In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in the territories of the United States. This ruling, called the Dred Scott decision, heightened tensions between the proslavery South and the antislavery North. These tensions would lead to the American Civil War only a few years later.

Background

Dred Scott was a black slave owned by a U.S. Army officer. In 1834 Scott's master had taken him from the slave state of Missouri to the free state of Illinois. He later moved to Wisconsin, which had been declared a free territory that prohibited slavery under an 1820 ruling by Congress known as the Missouri Compromise. When Scott and his master moved back to Missouri, he sued the state for his freedom. He argued that he should be considered a free man because he had lived in a free state and a free territory.

The case

A lower-level court agreed with Scott, but the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the decision. The case eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where seven of the nine justices ruled against Scott. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney presented a strong opinion that blacks did not have any rights as U.S. citizens, including the right to sue for their freedom.

Scott's appeal was not the only matter dismissed by the Supreme Court with this decision. The court also ruled that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional because Congress had no right to determine whether territories should be free or allow slaves. Slaves, the court ruled, were property, and Congress should not force citizens to give up their property. This ruling overrode Scott's claim that he had been free as a result of living in Wisconsin because the court believed Congress unlawfully forced Wisconsin to prohibit slavery. As for living in the free state of Illinois, the court ruled that Scott had been subject to Missouri law during that time.

Civil War

Efforts to overturn slavery seemed to suffer a great loss with the Dred Scott decision. The new Republican Party, which had voiced opposition to slavery, seemed weakened by the decision. In the coming years, however, it would gain strength with the help of a lawyer and energetic debater from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. Meanwhile, the Dred Scott decision fueled emotional debates on both sides of the slavery issue, which in 1861 erupted into the American Civil War between the North and South. In 1863 President Lincoln abolished slavery in the Southern states with the Emancipation Proclamation, but the war continued until 1865.