Let’s go all the way back to the birth of the Constitution. Congressional seats are apportioned according to population, but the northern states wanted to exclude slaves from the census, hence the Massachusetts Compromise counting slaves as 3/5 of a man. Without this odd count, Virginia would have had huge political clout. And the southern political disadvantage worsened with time. Then comes the abolitionist movement, threatening the economy of the southern states. I have never seen anything that suggests the abolitionists ever offered to pay for the property of the slave-holders, as is required in the Constitution, much less any proposals to ease the economic burdens of a transition. The abolitionists were talking about ethics, and the south were talking about law, previous agreements, and economic survival. Both sides were wrong, and neither would admit it. Dred Scott was just another inflammatory point in a long slide to the tragedy of the war.
bc dredd scott took his case to trial bc he thought he should be considered free! When he was shot down and considered a slave, abolitionsits freaked the freak out lol and put some more fuel into the fire that was the civil war
Dred Scott was ruled as property and was therefore not free, even though he had been in the North. Notherners, and abolitionists, decided that action needed to be taken since now slaves had to make it all the way to Canada to gain freedom.