DRED SCOTT WAS NOT A CITIZEN OF MISSOURI - Essay Example

Thus, presently, the Supreme Court is the Court which most closely carries out the intentions set in the Constitution. Both the Constitution and the Supreme Court are federal institutions, and as such are ultimately respected by the citizens, the public officials and the law-makers of this country, within States, and by the people as a whole. Early in the development of the United States, though, this was not always the case, and a particular case, Scott v. Sandford, gave rise to a series of legal events which called into question both the US Constitution and the power and validity of the US Supreme Court.

In fact, this case may even have primary importance in explaining the reasons for the Civil War. Perhaps the most significant social factor at work in the US in the late 1700s, and throughout the 1800s was slavery. This economic and social fact at work within society was considered, though, to be a political issue. Legal debates and decisions were largely made to enforce the Constitutional acknowledgement of slavery, not to make rulings about slavery being right or wrong. Political solutions were sought to the question of slavery, rather than legal solutions.

By 1787, slavery was recognized in the Constitution (Author, year p. . ervice or Labor …” The Constitution went further, not to regulate slavery within States through Congress until 1808, but only to tax the movement of slaves into States, or between States up to that date (Art. I Sec. 9 Para.1). Slavery was, then, accepted as a fact which existed within States, and the federal Government restricted its involvement in the affairs of individual States. States made their own decisions about whether they were “Free States”, or whether they would allow slavery, and Congress respected those decisions.

But the implication was that 1808 would be the year in which Slavery would be abolished. In 1819, Missouri appealed to be included in the Confederation as a slave-owning State. This appeal was met by much resistance from the Northern States – in which Abolitionism was dominant – and the Midwestern States – where economies without slave labor would struggle against the slave-owning State economies. But Missouri entered the Confederation as a slave-owning State in 1819; Texas and Florida did likewise in 1845.

By 1854, though, a Bill was passed to enable the building of a railroad system to cross the continent, and it expressed overtly that regions, and the people themselves, could decide on slavery issues, rather than the Federal Government. This trend continued and by 1856-7, Abolitionism in the Northern States was becoming more powerful as a political force. Still, though, the Courts tried to avoid the issue of Slavery. Nonetheless, some decisions were made in the Courts, related to this question.

In 1824, for example, a case was heard relating to an 1803 Act of Congress preventing States from admitting persons of color. Arguments in the Gibbons v. Ogden case claimed that the rights of States to regulate slave traffic – the