Synopses & Reviews
During America's turbulent antebellum era, the Supreme Court decided important cases—most famously Dred Scott—that spoke to sectional concerns and shaped the nation's response to the slavery question. Much scholarship has been devoted to individual cases and to the Taney Court, but this is the first comprehensive examination of the major slavery cases that came before the Court between 1825 and 1861.
Earl Maltz presents a detailed analysis of all eight cases and explains how each fit into the slavery politics of its time, beginning with The Antelope, heard by the John Marshall Court, and continuing with the seven other cases taken before the Roger Taney Court: The Amistad, Groves v. Slaughter, Prigg v. Pennsylvania, Strader v. Graham, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Ableman v. Booth, and Kentucky v. Denison.
Case by case, Maltz identifies the political and legal forces that shaped each of the judicial outcomes while clarifying the evolution of the Court's slavery-related jurisprudence. He reveals the beliefs of each justice about the morality of slavery and the judicial role in constitutional cases to show how their actions were determined by a complex interaction of political and doctrinal considerations. Thus he offers a more nuanced understanding of the antebellum federal judiciary, showing how the decision in Prigg hinged on views about federalism as well as attitudes toward human freedom, while the question of which slaves were freed in The Antelope depended more on complex fact-finding than on a condemnation of the slave trade. Maltz also challenges the view that the Taney Court simply mirrored Southern interests and argues that, despite Dred Scott, the overall record of the Court was not particularly proslavery.
Although the progression of the Court's decisions reflects a change in the tenor of the conflict over slavery, the aftermath of those decisions illustrates the limits of the Court's ability to change the dynamic that governed political struggles over such divisive issues. As the first accessible account of all of these cases, Slavery and the Supreme Court, 1825-1861 underscores the Court's limited capability to resolve the intractable political conflicts that sharply divided our nation during this period.
Synopsis
The first book to provide a comprehensive examination of all eight major slavery cases that came before the Supreme Court. Identifies the political and legal forces that shaped the judicial outcomes and argues that, Dred Scott aside, the Court was not, in fact, proslavery.
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Part I. The Jurisprudence of the Marshall Court
Chapter 1: Prelude to Conflict: The Marshall Court and The Antelope
Chapter 2: The Marshall Court and Federalism
Part II. The Age of Accommodation
Chapter 3: Sectionalism and the Rise of the Second Party System
Chapter 4: The Supreme Court in the Early 1840s
Chapter 5: United States v. The Amistad
Chapter 6: Slavery, the Commerce Power, and Groves v. Slaughter
Chapter 7: The Problem of Fugitive Slaves
Chapter 8: Assessment
Part III. The Conflict Escalates, 1842-1853
Chapter 9: Slavery and Territorial Expansion
Chapter 10: The Controversy over Fugitive Slaves, 1842-53
Chapter 11: The Supreme Court in 1846
Chapter 12: Revisiting the Commerce Power
Chapter 13: The Ongoing Struggle over Fugitive Slaves
Chapter 14: Prelude to Dred Scott: Strader v. Graham and the Doctrine of Reattachment
Chapter 15: Assessment
Part IV. The Sectionalization of American Politics, 1853-1859
Chapter 16: The Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Anthony Burns Affair, and the Demise of the Second Party System
Chapter 17: The Supreme Court in the Mid 1850s
Chapter 18: Northern Nullification: Ableman v. Booth, Part One
Chapter 19: Dred Scott, Part One: The Road to the Supreme Court
Chapter 20: The Court on the Brink
Chapter 21: Sectionalism on the March
Chapter 22: Dred Scott, Part Two: Reargument and Reconsideration
Chapter 23: Dred Scott, Part Three: The Opinions of the Justices
Chapter 24: Dred Scott, Part Four: The Reaction to the Court's Decision
Chapter 25: Ableman v. Booth, Part Two: The Court Decides
Part V. The Isolated Court
Chapter 26: The Election of 1860
Chapter 27: Kentucky v. Dennison and the Problem of Extradition
Conclusion: The Lessons of the Slavery Cases
Notes
Bibliography
Index