That Dred Scott's claim to freedom by reason of his residence in Illinois was a Missouri question, which Missouri law had decided against him.

That the Constitution of the United States recognizes slaves as property, and pledges the Federal Government to protect it; and that the Missouri Compromise act and like prohibitory laws are unconstitutional.

That the Circuit Court of the United States had no jurisdiction in the case and could give no judgment in it, and must be directed to dismiss the suit.
This remarkable decision challenged the attention of the whole people to a degree never before excited by any act of their courts of law.
Multiplied editions were at once printed,[6] scattered broadcast over the land, read with the greatest avidity, and earnestly criticised.
The public sentiment regarding it immediately divided, generally on existing party lines--the South and the Democrats accepting and commending, the North and the Republicans spurning and condemning it.
The great anti-slavery public was not slow in making a practical application of its dogmas: that a sweeping and revolutionary exposition of the Constitution had been attempted when confessedly the case and question had no right to be in court; that an evident partisan dictum of national judges had been built on an avowed partisan decision of State judges; that both the legislative and judicial authority of the nation had been trifled with; that the settler's "sovereignty" in Kansas consisted only of a Southern planter's right to bring his slaves there; and that if under the "property" theory the Constitution carries slavery to the Territories, it would by the same inevitable logic carry it into free-States.
But much more offensive to the Northern mind than his conclusions of law were the language and historical assertions by which Chief-Justice Taney strove to justify them.
[Sidenote] 19 Howard, p.

407.
In the opinion of the court [said he] the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.

It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted.