C. Hopkins, Dred Scott's Case (1951); Carl B. Swisher, Roger B. Taney (1935).