Ch 14, 15, 16

In Chapter 14 one of the sections that interested me the most was the Dred Scott Case.  This case was one of the Supreme Courts most controversial cases.  Dred Scott was a slaved man whose owner had taken him from the slave state of Missouri into Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory where slavery was prohibited. During the 1830s Dred Scott sued for his freedom on the fact that he was in a slave free territory.  The Court was faced with two dilemmas which was whether Dred Scott was a free man or not? And whether he had the right to sue in the federal court? Under the Missouri Compromise Dred Scott would technically be free but the Judicial decision was that it would not apply to him.

During wartime since most the men in the household left to war, they would have to tightened slave patrol and spread scare stories among the slaves.  Some slaves were still faithful to their owners but those who were given the chance to flee to Union lines usually did.  No slave uprising rose and the Confederate war continued to use slave labor. Thousands of slaves worked in war plants, toiled as teamsters and cooks in army camps, and served a nurses in field hospitals. With the lack of men in the household the slaves held no respect towards the women in the house.  They wouldn’t do their work or they would do it inefficiently some even destroyed property. 

In 1869 Jay Cooke took over a new transcontinental line in the Northern Pacific.  In 1873 the construction costs outran bond sales, and Cooke neglected his responsibilities and his bank shut down.  Firms collapsed as did the stock market and the Panic of 1873 led the nation into a five year depression.In two years eighteen thousand businesses went bankrupt and 3 million people were unemployed by 1878.  Then there was a rise of the Greenback party which were advocates who favored continued issuance of greenbacks and the free coinage of sliver, it was basically “easy money”.