The Boundaries of Political Community

During the political crisis of the 1850s, as this chapter demonstrates, the Supreme Court drew a stark line between Americans of European and African descent. In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), Roger Taney ruled not only that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional but also that black Americans, whether free or enslaved, could never be citizens of the United States. Irish immigrants, by contrast, faced a nativist backlash from the Know-Nothing Party, yet—like all European immigrants—they enjoyed basic civic political and privileges denied to African Americans born on the soil, including the right to travel and to naturalize as citizens. After Dred Scott, Abraham Lincoln warned that the Supreme Court might prevent free states, as well as territories, from excluding slavery. The case of Lemmon v. New York was pending when eleven slave states seceded from the Union in 1860–61, which Alexander Stephens celebrated as heralding a new civilization founded on slavery.