Dred Scott V. Sanford Should Essay

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Thus, Scott was always a slave in areas that were free" ("Classifying arguments," Landmark Supreme Court Cases, 2009).

After the Scott decision, advocates of compromise between slave and free states such as Senator Henry Clay found their views legally invalidated. Clay had advocated the doctrine of popular sovereignty: that states should decide whether slavery was prohibited or permitted within their borders. As a result of Scott v. Sandford Northern states that had abolished slavery would now be forced to harbor slaves within their borders, if residents of slave states transported their 'property' to free states. To a slave-holder, being able to transport his or her property to the north was akin to being able to take a piece of luggage across state borders and retain his or her control over the property.

Southern states had always stressed the inclusion of slavery within the Constitution, and generally disregarded the Supremacy Clause, which stated that the laws of the federal government were the supreme law of the land, and state laws that conflicted with those of the federal government were to be overturned.

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However, it is important to remember that at the time of the Scott decision, slavery was not prohibited by federal law.

In further support of the Court decision in the Scott case, the Compromise of 1820 was already defunct and irrelevant by the time of the 1857 Scott decision. The Kansas-Nebraska Act had repealed the 1820 Compromise, and brought the states of Kansas and Nebraska into being. The scandal of 'Bleeding Kansas' was the result: Kansas was invaded during its (rigged) elections regarding its slave or free status by both abolitionists and pro-slavery activists. It was unclear who had the right to vote, and the state became a kind of symbol of the entire nation's ideological divisions. 'Bleeding Kansas' illustrated the logistical impossibility of America remaining a divided nation. The Scott decision highlighted the impossible legal quandaries that resulted from having a patchwork of free and slave states within the same country.

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