Once before the Supreme Court of the United States tried to save a
decaying social institution--the institution of Slavery. There was a
slave named Dred Scott. He was owned by a resident of Missouri. He was
taken into Minnesota and into Illinois. Illinois was a free State by its
own laws. Minnesota was free by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Then
his master took Dred Scott back to Missouri, and there Dred Scott tried
to gain his freedom. The case was finally decided by the Supreme Court
of the United States in 1857.
The Supreme Court held (two justices dissenting) that Scott could not
sue in the lower courts because he was not a citizen and, therefore, was
not entitled to any standing in the courts; that at the time of the
formation of the Constitution, negroes descended from negro slaves were
not and could not be citizens in any of the States; and that there was
no power in the existing form of Government to make citizens of such
persons. In the course of his decision, Judge Taney used the following
language:
"It is difficult, at this day, to realize the state of public opinion
which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world
at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the
Constitution was framed and adopted in relation to that unfortunate
race. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a
manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before
been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to
associate with the white race, either in social or political relations;
and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was
bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be
reduced to slavery for his benefit. He has been bought and sold and
treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a
profit could be made by it. The opinion was at that time fixed and
universal in the civilized portion of the white race."
The Chief Justice went farther than the point at issue warranted, and
stated that the power of Congress to govern territory was subordinate to
its obligation to protect private rights in property and that slaves
were property and as such were protected by the constitutional
guarantees; that Congress had no power to prohibit the citizens of any
State to carry into any territory slaves or any other property, and that
Congress had no power to impair the constitutional protection of such
property while thus held in a territory.
The Dred Scott decision fastened Slavery forever upon the United States.
Slavery lasted just six years.