ited States Constitution they were not, and could not be, citizens in any of the states(Oates 51). Because of this, Scott wasstill a slave and not a citizen of Missouri, and therefore had no right to sue in thefederal courts. Their decision meant that slaves could be taken anywhere within the United States, that the Missouri Compromise was in violation of the Constitution, and that slavery could not be prohibited by Congress in the territories of the United States. The case, and particularly the court s decision, aroused intense bitterness among the abolitionists, widened the gap between the North and the South, and was among the many causes of the Civil War. In 1858, Stephen Douglas, writer of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, was running for re-election to the Senate against Abraham Lincoln, then the leader of the Republican Party in Illinois. The campaign opened in Chicago, and Lincoln and Douglas argued over, among other things, the question of the expansion of slavery(Oates 64). Douglas stood on his doctrine of popular sovereignty, holding that the people of the territories could elect to have slavery. They could also elect not to have it. He attacked Lincoln for his house divided speech, accusing him of trying to divide the nation. Lincoln replied by calling for national unity. Recalling the Declaration of Independence, he said, Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man -- this race and that race and the other race, being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout the land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal(Oates 66). Lincoln argued that slavery was a moral, a social, and a political wrong,(Oates 66) and that it was the duty of the federal government to prohibit its extension into the territories. In July Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of face-to-face debates and Do...
