The Dred Scott Decision Led to Abraham Lincoln s Decision to Run for Office Again
The Dred Scott decision of 1857 put a match to the tinderbox of sectional conflict over the future of slavery, the most important issue in the mid-19th century United States. It exploded the hard-won rules under which the expansion of the Usa had been undertaken over the previous four or so decades and presented the bleakest possible future for African Americans, enslaved or free—that they were non and never would become citizens with guaranteed rights. In the procedure it set the stage for and had a huge impact on the historic presidential election of 1860.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act already had repealed the Missouri Compromise's prohibition of slavery in the territories west of Missouri and north of breadth 36˚30', but what caused the Dred Scott decision to stone the American political landscape was its ruling that the Constitution barred the federal government from prohibiting slavery in any territories. That ruling seemingly affirmed the Southward'due south vision of the American future and invalidated the platform of the Republican Political party, which had come up into being in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Human activity. Withal, the determination past many in the North to oppose and in some cases ignore the Dred Scott decision meant that the ranks of the Republican Party swelled. Its new bigger tent came to envelop radical abolitionists, who previously had believed that participation in whatsoever political party would water downwards their objectives; antislavery Democrats, who saw themselves at irreparable odds with their political party'south Southern contingent; Free-Soilers, who saw their hopes of settling in the West disappearing; and fifty-fifty members of the disintegrating nativist Know-Nothing party, despite the Republicans' overtures to immigrants. Moreover, the determination became the last straw that energized many moderates within the Republican Party.
For many Americans the Dred Scott decision confirmed their belief that compromise had been exhausted as a solution of the trouble of slavery. Nevertheless, every bit the Republicans gathered in Chicago for their 1860 national convention, a meaning number of delegates saw the frontrunner, William H. Seward of New York, and his primary challenger, Salmon P. Hunt of Ohio, as also radical to appeal to voters in the "Lower North" (Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey) and border states. Thus Seward and Hunt were idea to be unelectable. The raucous convention turned instead to Abraham Lincoln, who was seen as a moderate merely whose steadfast opposition to slavery and to the Dred Scott decision was widely known, specially in the Due south. Lincoln saw the decision every bit a manifestation of "slave power," the notion (some would say conspiracy theory) that a grouping of oligarchical plantation owners held sway over the U.Due south. government. He became hardened in the belief that merely a comprehensive monolithic solution to slavery would resolve the conflict. As he had said in his famous "A House Divided" speech in 1858, "I believe this regime cannot suffer, permanently half slave and half free."
Lincoln aside, at the eye of the Republican Party'south platform for the ballot was plank number viii, which expressly repudiated the Dred Scott determination:
That the normal status of all the territory of the United States is that of liberty: That, equally our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no persons should exist deprived of life, liberty or holding without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the dominance of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal being to slavery in whatsoever Territory of the U.s.a..
Significantly, the Republican Political party was not a national party just rather a party of the North. Lincoln's name would not fifty-fifty appear on the election in 10 slaveholding states. On the other hand, every bit the election approached, the country's only truly national party, the Democratic Political party, was splintering. Its most prominent member, Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, the champion of the popular sovereignty policy that was at the heart of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, entered the Autonomous National Convention in Charleston, South Carolina, in April as the frontrunner for the nomination, merely he was seen every bit no friend of the S. At Freeport, Illinois, during i of the famous debates between Douglas and Lincoln that were part of their 1858 campaign for Douglas'due south seat in the U.S. Senate, Lincoln had challenged Douglas to defend his popular sovereignty policy in the light of the Dred Scott decision. Douglas responded that territories could effectively ban slavery past choosing non to make laws that supported it. This equivocation, which became known as the Freeport Doctrine, proved to be anathema for many Southern Democrats at the Charleston convention, especially the "burn-eaters" from the Deep South who supported adoption of a revised version of the Alabama Platform commencement submitted past William L. Yancey at the party'due south 1848 convention. That platform called for the passage of legislation that would specifically codify the Dred Scott decision so as to prevent Congress or territorial legislatures from prohibiting slavery in any territory.
The Northern Democrats constituted the largest presence at the Charleston convention, just they could not muster the two-thirds majority necessary to nominate Douglas. On the other hand, they registered the accented majority that was necessary to preclude the adoption of the revised Alabama Platform. That rejection prompted delegates from eight Southern states to leave the convention and the party, an event that may accept been the premeditated objective of the fire-eaters, many of whom were already committed to secession every bit the reply to the slavery problem.
The Northern portion of the party met again later, this fourth dimension in Baltimore, Maryland, in June as the National Democratic Party. Nevertheless convinced, as they had been going into the Charleston convention, that no Southern Democrat would be able to compete with Lincoln in the N, they selected Douglas equally their candidate over Kentuckian John C. Breckinridge, the sitting vice president of the United States. The Southern Democrats convened separately, too, and chose Breckinridge, a slave owner, as their candidate. They then mounted a campaign based on the demand for federal legislation and intervention to protect slaveholding. The field was completed past the 11th-hour formation of a new party, the Constitutional Union Party, which rallied to back up the Union and the Constitution without regard to slavery. Drawing former Whigs who had withal to find a political dwelling house and other moderates, the party nominated John Bell as its candidate.
In the event, Lincoln captured only about 40 percent of the pop vote only won all of the northern states except New Jersey—whose electoral votes he split with Douglas—and tallied enough electoral votes to claim victory. The ultimate outcome would exist secession and civil war.
Source: https://www.britannica.com/story/how-the-dred-scott-decision-affected-the-us-election-of-1860
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