Dred Scott decision
1857 slavery case
The Dred Scott decision was an 1857 U.S.
Supreme Court ruling that enslaved people were not citizens and had no right to sue in federal court, and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in U.S. territories.
The decision inflamed sectional tensions and is widely considered among the worst Supreme Court rulings in American history.
The Dred Scott decision made civil war nearly inevitable.
- Fugitive Slave ActLaw mandating escapee return
- Civil WarCountrymen fighting countrymen
- sectionalismGeographic loyalty over national
- Kansas-Nebraska Act1854 territorial organization law
- Compromise of 1850Five bills balancing slave-state interests
chattel slavery · popular sovereignty · territorial expansion · free soil · slave states · Frederick Douglass · Lincoln-Douglas debates · due process · property rights · freedom · abolitionist movement · 13th Amendment · Supreme Court · court ruling · Constitution · federal power · states' rights · Jim Crow laws
- Antebellum Americaantebellum era, Compromise of 1850, sectionalism, states' rights, Fugitive Slave Act
- Abolitionismabolitionists, abolitionist movement, anti-slavery, antislavery, abolitionism
Dred Scott decisionEmancipation Proclamation
Executive order freeing Confederate slaves
Thirteenth Amendment · Fourteenth Amendment · emancipation · abolition · manumission
Dred Scott decisionMissouri Compromise
1820 slavery boundary legislation
Dred Scott decisionBrown v. Board of Education
Landmark desegregation decision
Fourteenth Amendment · Loving v. Virginia · citizenship · equal protection · birthright citizenship