Promotional Information

^IWinner of the Pulitzer Prize for History^R

Table of Contents

Introduction
PART ONE: OUT OF THE PAST
1: Race, Slavery, and the Origins of the Republic
2: Slavery in the American Constitutional System
3: The Pursuit of Freedom
4: Expansion and Slavery in Early National Politics
5: Expansion and Slavery in a Continental Republic
6: The Territorial Question, 1848-1854
7: Toward Judicial Resolution
8: The Taney Court and Judicial Power
PART TWO: A DECADE OF LITIGATION
9: Dred Scott and His Travels
10: Versus Emerson
11: Versus Sandford
12: Before the Supreme Court
13: Voices in Confusion
14: What the Court Decided
15: The Opinion of the Court: Negroes and Citizenship
16: The Opinion of the Court: Slavery in the Territories
17: Concurrence and Dissent
PART THREE: CONSEQUENCES AND ECHOES
18: The Judges Judged
19: The Lecompton Connection
20: The Freeport Doctrine
21: Not Peace But a Sword
22: Reasons Why
23: In the Stream of History
Notes
Index

About the Author

The late Don E. Fehrenbacher was William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University.

Reviews

"Probably the most thorough study of any Supreme Court decision ever undertaken."--C. Vann Woodward, The New York Review of Books
"A masterful reexamination of some of the most complex and enduring American constitutional problems...I know of no other book on the slavery controversy that contributes so much to the specialist's knowledge yet is so readily accessible to the general reader."--David Herbert Donald, Chronicle of Higher Education
"Fehrenbacher's book is the best history of a landmark constitutional case ever written, but it is far more: it is a probing and lucid study of slavery in American political and legal history....A masterpiece of the historian's art." --Richard B. Bernstein, Harvard Law Record
"A study of the Supreme Court's 1857 decision that invalidated Congress' power to prohibit slavery in federal territories and its effects today."--The Chicago Tribune
"[A] monumental study of Dred Scott."--Civil War Book Review
"Probably the most thorough study of any Supreme Court decision ever undertaken."--C. Vann Woodward, The New York Review of Books
"A masterful reexamination of some of the most complex and enduring American constitutional problems...I know of no other book on the slavery controversy that contributes so much to the specialist's knowledge yet is so readily accessible to the general reader."--David Herbert Donald, Chronicle of Higher Education
"Fehrenbacher's book is the best history of a landmark constitutional case ever written, but it is far more: it is a probing and lucid study of slavery in American political and legal history....A masterpiece of the historian's art." --Richard B. Bernstein, Harvard Law Record
"This book confirms Fehrenbacher's preeminence among historians of the sectional controversy."--Stanley I. Kutler, The Journal of American History