What was the central point of the Dred Scott decision?

Answer 1

The judgment contained explosive allegations:

- Dred Scott was a slave, then he was not a citizen of the Union and therefore was not entitled to access to the Federal Justice;

- His stay in the Territories where the Missouri Compromise had banned slavery meant nothing because that compromise had not fallen neither in 1850 nor in 1854, but was void and of no effect, since its formulation in 1820, as the Congress had no power to legislate on slavery in the Territories;

- in essence, these Territories were and remained open to any form of agricultural exploitation, with or without slave labor;

- the Missouri Compromise was totally unconstitutional and any future parliamentary attempt to interfere in the question of slavery in the western Territories would have been unconstitutional as well.

The immediate outcome of the verdict and its grounds was that of further deepen the disagreement between the North and the South:

- the northern States declared that they never would accept the slavery and all the slaves brought within their boundaries would have immediately been declared free;

- the most extremist of the southern States' people prepared themselves to extend the slavery in the Territories and even claimed a new territorial expansion towards Mexico and a takeover of Cuba

(for whose purchase from Spain, Buchanan was ready to ask to the Congress an allocation of $ 30 millions), in order to enlarge the southern border of the US.

Since the moderate Southerners didn't agree to deal with such a dangerous development

of politics, which would have likely led to a war, the Democratic Party's leader Stephen Douglas decided to take side with the Republicans to prevent the situation from becoming irreparable.

The move was successful but provoked the split of the Democratic Party into two part in 1858, which opened the gate for Lincoln election in 1860.

Answer 2

What was the central point of the Dred Scott decision?

Answer 3

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