“THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL DECISION OF THE CENTURY, AND PERHAPS IN THE HISTORY OF THE SUPREME COURT”: FIRST PUBLICATION OF THE DRED SCOTT DECISION

(DRED SCOTT CASE) HOWARD, Benjamin. C. Dred Scott v. Sandford. IN: Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States. December Term, 1856. Volume XIX. Washington, D.C.: William Morrison, 1857. Octavo, contemporary tan cloth, tan and black morocco spine labels. $5200.

First edition of the complete report of the landmark Dred Scott decision that divided a nation, became “a prominent cause” of the Civil War, and ultimately generated the 14th Amendment, with complete opinions of all nine judges, including that of Chief Justice Taney.

"The Dred Scott decision is erroneous," pronounced Lincoln in 1857, and it is "based on assumed historical facts which were not really true… The court that made it, has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it over rule this" (Basler 355-57). "What troubled Lincoln most" about Dred Scott "was the Chief Justice's gratuitous assertion that neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution was ever intended to include blacks. Lincoln declared bluntly that… in order to make Negro slavery eternal and universal, the Declaration [was] 'assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it" (Donald, 201). "Dred Scott was the most controversial decision of the century, and perhaps in the history of the Supreme Court…. [and] the best known U.S. Supreme Court decision of the 19th century… In Dred Scott, the Court declared that a major piece of legislation—a linchpin of the Compromise of 1820 (the Missouri Compromise) was unconstitutional… All nine justices on the Court wrote opinions, but Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's 54-page opinion was designated the 'Opinion of the Court.' It was, with a few exceptions vilified in the North and cheered in the South… [Of] three new amendments to the Constitution [following the Civil War], one of these, the 14th Amendment, was particularly aimed at the Dred Scott precedent" (Finkelman, 43-5). "The decision… so inflamed sectional hostility… as to be a prominent cause of the War Between the States" (Grolier American 100:68). The Dred Scott case begins on page 393 and takes up the last two-fifths of the volume. When this official report—preceding all of the separately published editions—was finally issued after Taney's delays, it stirred up such excitement that Congress ordered a separate printing "of the original report of this case found in 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857). It was published by Benjamin C. Howard, the reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court, in an effort to profit from the case. This edition retains the original pagination and headnotes found in United States Reports" (Finkelman, 49). The U.S. Senate compensated Howard $1,500 for that edition, anticipating sales lost by a subsequent Senate printing distributed free by senators to their constituents. Blockson 9906. Sabin 33241. See Howes S218. Harvard Law Catalogue I:957.

Interior generally clean, text block expertly recase using original endpapers, expert repairs to joints and spine ends.