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The controversy surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act affected the 1856 Democratic presidential nomination. Party members vetoed the selection of two prominent figures involved with the act—Stephen Douglas and Franklin Pierce. Rather, delegates elected James Buchanan, a Pennsylvania lawyer not connected with the Kansas-Nebraska affair. Therefore, Democratic leaders believed he was safe from Republican scrutiny.
Buchanan sailed to an easy victory over Republican candidate John Frémont and ex-president Millard Fillmore, who represented the Know-Nothings. At the core of the Buchanan victory was a group of southern ruffians who violently threatened war and secession should the “slave-loving” Frémont take office. The threats worried Northerners, who made up the majority of the Republican Party. Since the Republicans were primarily businessmen, and the possibility of losing their profitable business connections with the South would be a financial disaster. Therefore, many Republicans begrudgingly voted for Buchanan.
Two days after Buchanan took the oath of office, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that would push the nation one step closer to Civil War. The case involved Dred Scott, a Missouri slave who frequently traveled with his owner through Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory. In 1846, Scott sued his owner’s widow for his freedom. He claimed that his residence in free state Illinois, and in the Wisconsin Territory, where the Missouri Compromise outlawed slavery, made him a free man.
After several years in litigation, the case made it to the United States Supreme Court. On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney announced the dismissal of Scott’s case. The Supreme Court—with five of its nine members from slave states—ruled that black people were not citizens of the United States. Since Scott was not a U.S. citizen, he could not sue for his liberty. Taney also announced that even if Scott had been considered a citizen, his residence in the Wisconsin Territory did not qualify him to be free. Taney argued that, in his opinion, the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because it deprived citizens of their property—slaves in this case—without the due process of the law outlined in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Taney’s ruling declared that since slave owners could take their “property” anywhere, Congress could not ban slavery from the territories.
The Supreme Court’s decision shocked and angered blacks, abolitionists, and popular sovereignty supporters who had fought to end—or at least limit—the expansion of slavery. Republicans responded by declaring that the Court’s ruling was an opinion and, therefore, was not enforceable. Southerners were outraged at the Northerners’ blatant defiance of the Supreme Court’s verdict and promptly revisited their secession discussions. With these actions, the nation crept closer to war.
Copyright 2006 The Regents of the University of California and Monterey Institute for Technology and Education