At about the time that
Mr. Buchanan became President-elect of the republic, a case of much moment was adjudicated by the Supreme Court of the
United States.
A negro named
Dred Scott had been the slave of a United States army officer living in
Missouri.
He was taken by his master to a military post in
Illinois, to which the latter had been ordered in the year 1834.
There
Scott married the female slave of another officer, with the consent of their respective masters.
They had two children born in that free-labor Territory.
The mother was bought by the master of
Scott, and parents and children were taken by that officer back to
Missouri and there sold.
Scott sued for his freedom on the plea of his involuntary residence in a free-labor Territory and State for several years.
The case was tried in the Circuit Court of
St. Louis, and the decision was in
Scott's favor.
The Supreme Court of the
State reversed the decision, and the case was carried to the Supreme Court of the
United States,
chief-justice Roger B. Taney (q. v.) presiding.
The
chief-justice and a majority of the court were friends of the slave system, and their decision, which, for prudential reasons, was withheld until after the Presidential election in 1856, was against
Scott.
The chief-justice declared that any person “whose ancestors were imported into this country and held as slaves” had no right to sue in a court in the
United States; in other words, he denied the right of citizenship to any person who had been a slave or was a descendant of a slave.
The
chief-justice, with the sanction of a majority of the court.
further declared that the framers and supporters of the Declaration of American Independence did not include the negro race in our country in the great proclamation that “
all men are created equal” ; that the patriots of the Revolution and their progenitors “for more than a century before” regarded the negro race as so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that they were never spoken of except as property.
He also declared that the framers of the national Constitution held the same views.
The chief-justice went further in his extra-judicial declarations, saying that the
Missouri compromise (q. v.)and all other acts restricting slavery were unconstitutional, and that neither Congress nor local legislatures had any authority for restricting the spread over the whole Union of the institution of slavery.
The dominant party assumed that the decision was final; that slavery was a national institution, having the right to exist anywhere in the
Union, and that the boast of a Georgia politician that he should yet “count his slaves on
Bunker Hill” might be legally carried out.
President Buchanan, who had been informed of this decision before its promulgation, foreshadowed his course in the matter in his inaugural address (March 4, 1857), in which he spoke of the measure as one which would “speedily and finally” settle the slavery question; and he announced his determination to cheerfully submit to it. The decision, or opinion, was promulgated March 6, 1857.
