Chief Justice Roger Taney, who held that office from 1836 until his death in 1864, argued for the majority of the Court’s members that Scott was not a citizen, for citizenship had been confined to the white race and, therefore, Scott had no standing to sue. Moreover, he declared that Congress did not have constitutional authority to ban slavery in those territories, for it denied slaveholders property without due process.11 Should Taney and the Court have had the final word? The Dred Scott decision was a major impetus for the Civil War.
