Before the Civil War

The Dred Scott decision announced by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, 79, March 6 enrages abolitionists and encourages slaveowners. The fugitive slave Dred Scott claim freedom on the ground that he resided in free territory, but the court rules that his residence in Minnesota Territory does not make him free. Mentioned that the Congress never had the authority to ban slavery in the territories, a ruling that in effect calls the Missouri Compromise of 1820 unconstitutional. …

…The passage of the KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT (1854), which allowed settlers in those territories to decide whether they should have slavery or not, had polarized Kansas politics. Regrettably, compromise proved impossible because proslavery men dominated the convention, while free-state forces set up an extralegal government at Topeka. This was intolerable for their antislavery opponents, who refused to participate in what they considered to be an illegal government. Eventually the Lecompton Constitution was defeated at the national level.