In 1857 a landmark case in American history before the American Civil War took place. Dred Scott was a slave who was raised in a slave state by his owner and then moved to a free state. After his owner’s death, Dred Scott sued for the freedom of both he and his wife. Scott based his case on the fact that the man that had used Scott as a slave had died and, now that Scott was in the North, the Missouri Compromise granted him his freedom. Scott was eventually denied his freedom based on the idea that as a man of African descent he was not a citizen and that it would be unconstitutional for the federal government to intervene on a slave’s behalf against state governments. Like almost all other national news, the Dred Scott v. Sandford hearing drew deep, harsh divisions in opinion in the north and south.
Northern Republicans were strongly opposed to the outcome that had been influenced by Democratic Justices as well as Democratic President James Buchanan. Republicans believed the case went against the Missouri Compromise, which divided America into a northern and southern sections based on free and slave states, respectively. If a slave was not free once he reached the free Northern states, it was though that the Missouri Compromise was not made useless. When southerners embraced the decision, it furthered the drastic sectionalism that had taken place in the United States, driving the south further toward secession and the Civil War.
The Dred Scott case symbolized a breakdown in the unity of the United States, and the emergence of the western frontier only multiplied problems in terms of power in Congress and the Supreme Court. Political parties such as the Whigs had begun to fail, and an entire political party, the Republican Party, was founded on the idea of stopping the spread of slavery and halting the expansion of Southern power in Congress. Because the Republican Party was founded on these ideas it made politics more about the north against the south and every part of the political process became infected with this sectionalism. This sectionalism found its climax in southern opposition to Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln was a member of the Republican Party, though he was more concerned in the immediate time period with only containing slavery and not yet advocating complete emancipation. Stephen Douglas and Lincoln took opposite sides when they debated the issue in the election for senator of Illinois. It promoted Lincoln in the national picture, as he took a stance against the expansion of slavery, whereas Douglas wanted to expand slavery into western territories. Lincoln would eventually be nominated to be president by the Republicans, and his victory was the last event that set off secession.
The Dred Scott case was one of the most significant events when taken into context of the coming Civil War. The Missouri Compromise was passed to try and alleviate tensions between northern abolitionists and southern slaveholders, when instead it acted only as a sort of “ticking time-bomb” in that it only pushed off conflict. The Dred Scott case called into question what the Missouri Compromise meant. It allowed the boundaries of slavery to extend into what was considered free soil in the north, drawing larger, and more fueled arguments over the question of the rights of state governments and the power of the federal government. This questions and the question of slavery provided a heavily sectionalized society that, in hindsight, seemed destined for the Civil War.
