US History

U.S. History Study Guide

Mirroring the sectional feelings of the day, the Democrats were strong in the South, the Republicans in the North. The election in 1856 brought a weak president to leadership in a badly divided nation. 12.14 Buchanan Administration 1856-1860 James Buchanan was the last pre-Civil War president. His time in office was filled with handling the increasingly contentious sectionalism of the time. The Confederate States of America were created while he was president and after Abraham Lincoln was elected in November, 1860. He did not take an aggressive stance against the states who seceded and instead attempted reconciliation without war. 12.15 The Dred Scott Decision Distraught by the violence of Bleeding Kansas, President James Buchanan, who was elected in 1856, sought a judicial resolution to the issue of slavery’s extension. A case he saw as potentially providing such a resolution was that of Dred Scott, in which Scott, a Missouri slave, sued for his freedom on the basis that his owner had taken him to live in a free state (Illinois), and later a free territory (Wisconsin). In March 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the majority opinion on Dred Scott v. Sandford . To begin his ruling, Taney stated that Scott, as a slave, had no right to sue in federal court, and further claimed that no Black, whether slave or free, could become a citizen of the United States. Slaves were property, according to Taney, and would remain property, even if they resided in free territory. Furthermore, Taney ruled that Congress could not forbid slavery in any U.S. territory because doing so would violate the Fifth Amendment’s protection of property, including slaves, from being taken away without due process. This decision rendered the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional (though the Compromise had already been effectively nullified by the Kansas-Nebraska Act). Taney further suggested that the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act were unconstitutional, since they enforced popular sovereignty, which allowed territorial governments to prohibit slavery and therefore violated the Fifth Amendment as interpreted by the Court. Though Buchanan initially had hoped that the Dred Scott ruling might resolve the debates about extending slavery, it actually aggravated sectional tensions. Northerners harshly condemned the ruling, while Southerners celebrated it. Significance • The Dred Scott decision ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, and affirmed the status of slaves as simple property. Further, the decision casts serious doubt upon the legality of the Compromise of 1850.

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