This Supreme Court decision attempted to settle the legal status of slaves in free territories to avert a civil war, but it provoked one instead. Dred Scott, who was born a slave in Missouri ...

The plaintiff [Dred Scott ... the case will be very brief; for the principle on which it depends was decided in this court, upon much consideration, in the case of Strader et al. v.

The group then cites six cases including Dred Scott v Sandford. The 1857 ruling came a few years before the 1861 outbreak of ...