Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 6, 2004

Dred Scott v. Sandford was a lawsuit decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1857. It is considered by many to have been a key cause of the American Civil War, and of the later ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, leading to the abolition of slavery and establishment of civil rights for freed slaves. While the name of the case is "Scott v. Sandford", the respondent's surname was actually "Sanford". A clerk had misspelled the name, and the court never corrected the error. The decision for the court was written by Chief Justice Roger Taney. Dred Scott was a slave who was taken first to Illinois, a free state, and then to Minnesota, a free territory, for an extended period of time and then back to the slave state of Missouri. After his original master died, he sued for his freedom. After the Missouri Supreme Court ruled against him, he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the decision of the Missouri court, but also used the case to fundamentally change the legal balance of power in favor of slaveholders. (more...)

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