But the most powerful speech about the court’s ruling in Dred Scott was the speech given by Frederick Douglass. Jubilant slave owners said Dred Scott had settled the question of slavery for good. Douglass, looking to history, disagreed. “The more the question has been settled,” he wryly remarked, “the more it has needed settling.” In spite of the bleakness of the ruling—he called it a “vile and shocking abomination”—he found much reason for hope. “You may close your Supreme Court against the black man’s cry for justice, but you cannot, thank God, close against him the ear of a sympathising
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