Dred Scott, horrible as it was as a legal ruling, was inevitable. If the nation took the political option of the Lewis Cass/Stephen Douglas position (”popular sovereignty”), the South would lose because it would soon be outnumbered by new free states and outvoted, and eventually would lose the protections of slavery.
If it took the Daniel Webster position that Congress had authority over slavery, the South would lose, for the same reasons: the North would, with its population growth, overwhelm the South in the Senate and House.
Only John C. Calhoun’s position-—that only a preexistent state government could abolish slavery-—would preserve slavery, so that is what Taney’s Court went with. That made slavery the de facto position of every new state, which was also unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans.
When Taney declared that Negroes were not people, he sealed the quicker and bloodier doom of slavery, but I don’t see how it was going to be accomplished without a war.
Since the deep South had already seceded, there was no point in conflict as a moral issue.
The Dred Scott decision is more than a little confusing.
Thanks for a clear explanation.
There had to be a war about slavery because, and only because the slave power wanted a war about slavery. Noone else wanted a war about slavery.
Certainly Brazil, New Jersey, New York, the Northwest Territories, various northern states got rid of slavery without a war.
I would point out that Taney went beyond saying that state governments could abolish slavery, and asserted that Dred Scott’s being brought into a free state (which had abolished slavery) did not make him free, and if Dred Scott didn’t like that, he had no standing to sue, and there was no law that a white man had to obey when he was dealing with a black man.
A truly rotten decision.