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Dred Scott V. Sandford Case Of 1857

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Dred Scott was an enslaved african american man in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom. Dred Scott had lived with his owner in a free state before returning to the slave state of Missouri. His argument was that the time he spent in those states entitled him to be emancipated. However, Chief justice Roger B. Taney and the court disagreed. They believed no black man, free or slave could become a citizen or ask the court for freedom. This was the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the “Dred Scott Decision”. This decision incensed abolitionists as well as heightened north and south tensions, and in turn is one event causing the Civil War in just a couple years later.

Dred Scott was a slave, born into

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