ated that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the United States
             territories, mainly speaking of the Midwestern territories. During the
             1850's in the United States, Southern support of slavery and Northern
             opposition to it collided more violently than ever before over the case
             of Dred Scott, a black slave from Missouri who claimed his freedom
             on the basis of seven years of residence in a free state and a free
             territory. When the outweighed proslavery Supreme Court of the
             United States heard Scott's case, they that not only was he still a
             slave, but that the main law ensuring that slavery would not enter the
             new Midwestern territories of the United States. This decision sent
             the US into fights between the disagreeing groups. The chaos would
             end only after a long and bloody civil war fought primarily over the
             issue of slavery and its extension into the Midwestern territories. The
             Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford helped accelerate
             the arrival of the American Civil War by intensifying the already tense
             relationship between Northerners and Southerners.
             Dred Scott was the slave of a United States Army surgeon,
             John Emerson of Missouri. Missouri was a state that permitted
             slavery, so there was no law that was broken. In 1834, Dred Scott
             went with Emerson to live in Illinois, which also prohibited slavery.
             They later lived in the Wisconsin Territory, but slavery was forbidden
             by the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise was a plan
             agreed upon the United States Congress in 1820 to settle the debate
             over slavery in the Louisiana Purchase area. The plan temporarily
             maintained the balance between free and slave states. In 1838, Dred
             Scott and Emerson returned to Missouri. Emerson died five years
             later, and in 1846, Dred Scott sued the surgeon's widow for his
             freedom. Unlike the states in the South, Missouri enacted slave laws
             that wer...