Compare And Contrast The Dred Scott Vs Stanford

The United States was founded upon the idea of liberty, justice, and the premise that “all men are created equal”. This idea was not always reflected in the reality of daily life in America. If you were an African American during these times, you had little rights. The African Americans were mostly slaves, but even the freed ones had little respect. Slaves were treated worst then animals, while freed slaves were treated as a third race among the blacks and whites. The demand on cotton made it near impossible at the time to free the slaves. The abolitionists never stopped helping the slaves and eventually they got their freedom forever. By the 1860’s, 250,000 blacks were freed in the South. This freedom was due to the idea of emancipation. Many of these freed blacks were the children of a white plantation owner and black mistresses who were slaves on their …show more content…
Stanford was a case about a slave who sued for freedom in 1857. Dred Scott was a slave who lived in Missouri. He lived in Illinois, a free state, from 1833 to 1843. This was in an area of the Louisiana Territory, where slavery was forbidden by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. After returning to Missouri, he sued unsuccessfully in the Missouri courts for his freedom. He claimed that his residence in free territory made him a free man. The Supreme Court ruled that he was a black slave and had not rights to sue for freedom because he was not a citizen. The majority decided to go further under the leadership of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. Most of the Court said that because a slave was private property, a slave should be allowed to be taken into any state and be held there in slavery. The Fifth Amendment did not give Congress the right to deprive the people from their property without due process of law. The Court found that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, hoping to end the slavery question once and for all, because Congress had no power to ban slavery from