How did the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case lead to the decision of Southern states, including South Carolina, to secede?
Question 4 options:
It was decided that slaves were citizens and had constitutional rights. This caused panic in the South and led to the immediate secession of Southern states.
While the South was pleased that the decision affirmed slaves as "property," they feared that, once elected, Lincoln would reverse the decision and decided to secede.
The court decided that Dred Scott was in fact free since he had lived in free territory, upsetting southern slave owners. The South immediately seceded.
It created a new line across the country that designated a large free territory to the north and a small slave territory to the south. The South responded with secession.
While the option "It was decided that slaves were citizens and had constitutional rights. This caused panic in the South and led to the immediate secession of Southern states" has some elements of truth, it is not entirely accurate.
The correct option is: "While the South was pleased that the decision affirmed slaves as 'property,' they feared that, once elected, Lincoln would reverse the decision and decided to secede."
The Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case, handed down in 1857, had significant implications for the issue of slavery in the United States. The decision held that enslaved African Americans were not citizens and therefore could not sue for their freedom in federal courts. Additionally, the court declared that the Missouri Compromise, which had banned slavery in certain territories, was unconstitutional. This decision, while reinforcing the rights of slaveholders, led to widespread outrage and deepened sectional tensions between the North and the South.
The option states that the South was pleased that the decision affirmed slaves as "property," which is accurate. Slaveholders in the South welcomed this aspect of the decision as it reinforced their ownership rights over enslaved individuals. However, the option then suggests that the South immediately seceded, which is not true.
The actual reason for the Southern states' secession was the fear that the newly elected president, Abraham Lincoln, would work towards the end of slavery and potentially overturn the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln, a Republican, had expressed his opposition to slavery during his campaign, though he did not explicitly call for its immediate abolition. Southern states, including South Carolina, saw Lincoln's election as a threat to their way of life and their economic dependence on slavery. This fear, coupled with other long-standing grievances related to states' rights and sectional tensions, ultimately led to the secession of Southern states and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.