Dred Scott Case?

Question

What is the Dred Scott case?

Answer 1

THE key 1850s case dealing with slavery

Scott was a slave of the Sanfords, a military doctor who was transferred from Missouri, a slave state, to the North and free states. When he returned he died and left Scott to his widow and son, but they wanted to see him emancipated, something that was against the law. So, he ends up suing in order to gain his freedome using as his argument that he was held for a time in a free state so that made his condition one of being free and that he could leave any time he wanted to.

However, when the case reached the Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney ruled, along with the court, that several problems existed: First, Scott was a slave and therefore he had no standing to bring a case to the courts (this is not unlike the case a year or two ago when the athiest father challenged the requirement of his daughter to say the Pledge with "under god" included. The court ruled since he was the non-custodial father he had no standing to bring the case and threw it out). Secondly, they ruled, even if he was able to bring the case to court, a slave was considered property and therefore he could be taken wherever the property owner wanted to take him, including to free states.

The effect of this ruling was to say, effectively, that there was no such thing as slave states and free states. According to the Bill of Rights a property owner could not be deprived of his property without due compensation, therefore, if a slave owner wanted to take all of his slaves to free states he could.

Interestingly enough, I have heard it suggested that this case was the real cause of the Civil War because it showed that the only way the North and abolitionists could ever get rid of slavery was to have a war, because the Constitution favored the slave owner. An interesting but far reaching argument and suggestion.

Answer 2

Dred Scott v. Sandford,[1] 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1856)[2], known as the "Dred Scott Case" or the "Dred Scott Decision", was a lawsuit decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1857 that ruled that people of African descent, whether or not they were slaves, could never be citizens of the United States, and that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The decision for the court was written by Chief Justice Roger Taney.

Answer 3

The Dred Scott case has to do with the view of Property rights and where slaves fit in (because they were viewed as property). Dred Scott after being brought north to a free state sued to try and gain his freedom on the fact that he wasn't in a slave state so he was tech. free. The case was every important to abolitionists of the time. Unfortunately, Dred Scott was declared not free by Supreme Court...but did later gain his freedom after the trail.

Answer 4

(March 6, 1857), ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court that made slavery legal in all the territories, thereby adding fuel to the sectional controversy and pushing the nation along the road to civil war.

The decision--only the second time in the nation's history that the Supreme Court declared an act of Congress unconstitutional--was a clear victory for the slaveholding South. Southerners had argued that both Congress and the territorial legislature were powerless to exclude slavery from a territory. Only a state could exclude slavery, they maintained.

Dred Scott was a slave whose master in 1834 had taken him from Missouri (a slave state) to Illinois (a free state), then into the Wisconsin Territory (a free territory under the provisions of the Missouri Compromise), and finally back to Missouri. In 1846, with the help of antislavery lawyers, Scott sued for his freedom in the Missouri state courts on the grounds that his residence in a free state and a free territory had made him a free man.

The Missouri Supreme Court overturned an initial ruling by a lower court which had declared Scott free, and the case, then, began a long sojourn up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court announced its decision on March 6, 1857, just two days after the inauguration of Pres. James Buchanan. Though each justice wrote a separate opinion, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's opinion is most often cited on account of its far-reaching implications for the sectional crisis.

Taney, one of the seven justices denying Scott his freedom (two dissented), declared that a ***** could not be entitled to rights as a U.S. citizen, such as the right to sue in federal courts. In fact, Taney wrote, Negroes had "no rights which any white man was bound to respect."

The decision might have ended there, with the dismissal of Scott's appeal. But Taney and the other justices in the majority went on to declare that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (which had forbidden slavery in that part of the Louisiana Purchase north of the latitude 3630', except for Missouri) was unconstitutional because Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories. Slaves were property, and masters were guaranteed their property rights under the Fifth Amendment. Neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could deprive a citizen of his property without due process of law. As for Scott's temporary residence in a free state, Illinois, the majority said that Scott had still been subject then to Missouri law.

The Dred Scott decision seemed a mortal blow to the newly created Republican Party, formed to halt the extension of slavery into the western territories. It also forced Stephen A. Douglas, advocate of popular sovereignty , to come up with a method (the "Freeport Doctrine") whereby settlers could actually ban slavery from their midst. President Buchanan, the South, and the majority of the Supreme Court hoped that the Dred Scott decision would mark the end of antislavery agitation. Instead, the decision increased antislavery sentiment in the North, strengthened the Republican Party, and fed the sectional antagonism that burst into war in 1861.

Answer 5

hmmm... let me think...

that's the one that allowed segregation right? he wanted to sit on the train, but some poeple got mad... when to the courts and they were like "yup, you gotta' get in the back", right?

Answer 6

who? never heard of him