The decision just made in the Dred Scott case — an obscure African — is probably the most important that ever emanated from that highest tribunal. We cannot refrain from expressing our gratification that the subject has at last had a final adjudication.
Original passage & context
"The decision just made in the Dred Scott case, an obscure African, by the Supreme Court of the United States, is probably the most important that ever emanated from that highest tribunal of our country. [...] we cannot, in the meantime, refrain from expressing our gratification that this important subject has at last had a final adjudication"
A border-state paper in Taney's own Maryland. The phrase "an obscure African" is the Sun's, and is the period's habitual disposal of the man whose name the case carries: Dred Scott had sued for his family's freedom for eleven years.
Read it in the original — The Sun (Baltimore), Mar 9, 1857 ↗