4th Annotation Dred Scott

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/a/part4/4h2933.html. 1857. PBS online

In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks (slaves as well as free) were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all of the country's territories.The case before the court was that of Dred Scott v. Sanford. Dred Scott, a slave who had lived in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin before moving back to the slave state of Missouri, had came to the Supreme Court in hopes of being granted for his freedom. Taney which was a supporter of slavery and intent on protecting southerners from northern aggression wrote in the Court's majority opinion that, because Scott was black, he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue. But Dred Scott sued anyway and lost his first case but later won his second one.
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This website was helpful to my knowledge on Dred Scott because, it helped me form my first two paragraphs of my paper on him. This was a secondary source because it told me what happened during those years, it did not tell me exactly what happened. The intended audience I think was African Americans and judges or juries.