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  • Essay / Dred Scott Decision: The Role of the Supreme Court and Political Parties

    Dred Scott is someone I heard about growing up, but never really paid attention to his information. That the Dred Scott decision was referred to the case of Dred v. Sandford by the United States Supreme Court. I always told myself that black people never had anything to do with the courts. The Supreme Court was impolite in its ruling that if a person of African descent brought to the United States as a slave had no rights. That African descendants also had no protection under the Constitution. African descendants wouldn't even worry an American. The courts went even further in their power by giving Congress no power to say or ban slaves. African ancestry seems to be the territory of the slave owners and the white man no matter what happens or who has anything to say in my opinion. Since African descendants were not Americans, they had no right to sue in court. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe overarching issue behind the Dred Scott decision was the fact that if you were to take a slave to a free state, that slave would become- it free? The Supreme Court ruled that slavery could not be banned and must be nationalized, arguing that they could not take away people's property because they had a constitutional right to their property. At this time, the republican movement continued to grow more and more. Southerners feared that Republicans would destroy slavery, at least in Alabama. They began to question whether the South would have to leave the Union if a Republican was elected. Harper's Ferry also contributed to this fear. John Brown led an assault on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry, hoping to distribute weapons to slaves and start a slave rebellion. As fear increases, the South forms militias to defend against possible rebellion. In late 1859, some southerners began demanding a federal slavery code, which had been proposed earlier in the Alabama Platform by Willian Lowndes Yancey. Yancey, along with other Southern radicals, began demanding that the Democratic Party adopt a commitment to federal legislation to protect slavery in the territories. Many southerners, however, were critical of this additional slavery code and considered it unnecessary. They knew that Democrats in free states could not support such a law and hoped to win in free states where anti-slavery sentiment was high. This caused a division among Southern Democrats over how best to defeat a Republican candidate in the 1860 election. Dred Scot v. Stan Ford was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that Afro -Americans, whether slave or free, could not be U.S. citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. Dred Scott, an African American slave who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom. In a 7-2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Court denied Scott's request. This was only the second time in history that the Supreme Court had found an act of Congress unconstitutional, in other words, SCOTUS was complying with the standards..