The Dred Scott Case by D.J. Herda

Author:D.J. Herda [Herda, D. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4645-0180-7
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2011-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

The Decision

Christmas 1856, was a time of mixed feelings for Dred and Harriet Scott. Throughout the course of the Supreme Court hearing, they had worked under the supervision of the Court, which allowed them to be hired out to perform various odd jobs in and around their home in Missouri. The money they earned was deposited in a bank account and would be released following the Court’s decision. If the decision went in favor of John Sanford, he would receive the money. If, on the other hand, it went in favor of the Scotts, they would receive the money.

The Scotts had never dreamed that the Court’s proceedings would take so long or become so involved. Scott himself later told a local newspaper interviewer that he did not understand what all “the fuss” was about. But fuss there was. In fact, by the time the New Year had dawned, the “great case,” which several newspapers had come to call it, had caused heated debate from the local barber shop to the floor of Congress. Everywhere people were talking about Dred Scott v. Sandford, not because of their interest in the outcome of Scott’s bid for freedom so much as from their desire to see how the Court would decide on the question of slavery.

But the Court’s decision was unexpectedly delayed when, on January 3, 1857, Justice Peter Daniels’s wife died in a fiery accident. The grief-stricken Daniels was unable to attend another session until mid-February, and it was then that the Court held its first conference on Dred Scott.

At that Supreme Court conference, two notable things happened. First, Justice Samuel Nelson decided to join four other justices who believed that the plea in abatement was not a consideration of the Court and therefore would not play a role in the Court’s decision. This created a majority opinion and was good news for Scott.

Second, the Court’s five Southern justices favored doing away with the slavery restriction of the Missouri Compromise. Justices John McLean and Benjamin Curtis favored keeping the Compromise intact, while Samuel Nelson and Robert Grier favored maintaining the circuit court’s decision, thus in effect avoiding entirely a decision on whether or not the Compromise was constitutional. In time, the five Southern justices decided to join with Nelson and Grier in upholding the lower court’s decision, and Nelson was appointed to write the opinion of the Court. No decision on the citizenship issue or on the power of Congress to regulate slavery in the territories would be made—this was more good news for Scott.

But as time passed, the justices became aware that the public had come to expect a decision on the question of the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise. What had begun as a simple question of ownership had grown into something far more complex. Plus, political pressure from the justices’ peers and associates, especially those of the Southern justices, was beginning to take its toll. Several members of the Court expressed concerns about the need to save the

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