Analysis Of Speech By Frederick Douglass

The North and the South had widely different views and opinions on the issue of slavery; they held feelings intense enough to lead to the nation’s Civil War. A majority of Northerners were abolitionists, meaning that they wanted to put an end to slavery, for they saw it to be an enormous moral issue. In a speech given by Frederick Douglass, a former slave that became a Northern abolitionist, he spoke in 1852 to other people who supported the anti-slavery movement, saying, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. … To him, … your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license

The Supreme Court became involved with the case and announced its decision, resulting in mixed reactions from the nation. In a quote from the Supreme Court’s address to Dred Scott, they say, “The question is simply this: Can a Negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community. … they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. … And, accordingly, a Negro of the African race was regarded by them as an article of property. … (I)t is the opinion of this court that the Act of Congress (the Missouri Compromise) … is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void” (Brady 247). The Dred Scott Decision was a significant turning point in the political arguments surrounding slavery. Not only did it state that slaves did not apply to the Constitution because they were deemed property, but it also decreed that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and no longer applied. The Supreme Court’s ruling meant that slave labor could be practiced nationwide, and Congress could not ban slavery. To abolitionists, this was horrible news that went against their whole movement. White Southerners, though, could have seen this as a great decision, for that meant they could build more plantations and utilize slavery even in free states. The Dred Scott Decision was a reason as to why the Civil War started in the United States, attributable to how strongly the negative and positive reactions of people supporting anti-slavery and pro-slavery