Why did the Dred Scott v Sanford case occur?

Answer 1

Answer

Nothing was classified as 'Racist' in 1857.

But Abolitionists were offended by the Supreme Court's judgment that a black man was not the sort of person who should be suing a white man.

Answer

The term "racist" may not have been used in 1857, but 19th-century people were certainly able to recognize racial discrimination, oppression and maltreatment, or there would have been little impetus for the Civil War. Abolitionists were "offended" by the institution of slavery because it violated African-Americans' human rights. That they lacked the same modern terms for conditions doesn't mean our ancestors also lacked an understanding of the concept we call "racism," nor that the Dred Scott decision wasn't blatantly racist in retrospect.

It is correct that a large portion of white society, particularly in the South, viewed the practice of slaver as acceptable. Many believed African-Americans were inferior and incapable of being educated and independent; others considered them sub-human. Most Southerners relied directly or indirectly on African-American labor for their economic survival, which tended to reinforce stereotypes and encourage rationalization of unfair treatment.

The Dred Scott decision pandered to Southern politicians and to the incoming President, James Buchanan, who pressured the Court to make a decision that would overturn the Kansas-Nebraska Act that allowed residents of the future state to vote (popular sovereignty) whether Kansas would be a free or slave state. Abolitionists and slave owners had literally turned the territory into a bloody battleground over the issue.

The decision in Dred Scott was both directly and indirectly racist:

1. Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that all African Americans, whether they were slaves or not, were not citizens of the United States under the Constitution. Taney carried this idea further, later in the opinion, by asserting the Constitution had intentionally excluded African-Americans from being citizens.

   "A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a "citizen" within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States."

2. Slaves were also not counted as citizens of states or territories, and therefore had never had any of the protections afforded under either state or Federal Laws.

   "...the special rights and immunities guarantied to citizens do not apply to them..."

3. Based on his deduction that African-Americans weren't citizens, Taney revoked their right to sue for freedom in a court of law (which had become an established and accepted practice in some parts of the country), by stating they had no right to sue, and no court had jurisdiction to hear their cases.

   "...they are not entitled to sue in that character in a court of the United States, and the Circuit Court has not jurisdiction in such a suit..."

4. Taney claimed the only two clauses of the Constitution that refer to African-Americans made it lawful to treat them as property, rather than humans.

   "The only two clauses in the Constitution which point to this race treat them as persons whom it was morally lawfully to deal in as articles of property and to hold as slaves."

5. While the states could individually choose whether to make African-Americans equal to whites on their own soil, none had the right to confer US citizenship on them.
6. Constitutional interpretation would not change to accommodate social changes; there was no legal means of forcing an end to slavery in the United States.
7. Taney also stated Congress lacked Constitutional authority to pass laws prohibiting slavery in virtually all territories, nor could legislation passed while a state was a territory be forced on the state after it entered the Union.
8. Neither Congress nor the states had the right to take slaves from their "owners" simply because they had entered or were living in on free soil, because slaves were property. This ended the informal "once free, always free" doctrine by legally reducing slaves to the status of property, regardless of where they lived or traveled.
9. Taney further asserted that Congress lacked Constitutional authority to enter into mutual agreements with states to limit or prohibit the spread of slavery. This effectively nullified the Missouri Compromise, which Congress had negotiated with the southern states, as unconstitutional.
10. Ironically, the Taney Court earlier upheld the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (a renewal of a 1793 Act), an act of Congress that favored slave owners.
11. After the case was first argued before the US Supreme Court, five Justices favored a narrow ruling for Scott, allowing him his freedom on procedural grounds. Buchanan applied political pressure to Taney and other Justices to switch the vote from 5-4 in Scott's favor to 7-2 against him, making Dred Scott a pawn in a political struggle.
12. Chief Justice Taney ruled on issues generally favoring slavery that were beyond the scope of the case, placing the issues outside the Court's jurisdiction, but also leaving no means of appealing his action.
13. The Court defined African-Americans as a "...subordinateand inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority..." ensuring that even legally free African Americans would remain subordinate to whites.
14. The Court's decision applied equally to all blacks, both slaves and freemen, making the decision one related to race (racism) rather than to status.

For more information, see Related Questions, below.

Answer 2

Dred Scott had been for many years a slave of a medical officer and during that period he followed his master in Illinois, which at that time was not yet a State. After the death of the doctor, the widow remarried and didn't know how employ the old Dred, who was in poor health. Consequently, the slave (it seems following the advice of the children of a former owner of him), filed a law suit, asking to be recognized free and get paid for fourteen years of wage arrears.

The request was motivated by the fact that while serving the medical officer, Dred had lived in Territories where, according to the Missouri Compromise at that time still in force, slavery was prohibited and therefore he was no more a slave. The law court gave him reason, but the Supreme Court of Missouri to which his opponent appealed, rejected the first sentence. The case moved then before the Federal Court in the District which, taken into consideration that, being Dred a Missouri citizen and the opponent one of New York, the controversy had to be discussed before the Supreme Federal Court.