LAD #14: Dred Scott Decision

When the court met for the first time in early 1857 it favored a moderate decision that ruled in favor of Sanford. It did not consider the larger issues of black citizenship and the Missouri Compromise. President-elect James Buchanan contacted friends on the Supreme Court, and he asked if the Court had reached a decision in the case. He needed some definite information about territories to bring up in his inaugural address on March 4. By inauguration day 1857, Buchanan knew what the outcome of the Supreme Court's decision would be and took the opportunity to throw his support to the Court in his inaugural address. That support was for the idea that every territory should have popular sovereignty and answer this question of slavery themselves. Chief Justice Thaney later in March of the same year addressed not only the slave issue, but the issue of free blacks, as well. One of the privileges reserved for citizens by the Constitution was the "privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified by the Constitution." Taney's opinion stated that blacks, even free blacks, were not citizens of the United States, and that therefore Scott, as a black, did not have the privilege of being able to sue in a federal court. Taney went on to reason that the Missouri Compromise deprived slaveholding citizens of their property in the form of slaves and that therefore the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.