The reaction to the decision
The reaction to Taney’s ruling was predictable: The South celebrated, crowing that the constitutional guarantees of property (described in the Fourth Amendment) were secured once and for all. No governmental body had the authority to restrict the movement of slaves, who had been declared inviolable property by the highest court in the land. The North condemned the ruling, describing it as a politically motivated act by a pro-Southern Supreme Court. The Court, they noted, seemed to ignore the fact that the Constitution also spoke of guarantees to freedom in the same sentence that it guaranteed property in the Fourth Amendment. Northerners complained that Taney also forgot to look at Article IV, Section 3, of the Constitution, which clearly gives Congress the power to administer territories.
The can of worms is opened
In one blow the Supreme Court unwittingly toppled the delicate house of cards built since 1820 to maintain sectional harmony over the issue of slavery’s expansion. Neither popular sovereignty (the authority for people in the territories to decide whether to allow slavery to exist) nor the geographical limitations laid out by the Missouri Compromise were valid any longer. The Court’s decision opened all of the United States and its territories to slave owners. Congress (with its Northern voting bloc majority in the House of Representatives) could do nothing about it. By declaring that no law could restrict the movement of slaves, the Court placed human beings in the same category as furniture or livestock. Property has no rights to itself, and as such under the Constitution, people cannot be deprived of their property without due process of law.
The firestorm in the North
Northern radical abolitionists, were, of course, outraged by the Dred Scott decision, but, more importantly, Northern moderates were greatly upset by it too. The decision was too much for Northerners to take, so they declared that they would not obey the Court. This is the first instance of “Massive Resistance” to a Supreme Court decision. Several Northern state legislatures passed resolutions declaring the Court’s decision invalid and nonbinding. Some state legislatures refused to provide any assistance to the federal government in prosecuting anyone who violated the Fugitive Slave Law (see Chapter 1).
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
In 1852, in reaction to the Fugitive Slave Law, Harriet Beecher Stowe (see the following image), a member of a prominent abolitionist family, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel portraying the problems of slavery in the South. The novel, typical in many ways of the sentimental writing of this period, nevertheless tells a powerfully effective story using characters that have become stock characters in American culture: Little Eva, the pure little girl destined for heaven; Uncle Tom, the kindly, Christ-like Black servant; and Simon Legree, the brutal and degraded slave owner. It sold 100,000 copies in two months, and 300,000 in its first year. For 1852, these are impossibly large numbers. Like the bestseller Jaws, which made the idea of shark attack so real that everyone was afraid to swim in the ocean, Uncle Tom’s Cabin created frightening images of the South in the minds of its readers. Despite howls of outrage from Southerners, Stowe’s image of a benighted South and Southerners as a collection of depraved sadists became reality, convincing thousands of Northerners that slavery’s very existence was a moral blight on the soul of America. When Abraham Lincoln met Mrs. Stowe in 1862, he reportedly said, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe / The Library of Congress / Public Domain
The results of the Dred Scott decision
The Dred Scott decision was a disaster for the South. Rather than protecting slavery, it brought many Northerners to the Republican Party, who now saw the party as the only bulwark against a Southern legal and political conspiracy to open the entire nation to slavery. The Court’s decision also unwittingly dealt a deathblow to the Democratic Party’s chances to maintain an intersectional political organization. Stephen Douglas’s popular sovereignty, whatever its merits, was the one issue that brought Northern and Southern Democrats together. It had allowed the party to win the presidency in 1856. Now that the Dred Scott decision declared popular sovereignty invalid, the party had no hope of winning the 1860 presidential election against a united and powerful Republican Party.
The Underground Railroad
Some common citizens, angered by the government’s policy and spurred by strong moral convictions, turned to clandestine methods. This loose organization, called the Underground Railroad, sought to move escaped slaves and free Blacks to Canada, beyond the ability of the U.S. government to touch them. The Underground Railroad’s effectiveness as an organization has grown to mythical proportions over the years. While many noble and courageous people were involved in this act of defiance, many others took advantage of such altruism. Unscrupulous groups would entice escaped slaves by pretending to be part of the Underground Railroad. Instead of guiding them to freedom, however, they would turn the slaves over to federal authorities and collect the reward money.
John Brown’s Raid
Tensions between North and South in 1859 were very great; for years, emotions never seemed to reach a peak. Every new incident drove emotions to new heights, but there never seemed to be a limit to how high they could go, or where they would take the antagonists. In this overwrought atmosphere of crisis and tension, John Brown reenters our story.
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, John Brown and his followers had murdered several suspected pro-slavery Kansas settlers. After this attack, Brown and his group spent some time in Canada until the heat was off. By 1859, he had concocted a new and more ambitious scheme than simple nighttime murder and terror. He had become impatient with the lack of action in the country over slavery. What was needed, he kept saying, was action — do something, once and for all, to bring about the destruction of slavery in fire and blood.
His fanatic dedication to ending slavery led him to believe that he could be a one-man instrument of its destruction. His plan to do this called for nothing less than instigating and leading a nationwide slave revolt and race war. Supported with money and arms from wealthy antislavery sponsors who wished to remain anonymous, Brown prepared to carry out his plan.
Harpers Ferry
Brown selected Harpers Ferry, Virginia — the site of a federal arsenal located at the junction of a key transportation intersection only a few miles from Washington, D.C. — as his target. After he captured the arsenal and its weapons, he planned to use the town as his base of operations to receive the thousands upon thousands of slaves who would escape and join him. He would then arm the slaves as they arrived and create a stronghold. As more slaves arrived, he would expand the area under his control through violent action until he had created a free Black nation. On the night of October 16, Brown and his 18 followers entered Harpers Ferry and had no trouble gaining control of the arsenal and its production facility. Brown was so focused on the first phase of the operation — capturing the arsenal — that he had not thought through exactly how all the slaves in Virginia and the rest of the South would be notified that Brown and his conspirators were waiting at Harpers Ferry to arm them for a race war. Faced with this daunting reality, he did what terrorists usually do: He took hostages, swore he’d never be taken alive, and waited for the inevitable.
Sending in the Marines
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