Extraordinarily important to "get" what happened here, since Dred-Scott represented the culmination of decades of Slave Power political efforts to have slavery permanently recognized nation-wide.
Just like Democrats today, they sought (and found!) from the Court what they could not otherwise win through Constitutional processes.
Lincoln said Dred-Scott implied slavery was legal everywhere, and the next Supreme Court decision would make it explicit.
That's what inflamed Northerners generally, drove radicals like John Brown, and helped elect Republicans as never before.
In other words, in its greatest Federal victory the Slave-Power sewed the seeds of its own eventual destruction.
In writing the decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford, Justice Taney sought to craft a “final solution to the slavery question.” His decision was the failure of the legal system to resolve the issue. While Americans tend to decry our overly litigious society, it has had one positive effect: when angered, Americans traditionally don’t resort to violence, we go to Court. In this instance, Dred Scott was the failure of the Court system to adequately resolve the issue. That left the only alternative as violence.
So Taney’s decision will ultimately resolve the slavery question, but not the way he intended.