Obey and Yet Disbelieve: Unionism, the Missouri Compromise, and the Southern Response to the Dred Scott Decision Revisited

SUMMER 2013 25 “Obey and Yet Disbelieve” Unionism, the Missouri Compromise, and the Southern Response to the Dred Scott Decision Revisited Rachel A. Shelden O n March 6, 1857, the United States Supreme Court handed down its opinion in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. The decision, written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, set forth two pronouncements. First, it declared that no black person could be a citizen of the United States and therefore could not invoke the diversity jurisdiction to sue in federal courts. Second, it proclaimed that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in the federal territories and accordingly ruled the Missouri Compromise of 1820 unconstitutional . Dred Scott v. Sandford remains one of the most infamous court cases in American history. Scholars have written extensively about it and have made groundbreaking conclusions about the origins, interpretation of, and reaction to the decision. Some of the best work on the case concerns northerners’ reactions in the months and years that followed. Historians such as Don Fehrenbacher, David Donald, Eric Foner, and Leonard Richards have illustrated the importance of Abraham Lincoln’s response to Dred Scott in his rise to national prominence, in addition to noting the growth of support for the Republican Party in the North following the decision.1 By contrast, scholars have paid less attention to the southern response to Dred Scott, generally describing the region’s reaction to the case as monolithic, with most southerners sharing a sense of jubilation. In one of the most renowned accounts of Dred Scott, Don Fehrenbacher explains that southerners typically did not talk much about the decision “because the Court had put the ball in the antislavery court, so to speak, and the best defense for a decision allegedly complete and perfect was not further supportive argument but rather obeisance to the Court.” Similarly, scholars of southern state and regional politics have portrayed southerners’ “delight” upon reading the opinion, regardless of their partisan affiliation . Many such histories do not even mention the Dred Scott case or register any southern opposition to the decision.2 Yet southerners responded to the Dred Scott decision in a more nuanced fashion than Fehrenbacher and others suggest. Critically, a small but prominent group of moderate southern political leaders objected to the Supreme “OBEY AND YET DISBELIEVE” 26 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, Supreme Court of the United States, December term, 1856. CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER RACHEL A. SHELDEN SUMMER 2013 27 Court’s declaration that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional . Southern moderates expressed their displeasure with the decision in two ways. First, a few openly argued that Congress did have the power to legislate for the territories. While speaking out, they carefully differentiated themselves from northern opponents of Dred Scott by professing their unwillingness to undermine the authority of the Supreme Court. Southern moderates reasoned that the decision was inviolable and argued that it must be upheld regardless of their personal disapproval. As one senator explained in March 1858, “I admit the Supreme Court to be the great arbiter…and while I differ from it, I do not the less admit its constitutional and sovereign power.” A second and larger group of southern moderates who opposed the court’s decision couched their disagreement in the language of opposition to the KansasNebraska Act of 1854. In that act, Congress had already repealed the Missouri Compromise, making the part of Dred Scott that overturned the 1820 compromise merely a validation of the existing legislation. Many southern moderates had openly opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act when it passed, and their opinions were well known.3 “Status of Slavery in the United States, 1775-1865,” from Albert Bushnell Hart, Epoch Maps Illustrating American History. (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1893). CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER “OBEY AND YET DISBELIEVE” 28 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Southern moderates found criticizing the Kansas-Nebraska Act rather than the Supreme Court a more politically palatable position. Moderates knew that their political opponents might distort their disapproval of one part of the Dred Scott case—the Missouri Compromise element—as disapproval of the entire decision, including the insistence that slaves could not be citizens. If they...