Even as Northern views on abolition changed
in the 1850s, an 11-year lawsuit came to
fruition and fueled the abolitionist cause.THE DRED SCOTT CASE
Since the mid-1840s a lawsuit
brought by a slave, Dred Scott,
had slowly worked its way from
the courts of Missouri to the
U.S. Supreme Court. Scott
claimed that when his owner
had moved to the free
territories in the upper
Midwest, he and his
family were entitled to
their freedom.
In January 1857, Chief
Justice Roger Taney, a Democrat,
delivered a decision that shocked the North. He
ruled that Scott’s case had no legal standing,
since blacks could never become citizens
and were “unfit to associate with the white race.”
He declared that Congress had no right to
restrict slavery in the territories. As
Southerners celebrated, Republicans seized on
the decision as more evidence of a Slave Power
conspiracy and warned that it would lead to the
legalizing of slavery across the nation.
The decision in fact aided the anti-slavery
cause and swelled the new Republican party,
leading to its election victory in 1860 36–37 ❯❯.AFTER
DRED SCOTTTHE FURY OF ABOLITIONhostile response. Many people resented
their attacks on the political system and
critiques of America, while an even
larger number rejected the idea of
political and civic equality for blacks.
Occasionally, Northerners showed
their hostility toward abolitionists by
attacking them physically. Between
1834 and 1838, approximately 30 such
attacks occurred. Buildings were
torched, newspaper presses destroyed,
and abolitionist speakers were shouted
down and roughed up. Many of the
attacks were organized by political and
business leaders trying to prove to
Southerners that abolitionists were just
a deluded minority. However, in Alton,
Illinois, one attack proved fatal. Elijah
Lovejoy moved to St. Louis in 1834 to
serve as a Presbyterian minister and
publisher of a religious newspaper in
whose pages he advocated abolition.
After witnessing a slave burned alive at
the stake, Lovejoy condemned slavery,
the legal system, and the thousands
who had joined the mob. His press was
destroyed in 1836 and he moved across
the river to Alton where he set up the
Alton Observer. His anti-slavery editorials
angered many of Alton’s citizens, who
attacked his office three times and
destroyed his presses. In November,
1837, Lovejoy and about 20 men were
gathered to hide and protect a new
press from a mob when shots were
exchanged and Lovejoy was killed.
Yet mob violence, Southern
condemnation, and Federal acceptance
of censorship of the mail and right ofpetition failed to halt the growing
spread of anti-slavery and abolition
societies. Attacks and attempts to limit
freedom of speech troubled a Northern
public that had so far been indifferent
or opposed to abolitionists’ goals. Issues
about the expansion of slavery and agrowing sectional rift over the place of
slavery in the West and in the nation
made hostile Northerners listen again
to abolitionist critiques of the South.Political anti-slavery
Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, many
Northerners grew increasingly opposed
to the spread of slavery. These anti-
slavery supporters did not necessarily
advocate emancipation. Often hostile to
Southern interests, many were simply
opposed to the existence of more slave
states. Some used anti-slavery as a way
of playing the political system, running
candidates, and seeking office. Garrison
and his followers rejected any political
activity as corrupt, while others such as
Frederick Douglass were suspicious of
the absence of concern for black rights.
Events of the 1850s
would move radical ideas
about slavery into the
political mainstream in
the North, a gradual shift
observed by Southerners
with anger and alarm.Mob rule in Illinois
A contemporary engraving shows
the attack on the warehouse in Alton
where abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy had
hidden his printing press. In the riot,
Lovejoy was fatally wounded by five
bullets and the press destroyed.A cover for The Liberator newspaper
William Lloyd Garrison’s weekly newspaper campaigned
for the abolition of slavery from 1831 right through the
Civil War. The last issue appeared in 1865.