Events
1857
Buchanan accepts Lecompton Constitution
Supreme Court issues Dred Scott v. Sanford decisionPanic of 1857
1858
Congress rejects Lecompton Constitution
Lincoln and Douglas debate slavery in Illinois
Key People
-
James Buchanan
15th
U.S. president; supported the Lecompton Constitution to admit Kansas
as a slave state
-
Dred Scott
Slave
who sued his master for his and his family’s freedom in a landmark 1857 Supreme
Court case
-
Roger Taney
Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court who declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional
in the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision
-
Stephen Douglas
Illinois senator who rejected Kansas’s Lecompton
Constitution; announced Freeport Doctrine of popular sovereignty
during the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858
-
Abraham Lincoln
Former lawyer from Illinois who rose to national
prominence during the Lincoln-Douglas debates
Dred Scott v. Sanford
Just two days after James Buchanan became
president in 1857,
controversy over the slavery issue struck again when the Supreme
Court declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional in the Dred Scott
v. Sanford case. In the infamous decision, the enslaved Dred
Scott sued his master for his freedom and that of his wife
and daughter. Scott had married a free black woman while traveling
with his master in the free state of Illinois in the 1830s.
The two had a child but then moved back to the South. Scott believed
that he had been freed once he had crossed the 36˚ 30'
parallel and that his wife and daughter had been enslaved illegally
when they returned to the South.
However, Chief Justice Roger Taney, along
with a majority of the other justices—all but one from the South—ruled
that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because the federal
government had no right to restrict the movement of property (i.e.,
slaves). Taney also contended that Scott had no business suing his
master in a U.S. court, because that right was reserved only for
citizens. Taney hoped his ruling would finalize blacks’ status as
property, uphold slavery, and end the divisive sectional debates.
Northern Backlash
The Dred Scott ruling only exacerbated
sectional tensions, however. Whereas Southerners hailed it as a
landmark decision that would finally bring peace, Northerners were
appalled. Thousands in the North took to the streets to protest
the decision, and many questioned the impartiality of the Southern-dominated
Supreme Court. Several state legislatures essentially nullified
the decision and declared that they would never permit slavery within
their borders, no matter who ordered them to do so. Buchanan himself
was implicated when it was discovered that he had pressured the
Northern justice into voting with the Southerners. Arguably, the Dred
Scott decision had almost as great an effect on Northern
public opinion as Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The Lecompton Constitution
Meanwhile, the bleeding had not stopped in Kansas, where abolitionist
settlers and border ruffians, unable to agree
on a territorial government, established two separate ones—a Free-Soil
legislature in Topeka and a proslavery legislature in Lecompton.
After the Free-Soilers boycotted a rigged election to draft a state
constitution in 1857,
proslavery settlers were given a free hand to write the document
as they sought fit. When they finished this Lecompton Constitution,
they then applied for statehood as a slave state.
President Buchanan accepted the constitution immediately
and welcomed Kansas into the Union. In 1858,
however, the Republican-dominated Congress refused to admit Kansas
on the grounds that border ruffians had rigged the election. Stephen
Douglas declared that Kansas would be admitted only after
honest elections were held to determine whether the state would
be free or slave. The Lecompton Constitution was put to a special
vote in the territory the following year and was soundly defeated.
Kansas eventually entered the Union as a free state in 1861.
The Panic of 1857
Buchanan’s other major challenge was the brief economic
depression that swept the nation in 1857 and 1858.
The depression was sparked by the Panic of 1857,
which occurred when newspapers reported the failure of a prominent
bank in the Midwest. Reduced exports of food and manufactured goods
made the depression worse in the West and North but left the South’s
cotton economy relatively untouched. Southerners relished Britain’s
dependence on cotton and hailed the soaring unemployment rate in
the North as proof that the wage-labor system had failed.
