• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

In a 7–2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled against Scott, arguing that the Founding Fathers had considered Negroes “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race” when they drafted the Constitution. Consequently, Negroes couldn’t be citizens of the United States, and couldn’t bring suit in federal court to begin with. They had no more right to due process than the plows they drove.

It was a devastating outcome for Scott, but it had implications far beyond his personal freedom. In issuing its ruling, the Court declared that:

Congress had exceeded its authority when it banned slavery from spreading to certain territories—and that these territories had no power to ban slavery on their own. Slaves and their descendants (whether free or not) were not protected by the Constitution, and could never be United States citizens. Escaped slaves who reached free soil were still the legal property of their masters.

In the wake of the Dred Scott ruling, the Albany Evening Journal accused the Supreme Court, Senate, and newly inaugurated President James Buchanan of being part of a “conspiracy” to spread slavery, while the New York Tribune ran an editorial that captured the fury of many Northerners:

Now, wherever the stars and stripes wave, they protect slavery and represent slavery…. This, then, is the final fruit. In this, all the labors of our statesmen, the blood of our heroes, the life-long cares and toils of our forefathers, the aspirations of our scholars, the prayers of good men, have finally ended! America the slave breeder and slaveholder!

Southern Democrats were more emboldened than ever, some boasting that the ruling would lead to “slave auctions on Boston Common.” Republicans and abolitionists had never been more electrified in their opposition. America was beginning to tear itself apart.

But few Americans knew just how much danger they were really in.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

III

On June 3rd, 1857, Abe received a letter addressed in a familiar scrawl. It contained no inquiries after his health or happiness; no regards to his family.

Abraham,

I beg you forgive my failure to write these five years. You must also forgive my abruptness, for matters here require my urgent attention.

I must ask another sacrifice of you, Abraham. I realize how presumptuous a request it must seem given all that you have suffered, and what little enticement I can offer against the contentment of home and family. Trust that I would not burden you unless the situation was dire, or if there were any other man capable of what I ask.

I have enclosed everything necessary to your swift passage to New York. If you are willing, then I beg you come no later than 1st August. Further instructions will be delivered upon your arrival. However, if your answer is no, I shall not bother you again. I ask only that you write at once with your refusal, so that we may consider a new strategy. Otherwise I look forward to our reunion, old friend—and to giving you the explanation you have long deserved.

It is time, Abraham.

Ever,

—H

Enclosed were various train and steamboat schedules, $500, and the name of a boardinghouse in New York City where a room had been rented under the name A. Rutledge.

Oh, how [the letter] annoyed me! Henry was clever indeed—for though he claimed to have little enticement to offer, every word was designed to entice: the self-censure; the flattery; the promise of an explanation—even the name left at the boardinghouse! That he would have me abandon my affairs, my family, and cross a thousand miles without so much as an intimation of the purpose!

And yet I could not refuse.

And this was more annoying than the letter itself, for Henry was right. It was time. Time for what, I knew not. Only that the whole of my life… the suffering, the errands, the death… that it had all been leading to something more. I had felt this, even as a child—the sense that I had been placed on