sed partisan feeling over slavery and intensifiedsectional differences. It did much to solidify militant antislavery attitude in theNorth, and therefore was an important factor in the start of the American Civil War(Oates 31). In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and stated that each territory could be admitted as a state with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission(Oates 42). This repealed the old dividing line between free and slave states as set by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. With the passage of this act, a new Lincoln emerged into the world of politics. Although he was as ambitious for political office as ever, he was now, for the first time in his career, devoted to a cause. He became a forceful spokesman for the antislavery forces. In 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States added to the mounting tension by its decision in the Dred Scott Case. Dred Scott was a slave owned by an army surgeon in Missouri. In 1836, Scott had been taken by his owner to Fort Snelling, in what is now Minnesota, then a territory in which slavery was explicitly forbidden according to the Missouri Compromise(Oates 50). In 1846, he brought a suit in the state court on the grounds that residence in a free territory liberated him from slavery. The Supreme Court of Missouri, however, ruled that since he was brought back into a state where slavery was legal, the status of slavery was reattached to him and he had no standing before the court. The Scott case was then brought before the federal court which still held against Scott. The case was finally appealed to the Supreme Court, where it was argued at length in 1856 and decided in 1857. The decision handed down by a majority vote of the Court was that there was no power in the existing form of government to make citizens slave or free, and that at the time of the formation of the Un...
