The Dred Scott decision challenged the very heart of the Republican Party platform. What events occurred as a result of the Dred Scott decision?
a. Fugitive slaves who were apprehended in the North were now subject to federal commissions that decided their fate outside the control of local and state laws.
The Fugitive Slave Act now prohibited state and local governments from intervening on behalf of fugitive slaves within their jurisdictions.
b. Popular sovereignty is the principle that people should rule, and as such the status of slavery should be determined by the votes of local settlers and not Congress
Popular sovereignty was seen as a political middle ground on the issue of slavery.
c. Slavery, according to President Buchanan, henceforth existed in all the territories by virtue of the Constitution.
Dred Scott was bought by a new master and immediately emancipated along with his family.
d. Daniel Webster: Wanted to abandon the Wilmot Proviso if it meant sectional peace
John C Calhoun: Rejected any idea of compromise on slavery
William H. Seward: Argued that a higher law than the Constitution—the law of morality—condemned slavery, and so southerners had no right to claim that abolition was a violation of their constitutional rights