Parentella

Portrait of Dred Scott painted by Louis Schultze

This is part three of our series of interesting facts about how black people have shaped America’s history and culture, in honor of Black History Month. I gathered this information primarily from Biography.com (with a little from Wikipedia, The History Place, US history.org, and President Profiles.com). Click on the links for parts One: 1619 – 1839 and Two: 1840 – 1855.

1857: The Dred Scott Decision

• Dred Scott had been a slave in Missouri. His master moved to Illinois, then Wisconsin (both non-slave areas), taking Scott with him, but eventually returned to Missouri. In 1847 Scott filed his case, arguing that he should be free since he lived in free territories for two years.

• Dred Scott vs. Sanford went through many appeals before going to the Supreme Court.

• The president at the time, James Buchanan, was in a political quandary with the increasingly heated issue of slavery. Seeing an easy out to resolve the matter, Buchanan encouraged the Supreme Court to accept the case, knowing the Court was stacked with pro-slavery judges.

• The Supreme Court declared no slave or descendant of a slave could be a U.S. citizen. As a non-citizen, Scott had no rights and could not sue in a Federal Court and must remain a slave.

• The Supreme Court also ruled that Congress could not stop slavery in the newly emerging territories and declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 unconstitutional. The Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery north of the parallel 36°30´ in the Louisiana Purchase.

• The decision further polarized the North and South. Abraham Lincoln reacted with disgust and publicly spoke out against it, claiming the next step would be for the Supreme Court to decide that no state could exclude slavery under the Constitution.

1860: Abraham Lincoln was elected president.

• His outspokenness regarding the Dred Scott Decision played a significant role in his election.

• Lincoln had always made it clear his main concern was preserving the Union, not ending slavery.

1861: The Civil War began

• South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as their president.

• Later in the year Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia join them. Virginia was divided up, with the eastern portion seceding to the Confederacy and West Virginia remaining with the Union.

• The term “King Cotton” was coined. Cotton made up about 60 percent of American exports when the war started, about $200 million a year. The Confederates stopped exporting cotton to Europe in hopes that Europe, needing cotton, would ally with the South. Instead, Europe stayed out of the war and bought cotton from India and Egypt.

• It was the bloodiest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of about 600,000.

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Compiled by Christi Grab, Parentella’s Editorial Director and author of  The Unexpected Circumnavigation: Unusual Boat, Unusual People Part 1 – San Diego to Australia.

Related posts:

1. Black History Highlights: 1619 – 1839
2. Black History Highlights: 1840 – 1855
3. History of Thanksgiving
4. President’s Day Activities for Your Family
5. Celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday

Tags: Abraham Lincoln, black history month, Civil War, Dred Scott Decision, James Buchanan, King Cotton, slavery

This entry was posted on Friday, February 25th, 2011 at 12:01 am and is filed under Christi Grab, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.