erners decided that Scott lacked standing in court because he was not a citizen; that the laws of a free state (Illinois) had no effect on his status because he was the resident of a slave state (Missouri); and that slave holders had the right to take their "property" anywhere in the federal territories and that Congress could not restrict the expansion of slavery. The Court's decision thus invalidated the whole set of comprise measures by which Congress for a generation had tried to settle the slavery issue. The Dred Scott decision stirred fierce resentment throughout the North. Never before had the Court been so bitterly condemned. For Southern Democrats, the decision was a great victory, since it gave judicial sanction to their justification of slavery throughout the territories. All the events and historical facts contained within this essay prove without a doubt that a sense of nationalism developed within the South because constantly throughout our nations history, events have occurred to create a rift between North and South. Constantly the South found itself on the defensive against various things that could be considered harmful to the very different southern way of life. This sense of nationalism can be associated undeniably with the Civil War. If there had been no such rift and sense of nationalism within the south, there would have been no war. This rift caused such differences in standing on issues between North and South that the two might as well have been enemy nations by the time the war came....
