Why was the south happy about the supreme court decision in the Dred Scott case?

Answer 1

Basic Points

• Chief Justice Taney sided with the South, despite believing slavery was a "blot on our national character."
• Incoming President Buchanan pressured Taney to render a decision that would overturn the problematic Kansas-Nebraska Act.
• Both Taney and Buchanan wanted a legal, rather than political, solution that would end the battle in Congress.
• Taney believed the individual states should decide whether to allow slavery without the intrusion of the federal government.
• Taney did not believe the Framers of the Constitution considered slaves citizens.
• Taney believed informal policies like "once free, always free" deprived slave owners of their Fifth Amendment right to Due Process.
• The South was economically dependent on slavery.

Basic Explanation

The reasons behind the decision in the Dred Scott case are a complicated mess of politics, economics, Constitutional interpretation and personal belief that almost defies explanation.

According to historians, much of the impetus behind Chief Justice Taney's decision related to pressure from soon-to-be President James Buchanan (who took office one week after the Court's rendered its decision) to overturn the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed people living in the federal territory to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery (under the theory of "popular sovereignty"). Prior to this Act, the Missouri Compromise would have prevented most of the territory from allowing slavery.

After the the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law, the federal government opened (future) Kansas for settlement, creating a rush for land by both abolitionists and slave owners, each side hoping to determine whether Kansas would become a free or slave state. Kansas became a battleground (known as Bleeding Kansas), both literally and figuratively, and the site of early violence leading to the Civil War.

The problems in Kansas mirrored the growing conflict between the North and South in the established states. Northerners favored ending slavery; Southerners, who relied on slaves to run their plantations, stubbornly refused any form of emancipation.

President Buchanan wanted the Supreme Court to settle the issue via constitutional interpretation, outside politics, with the hope of reducing animosity between the two sides. Both he and Taney seemed to believe settling the conflict under law would avert a potential war.

The Supreme Court was bitterly divided over the outcome of Scott v. Sandford. Five justices favored a narrow procedural ruling that would allow Scott his freedom, and they may have prevailed except for the fact that Dred Scott had become a pawn in a political battle.

Chief Justice Roger Taney, who grew up on a Maryland tobacco plantation, sided with the South, but privately believed slavery was a "blot on our national character," as he stated in an 1819 case. Taney had emancipated the slaves from his family's plantation and provided a pension to those too old to work, but held the contradictory view that African-Americans had not been considered citizens by the Framers of the Constitution, and therefore had no independent rights.

He also believed the decision whether to allow slavery should be determined by the individual states, not the federal government. This lead to his conclusion that Congress had no right to pass laws prohibiting slavery in the states.

If Northern states, which were strongly abolitionist, intended to remain free, Taney also had to tackle the "once free, always free" doctrine that allowed slaves who had lived in free states retain their freedom (or sue for it in court). On this count, Taney had more than 50 years precedent backing the Fugitive Slave Act, originally established in 1793 and renewed in 1850. The Fugitive Slave Act allowed slave owners to retrieve their "property," even from free states, and criminally prosecuted anyone helping a slave achieve freedom.

These precedents, unfortunately, led to the natural conclusion that - not only were African-Americans not citizens of the United States or the individual states - but they were legally considered objects, rather than humans. Taney claimed any attempt to force a slave owner to involuntarily relinquish his "property" was a violation of the owner's rights under the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause.

Both Taney and Buchanan hoped the Supreme Court's decision would settle the question of slavery permanently, but Scott v. Sanford ended up being one of the catalysts of the American Civil War.

Case Citation:

Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393 (1857)

For more information, see Related Questions, below.

Answer 2

Because it declared slavery to be legal in every state of the Union.

Answer 3

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