Several Supreme Court justices, particularly Chief Justice Roger Taney, hoped that the 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford would serve as the “final word” on the slavery question that had embroiled American politics for decades. They hoped that the prestige of the Supreme Court would command respect and end the increasing polarization of the country into pro-slavery and anti-slavery camps. However, these hopes were bitterly disappointed. The Dred Scott decision only deepened the divide facing the country. Southerners and pro-slavery Northerners hailed the decision as a complete affirmation of pro-slavery arguments, while previously moderate opinion in the North was radicalized against slavery. Far from being the final defeat of the anti-slavery movement, the decision brought more people into the movement’s ranks. This paper analyzes newspaper reactions in both the North and South to the Dred Scott decision, and also discusses common interpretations of the decision in the press at the time.
Naturally, nearly all shades of Southern opinion welcomed the Dred Scott decision. The opinion repeated arguments that supporters of slavery had used for decades to justify the existence of the “peculiar institution” – namely Chief Justice Taney’s statement that African-Americans were not American citizens and had no rights that whites were bound to accept. The Daily Courier of Charleston, South Carolina expressed the hope that the opinion would “settle these vexed questions forever, quiet the country, and relieve it of abolition agitation.” Indeed, one of the striking features of Southern commentary on the Dred Scott decision is the abuse poured on abolitionists.
While certainly not unusual in Southern newspapers at the time, it does reflect the increased radicalization of Southern public opinion by 1857. Many Southerners not only wished for an affirmation of their right to hold slaves but sought to silence all Northern criticism of slavery. These Southerners saw Dred Scott as their opportunity to do just that.
Southern slave-owners had significant political support from many Northern Democrats. Some of these “doughfaces” actively supported slavery, while others simply sought to finesse the issue and keep it out of national politics as much as possible. In 1857, the ultimate Northern apologist for slavery was President James Buchanan. The rise of the anti-slavery movement threatened the preeminence of the Democratic Party, with its core of Southern support. Not surprisingly, the Buchanan administration’s newspaper endorsed the decision in laudatory terms. It denounced anti-slavery agitators who it predicted would use the decision as a “fresh topic of sectional agitation.” At the same time, the newspaper attempted to use the respect Americans had for the court to persuade moderate Northerners to stop criticizing slavery. It encouraged those moderates to “conform their action to the adjudication of the highest judicial tribunal in the land.”
By 1857, much of Northern public opinion had turned strongly against slavery. The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had kept the issue of slavery in national politics and polarized both sections of the country. As a result of this polarization, most Northern newspapers had a strongly negative reaction to the Dred Scott decision. One Northern paper wrote that the “decision, we need hardly say, is entitled to just so much moral weight as would be the judgment of a majority of those congregated in any Washington bar-room” The paper went on to describe the Republican Party as the nation’s final shield against the extension of slavery.
Other Northern newspapers noted that the Dred Scott decision meant that slavery was no longer a local issue. Previously, many Northerners had opposed slavery in theory but did not feel the need to take any action against the institution since it did not affect their daily lives. Northern anti-slavery newspapers sought to use the Dred Scott decision to rally these previously apathetic Northerners to their cause. Some newspapers did this by claiming that the implications of Dred Scott could eventually lead to the extension of slavery to free states. One newspaper stated that the next step after Dred Scott would be that “no State Government has a right to deprive any citizen of property, which the Constitution of the United States protects him in holding.” This argument ultimately proved effective for anti-slavery supporters. Even many of those who had been previously indifferent to slavery had no desire to become slave catchers themselves.
In retrospect, it is obvious that Northern anti-slavery interpretations of the Dred Scott decision were much more accurate than Southern pro-slavery interpretations. Southern newspapers believed that Dred Scott would be the death knell for the abolitionist movement.
In the pro-slavery view, the Dred Scott decision affirmed all of the arguments in favor of slavery, and even anti-slavery Northerners would now stop criticizing slavery out of deference to the Supreme Court. Of course, this is not what happened, as the reaction of Northern newspapers to Dred Scott makes clear. These Northern newspapers bitterly criticized the opinion (with the notable exception of the pro-administration Buchanan newspaper) and encouraged Northerners to redouble their efforts against slavery before Dred Scott caused the extension of slavery into the North. The rise of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 demonstrated how seriously anti-slavery Northerners took these warnings.