Dred Scott v. Sandford
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Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that held that the United States Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black Afr
The Missouri Compromise created the slave-holding state Missouri (Mo., yellow) but prohibited slavery in the rest of the former Louisiana Territory (here, marked Missouri Territory 1812, green) north of latitude 36°30' North. Modern state boundaries are also shown.
Dred Scott
Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the majority opinion in the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision
Dred and Harriet Scott Statue in St. Louis
James Buchanan
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James Buchanan Jr. was the 15th president of the United States, serving from 1857 to 1861. A northern Democrat, he sought to resolve the sectional crisis through a pro-slavery interpretation of the U.
Dred Scott v. Sandford
…put up a token defense. Historians discovered that after the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case but before it issued a ruling, President-elect James Buchanan wrote to his friend, Supreme Court Associate Justice John Catron, to ask whether the case would be decided by the Court before his inauguration in March…
Daguerreotype of Buchanan, c. 1850–1868
Buchanan's birthplace
1834 portrait of Buchanan at age 42–43 by Jacob Eichholtz
Bust of James Buchanan by Henry Dexter at the National Portrait Gallery