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Albany Evening Journal @AlbanyEvJournalMar 7, 1857 · Albany, N.Y.

WASHINGTON, March 6 — Taney has delivered the Court's opinion in the Dred Scott case. Scott is not a citizen. He was not freed by being carried onto free soil. The Missouri Compromise was passed unconstitutionally. Five of the nine judges are slaveholders.

Original passage & context
"Chief Justice Taney delivered to-day the opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. The points are that Scott is not a citizen; that he was not manumitted by being taken by his master when a slave into the then Territory of Illinois, and that the Missouri Compromise was an act unconstitutionally passed by Congress. [...] Five of the Judges are slaveholders, and two of the other four owe their appointments to their facile ingenuity in making State laws bend to Federal demands in behalf of "the Southern institution.""

The news arrives as a wire dispatch — datelined Washington, March 6 — and the Journal prints the holding and its own verdict on the bench in the same breath. The paper's count of slaveholding justices was accurate: Taney, Wayne, Catron, Daniel and Campbell all owned or had owned slaves.

Where this sits

One passage from the Dred Scott decision, Mar 6, 1857 – May 14, 1857 — 28 posts, each linked to its primary source.

Part of 134 verified passages across 5 flashpoints, Jan 6, 1854 – Apr 13, 1861 — read the feed from the start.

How this was made