Dred Scott: Score one for slaveholder rights

The Supreme Court… decision in the Dred Scott case…  is the most important decision ever made by any Court in this country…. It fortifies as by a wall of brass the rights of the slaveholder in the States and in the common territories.

The idea of the abolitionists, that a slave is free as soon as he touches the soil of a free State, is again exploded; for it is declared that he remains a slave, though sojourning in a free State, and the right of his owner to his body and to his services cannot be affected.”

— From the Raleigh Standard, March 11, 1857