CHAPTER IV.
THE DRED SCOTT DECISION [Sidenote] 1854.
[Sidenote] March 6, 1857.
Deep and widespread as hitherto had been the slavery agitation created by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and by the consequent civil war in Kansas, an event entirely unexpected to the public at large suddenly doubled its intensity.

This was the announcement, two days after Buchanan's inauguration, of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case.

This celebrated case had arisen as follows: Two or three years before the Nebraska bill was thought of, a suit was begun by a negro named Dred Scott, in a local court in St.Louis, Missouri, to recover the freedom of himself and his family from slavery.

He alleged that his master, one Dr.Emerson, an army surgeon, living in Missouri, had taken him as his slave to the military post at Rock Island, in the State of Illinois, and afterwards to Fort Snelling, situated in what was originally Upper Louisiana, but was at that time part of Wisconsin Territory, and now forms part of Minnesota.

While at this latter post Dred Scott, with his master's consent, married a colored woman, also brought as a slave from Missouri, and of this marriage two children were born.