Chapter 92: The Dred Scott decision has little effect on slavery.

Little by little the ruling loses it authority. This begins when all nine Justices feel compelled to write their own opinions on the outcome, covering 250 pages and taking up two full days to be read aloud in court.

Those who quarrel with Taney’s summary are troubled by three things: voiding the case law associated with “once free, forever free;” the fact that Negroes have already been declared citizens in five Free States; and the anticipated public chaos that is sure to follow rejection of the 1820 Missouri Compromise.

Two of the four northerners – John McLean and Benjamin Curtis — publish dissents. Seven months later, Curtis resigns his seat. Garrison calls the ruling a moral assassination. Lincoln says that the different opinions argue against “settled law.” As for Scott, supporters buy his release and he lives a Free Man in St. Louis until tuberculosis takes him in September 1858.