The now famous case of Dred Scott had been decided in the
previous year. Its bewildering legal technicalities may here be
passed over; fundamentally, the real question involved was the
status of a negro, Dred Scott. A slave who had been owned in
Missouri, and who had been taken by his master to the State of
Illinois, to the free territory of Minnesota, and then back to
Missouri, now claimed to be free. The Supreme Court undertook to
decide whether his residence in Minnesota rendered him free, and
also whether any negro of slave descent could be a citizen of the
United States. The official opinion of the Court, delivered by
Chief Justice Taney, decided both questions against the
suppliant. It was held that the "citizens" recognized by the
Constitution did not include negroes. So, even if Scott were
free, he could not be considered a citizen entitled to bring suit
in the Federal Courts. Furthermore, he could not be considered
free, in spite of his residence in Minnesota, because, as the
Court now ruled, Congress, when it enacted the Missouri
Compromise, had exceeded its authority; the enactment had never
really been in force; there was no binding prohibition of slavery
in the Northwestern territories.
If this decision was good law, all the discussion about popular
sovereignty went for nothing, and neither an act of Congress nor
the vote of the population of a territory, whether for or against
slavery, was of any value whatsoever.
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