Slavery Extension Quotes
In the entire history of the Supreme Court there have been relatively few times where the personal opinions and interests of the Supreme Court justices tended to warp the decision making process of the court. Perhaps the worst of these was the Dred Scott Decision where the court ruled that the laws of non-slave states could not protect escaped slaves no longer living in the South or their children for that matter. The slave owning court majority completely reversed their traditional support of states’ rights and voted that the Northern legal establishment could must not protect ex-slaves and must return them to their “rightful owners.” This decision made the Civil War inevitable. The slave owning justices were under great pressure, economic and social. Slaves, at the time constituted the greatest economic asset of the Southern states in dollar value. Further, at the time, there was no way to farm most Southern land without slaves, and even real estate values depended on slavery.
Lincoln had been a Whig before he joined the Republican Party. Most Whigs had been opposed to the extension of slavery and some were abolitionists. The Whig Party was disintegrating. However, some of his former Whig associates had joined the anti-Catholic and anti-Immigrant Know-Nothing Party.
