The Case

The Dred Scott vs Sandford Case was a case that will be remembered for centuries. The summary of the case, Dred Scott was a slave that was purchased by John Emerson who was an army surgeon. Emerson took Scott to Fort Snelling in Wisconsin a free territory, were Dred Scott met his wife. When Scotts owner past, Scott and his wife then realized there was a doctrine that stated "once free, always free" that might help them and have an advantage in the US courts.In 1857, Chief Justice Rodger B. Taney came out with the decision, he stated that blacks had no rights to sue in the US courts because they were solely property and not citizens of the United States, and also stated that the Missouri compromise was unconstitutional. That statement led to many Northerners getting furious, and the proslavery conspiracy arrises, that the southerners are taking part in the government, and slavery is becoming to be a huge conflict. The case itself brought tension about the idea of slavery and the Northerners weren't going to take much more. The Dred Scott case is believed to have been a big cause of the Civil War, due to the fact that southerners celebrated the decision and had the idea that the government protected and defended the slavery clauses. Northerners believed that the Supreme Court flat out rejected the right of any territory to ban slavery within its own borders, this caused the Northerners to become furious and established many anti-slavery attitudes. During the 1860s, the South wished to expand westward with slavery while the North wanted to keep it a white labor only expansion, while the election of Abraham Lincoln made the South lose hope, they decided to succeed from the union and them doing so sparked the Civil War.