In 1857, several months after President Buchanan took the oath of office, the Supreme Court heard the case of *Dred Scott v. Sandford*. Scott, born a slave in Virginia in 1795, had been taken to Missouri, where slavery was legal under the Missouri Compromise. In 1820, Scott’s owner took him first to Illinois and then to the Wisconsin territory. However, both of those regions were part of the Northwest Territory, where the 1787 Northwest Ordinance had prohibited slavery. When Scott returned to Missouri, he attempted to buy his freedom. After his owner refused, he sued in the state courts, arguing that because he had lived in areas where slavery was banned, he should be free. In a complicated set of legal decisions, a jury found that Scott, along with his wife and two children, were free. However, the state Superior Court reversed the decision and the Scotts remained slaves. In 1857, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger Taney, decided the Scotts remained enslaved. Taney then went beyond the specific issue of Scott’s freedom to write a sweeping opinion about the status of blacks, both free and slave. In Taney's understanding of America, blacks could never be citizens. Further, the court ruled that Congress had no authority to stop or limit the spread of slavery into American territories. This proslavery ruling explicitly made the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional; implicitly, it made Douglas’s Popular Sovereignty unconstitutional.  ---- Next: [[13.8 - Lincoln v. Douglas]] Back: [[13.6 - 1856 Election]]