- In the 1850s, the United States was headed for civil war. Tensions were high over the expansion of slavery in the American West. In Kansas, for example, bloody fighting erupted between Northern and Southern settlers who fought to establish "Bleeding Kansas" as either a slave state or a free state. In the midst of all this fighting, Northern abolitionists were preventing slave catchers from forcing runaway slaves back into slavery.

Chief Justice Roger Taney and the Court thought they could prevent civil war with the 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Historical context is important in understanding this landmark case. Congress had been trying for decades to resolve the tensions between slave states and free states through carefully crafted compromises. For example, the 1820 Missouri Compromise allowed Maine to enter the Union as a free state and Missouri as a slave state. The compromise also banned slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of the 36, 30 parallel while allowing it in territory south of that line.

Dred Scott was a slave who lived in Missouri and eventually moved with his master to the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin. When Dred Scott's master moved back to Missouri, Dred Scott sued for his freedom, claiming that he became free when they moved to the northern free states. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, as they hoped it would settle political tensions surrounding slavery.

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a supporter of the South, wanted a firm united action against Northern abolitionist sentiment. So in ruling on the case, he arrogantly tried to settle the highly charged issue of slavery himself once and for all, rather than see Congress, which had debated the issue carefully for decades, plan out a solution. In a controversial 7 to 2 decision, the court decided that African Americans were not citizens. Therefore, they did not have the right to sue in court. Writing the decision for the court, Taney incorrectly and stubbornly claimed that the founders believed that "(African Americans) had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." He ruled that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to ban slavery from the states, and therefore the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.

Taney decided this despite Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, which reads, "Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States." Because of the Due Process Clause, Taney wrote slaveholders could take their property wherever they wanted, and slavery could not be prohibited in any state or territory.

One of the dissenters, Justice Benjamin Curtis, correctly asserted that free Blacks were citizens with the right to vote in five states at the time of the founding. He wrote, "It would be strange if we were to find (in the Constitution) anything which deprived of their citizenship any part of the people of the United States who were among those by whom it was established."

Contrary to Taney's intentions, the Dred Scott decision significantly heightened sectional tensions between North and South and contributed to the coming of the Civil War four years later. The case is seen as an infamous travesty of injustice and one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.

For more information on this and many other important court cases throughout history, be sure to check out the other videos in our homework help series.