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Chapter VIII - Buchanan Elected, Dred Scott Rejected
Buchanan Elected, Dred Scott Rejected 1856 - 1857
The election of 1856 further demonstrated how violently the slavery issue was ripping apart the Union. James Buchanan, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, won only because he had Southern support since eleven of the sixteen free states voted against him. The Republican candidates John C. Fremont, won the eleven free states but not even one of the slave states. Future battle lines were clearly drawn between the sectional Republican Party and the increasingly divided Democratic Party.
Congress was not the only branch of government desperately attempting to resolve the slavery issue. On March 6, 1857, the supreme Court rendered a monumental decision in the case of Dred Scott vs. Sanford. Born a slave in Virginia, Scott had been taken to St. Louis in 1830 and sold to an army surgeon who took him to Illinois, then to the Wisconsin territory, and finally back to St. Louis in 1836. After his well-traveled master died in 1843, Scott attempted to buy his freedom. However, a Missouri court ruled in 1846 that Scott was already a free man since he had lived in free territory, reaffirming the popular notion of "once free, forever free." But the Missouri State supreme Court found otherwise and ruled that a slave state did not have to honor freedom granted by other states.
When the notorious case finally reached the United States supreme Court, Chief Justice Roger Taney, an appointee of Andrew Jackson, ruled that Scott "lacked standing in the court"; that is, he could not sue anyone because he lacked citizenship. Taney claimed that at the time the Constitution was adopted, Negroes "had for more than a century been regarded as . . . so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Taney further argued that the Missouri Compromise had deprived citizens of the right to property - slaves - and that Congress certainly did not have the power to ban slavery in any territory. Justice Daniel of Virginia bluntly summarized the court's decision, concluding that "the African Negro Race did not belong to the family of nations," and, therefore, Negroes were fit only to become "commerce or traffic, slaves, property."
Jubilant proslavery groups celebrated the decision as a reaffirmation of their sacred right to property. On the other hand, enraged abolitionists utterly denounced the decision as a strong confirmation of their fear that the United States would ultimately become a "slaveocracy." For Dred Scott the controversial ruling held no philosophical importance. It simply meant that he was not free. Ironically, Scott's new owner married an abolitionist who liberated him in 1857. A year later Scott died of tuberculosis, a bitter, humiliated, yet free man.
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