MFW He just triggered a Civil War Instead

Dred Scott v Sanford was a landmark case in the supreme court… for all the wrong reasons.

The basic case was that Dred, a slave, had sued his master (Originally Irene Emerson, then her brother John F.A. Sanford, after she transferred her ownership of Dred to him) for freedom, arguing that his time spent in Missouri (a free territory at the time) granted he and his family freedom. It had escalated all the way to the supreme court, and, in 1856, the time had come for a final decision.

The decision was written by the 80-Year-Old and HARDLINE Pro-Slavery Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who saw the case as the perfect time to use the authority of the highest court in the land to settle the debate on slavery forever, and to permently hand victory in the debate over the “Peculiar Institution” to the pro-slavery side. This was helped by President-Elect James “Worst President of All Time” Buchanan, who urged Taney to write a “final” judgement on slavery as a whole.

Basically, Taney wrote that not ONLY did Dred Scott not get to be free, but he ALSO didn’t even have the right to sue for his freedom. He argued that Black People had never been intended to be included as citizens in the constitution, and as such, they had “no rights the white man was bound to respect”, in effect stripping every single black person, free or in bondage, in the entire nation of their rights under federal law.

Instead of just dismissing the case right then and there, in a blatant case of judicial activism, he then went even further, declaring that the 1820 Missouri Compromise line (which was one of the only reasons the United States hadn’t collapsed into a civil war ALREADY) was ALSO unconstitutional.

He argued that since slaves are property, the government couldn’t deprive their owners of their property by banning slavery in the territories, due to the 5th amendment. This effectively legalized slavery in all of the territories with the stroke of a pen.

This also created a obvious jumping off point for legal arguments that if the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT couldn’t ban slavery, neither could the Free States, effectively creating a legal diving board for legalizing slavery nationwide.

Naturally, the utter act of judical overreach and naked racism outraged the anti-slavery sections of American Society, rocketing the prevalence of the Nasent anti-slavery Republican Party, and, 4 years later, lead to the election of Abraham Lincoln without him carrying a single Southern State.

Realizing that the Anti-Slavery section of the population was becoming capable of outvoting them, with the gap only bound to widen year by year, the Southern States Seceded, Creating the Confederacy, and the rest is history.