1857 James Buchanan Dred Scott v. Sandford

In 1857 James Buchanan was morally opposed to slavery, yet he cheerfully supported the decision of the supreme court (Dred Scott v. Sandford) regarding the treatment of slaves as "property of their masters" protected by the Constitution. In his address to congress that year, he stated, 

 "The slaves were brought into the Territory under the Constitution of the United States and are now the property of their masters. This point has at length been finally decided by the highest judicial tribunal of the country, and this upon the plain principle that when a confederacy of sovereign States acquire a new territory at their joint expense both equality and justice demand that the citizens of one and all of them shall have the right to take into it whatsoever is recognized as property by the common Constitution. To have summarily confiscated the property in slaves already in the Territory would have been an act of gross injustice and contrary to the practice of the older States of the Union which have abolished slavery."

 
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