How did the Dread Scott Case heighten tension in 1857 - page 1
Keywords: Dread Scott, 1857, American civil war, tension
By ROYDS on 29/09/2008
Level: A Level (Year 12) / AS Level
Page Number: 1 of 2 pages: 1 2
" How did the Dread Scott Case heighten tension in 1857"
I would argue that the Dread Scott Case did indeed increase and cause tension in 1857, between north and south. It was perhaps the key ingredient that highlighted the already simmering tensions and problems within the U.S.A, but that is to say that there were other factors that became apparent and were already apparent before the Case was judged.
Only two days in the Buchanan’s Presidency, 6 March 1957, the Supreme Court delivered their judgement on the Dread Scott Case. Scott aimed to sue the Supreme Court on the grounds that he had lived in a free territory for a long time and had the right to gain his freedom now that his master was dead. It was ruled that the slave from Missouri, who had moved with his owner (John Emerson) to the northern part of the western territories, where slavery was forbidden under the terms of the Missouri Compromise, by Chief Justice Roger Taney on a verdict of 7-2 that “no black slave…could be a US citizen….since a slave was property of his master, congress had no constitutional right to deprive that master of his property in the territories.” The ramifications of this decision were shattering. It effectively ruled congress has no power to pass a law prohibiting slavery in the territories and that the Missouri Compromise (1820) has therefore been unconstitutional. This made abolitionist more radical and was clear evidence to the north of the Supreme Court as well as the president, the legislative and the Democratic Party all being in on the Slave power conspiracy. The judgement was received with elation in the south, who for them the case was a massive victory but in the north set a spiral of intensified hatred for the democrats and the south as a whole. The media openly talked about defying the law. The judgement also undermined the Republican Party who was committed to the expulsion of slavery and it also seemed to rule out popular sovereignty in the territories. Rather than settling the law about slavery in the territories Buchanan had provoked further sectional tension. “Instead of removing the issue of slavery in the territories from politics, the Court’s ruling became itself a political issue” –(McPherson)
However previous to the case in 1857 north – south relationships were at their worst. The Democrat’s new president James Buchanan was much
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