Missouri Compromise Of 1820 Quotes

After long and patient consideration of the case, in 1857, the decision of the Court was pronounced in an elaborate and exhaustive opinion, delivered by Chief-Justice Taney—a man eminent as a lawyer, great as a statesman, and stainless in his moral reputation—seven of the nine judges who composed the Court, concurring in it. The salient points established by this decision were: 1. That persons of the African race were not, and could not be, acknowledged as "part of the people," or citizens, under the Constitution of the United States; 2. That Congress had no right to exclude citizens of the South from taking their negro servants, as any other property, into any part of the common territory, and that they were entitled to claim its protection therein; 3. And, finally, as a consequence of the principle just above stated, that the Missouri Compromise of 1820, in so far as it prohibited the existence of African servitude north of a designated line, was unconstitutional and void. 28 (It will be remembered that it had already been declared "inoperative and void" by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854.)

Recall that the 1789 law prohibited slavery in a federal territory. In 1820, the Democratic Congress passed the Missouri Compromise 40 and reversed that earlier policy, permitting slavery in almost half of the federal territories. Several States were subsequently admitted as slave States; and for the first time since the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, slavery was being officially promoted by congressional policy.