Dred Scott: The Inside Story

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This is a captivating, well-written, focused examination of the Dred Scott case. Author David Hardy introduces and humanizes the people involved in the case, explains the social and legal context of the case, traces the procedural history of the case and provides a succinct statement of the United States Supreme Court ruling in Scott v. Sanford. The text is a short and easy read.

I'm a trial attorney and as I read this book I got the feeling from the organization and writing that I was reading a legal brief - which I mean in a good way since briefs really do have to have a focus on the main issues. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to see my suspicion confirmed that Hardy is an attorney.

I was also surprised by how much I didn't know about the case. I had learned that the case denied Scott's claims on the grounds that as a Negro he could not be a citizen. However, the Dred Scott decision went beyond that and held that neither Congress nor the territories could deny slave-owners their right to property in their slaves. In short, the Supreme Court ended the political process that was breaking down but also working out compromises by giving a clear win to the South and slavery in a manner that we've seen the modern Supreme Court do on various social questions.

As Hardy points out, these latter decisions were the political dynamite that destroyed Senator Douglas' compromise of “popular sovereignty” position. Douglas went from a figure that Southerners could vote for as giving them at least a chance at expanding slavery and Northerners could vote for as putting the issue of slavery into someone else's hands. Since the Southerners had been handed victory by the Supreme Court, they didn't need a compromise. On the other hand, Northerners were well-aware that they had been placed into a position where their way of life had been held by the Supreme Court to be outside the “Overton Window” of the mid-19th century.

I don't think I appreciated that angle on the Dred Scott decision and how it made war almost inevitable.

This is a very good book that makes for a quick read on the subject.