What were the opposing arguments in dred Scott v sandford?

Answer 1

Scott had been living earlier on free soil, where his freedom would have been granted automatically, if he had applied for it. But he did not apply for it until he was back in slave country.

Local judges had not dealt with this class of application before, and that is how it reached the Supreme Court.

The court voted to deny Scott his freedom. Then the Chief Justice chose to add some comments that proved highly inflammatory.

He chose to interpret the Constitution as he believed the Founding Fathers would have meant it. So when they declared that a man's property was sacred, they would have included slaves in their definition of property.

This appeared to mean that slavery was legal in every state of the Union, and that all the compromises were invalid. This delighted the South as much as it horrified the Abolitionists.

He also commented that a black man was not the sort of person who ought to be suing a white man in the first place. This further offended the Abolitonists, and divided the nation, bringing war closer.