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Updated: June 26, 2025
Political Effects of the Dred Scott Decision. Douglas's Springfield Speech on the Dred Scott Decision. He Indorses Chief-Justice Taney's Opinion. Freeport Doctrine Foreshadowed. Lincoln's Speech in Reply to Douglas. Uses of Judicial Decisions. Prospects of the Colored Race in the United States, Principles of the Declaration of Independence. Constitutional Convention Called by the Legislature.
Not otherwise could they have been so successful in persuading others to accept their views. Even before the Dred Scott decision had crystallized opinion, Franklin Pierce, although a New Hampshire Democrat of anti-slavery traditions, came, as a result of his intimate personal and political association with Southern leaders, to accept their guidance and strove to give effect to their policies.
And how could a member of Congress keep his oath and withhold the necessary protection to slave property in the Territories? Of course Lincoln was well aware that Douglas held that the Court had decided only the question of jurisdiction in the Dred Scott case; and that all else was a mere obiter dictum.
He tells us that on the 8th of March, 1820, Congress passed a law called the Missouri Compromise, prohibiting Slavery forever in all the territory west of the Mississippi and north of the Missouri line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes; that Dred Scott, a slave in Missouri, was taken by his master to Fort Snelling, in the present State of Minnesota, situated on the west branch of the Mississippi River, and consequently in the Territory where Slavery was prohibited by the Act of 1820; and that when Dred Scott appealed for his Freedom in consequence of having been taken into that Territory, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that Dred Scott did not become Free by being taken into that Territory, but that having been carried back to Missouri, was yet a Slave.
Dred and Coaly cowered as though whipped, while "Doc's" little hound slunk away in the keen misery of fear. We men looked at each other with lowered eyelids and the grim smile that denotes readiness, though no special eagerness, for dissolution. Beyond the "gant-lot" we could hear trees and limbs popping like skirmishers in action. Then that tidal wave of air swept by.
It is probable, however, that if the Dred Scott decision had not given to the South so full a measure of satisfaction, the South would have been more ready to accept the leadership of a Northern Democrat like Douglas. Up to a certain point in the conflict, they had felt the need of Douglas and had realised the importance of the support that he was in a position to bring from the North.
In the same connection he endeavored to silver-coat for Northern palates the bitter pill of the Dred Scott decision, by declaring that the people of any State or Territory might withhold that protecting legislation, those "friendly police regulations," without which slavery could not exist.
That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding like the mould at the foundry served through one blast and fell back into loose sand, helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds.
It declares that the sending home of the Africans would be "a practical reversal of the Dred Scott decision," and adds, "We have no fear that our people will long remain passive under such an accumulating weight of inequality." Is not this explicit enough? and does not the "white-basis" sufficiently explain what is meant by the systematic depreciation of the colored race in Mr. Cushing's letter?
This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State.
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