Roger Taney (1777-1864)

Dred Scott (1799-1858)

In which we talk about the results of the Dred Scott case in 1857 & the fiasco over the Lecompton Constitution in 1858, and we show how the snowballing negative consequences of those events finally caused the Democratic Party to split, once & for all, along sectional lines.  A unified Republican Party will take advantage of that split & win the presidency in 1860.

Our book recommendation for this episode is The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics by Don E. Fehrenbacher.  

On March 6, 1857 Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the Supreme Court’s decision against Dred Scott.  Scott, a slave, maintained he had been emancipated as a result of having lived with his master in territory where slavery was forbidden by the Missouri Compromise.  The decision did much more than resolve the fate of an elderly black man and his family, however; Dred Scott vs Sanford was the first instance in which the Supreme Court invalidated a major piece of federal legislation.  the decision declared that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the federal territories, thereby intensifying the sectional conflict over slavery.

Listen to Episode 15: DredScott