In March 1857 Chief Justice Roger B. Taney announced the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford. The Court’s most important decision on slavery to date, Dred Scott v. Sandford had a dramatic effect on American politics as well as law. The case involved a Missouri slave named Dred Scott who claimed to be free because his master had taken him to what was then the Wisconsin Territory and is today the state of Minnesota. In the Missouri Compromise (also known as the Compromise of 1820), Congress had declared that there would be no slavery north of the state of Missouri. Thus, Scott claimed to be free because he had lived in a federal territory where slavery was not allowed. In an opinion that was more than fifty pages long, Chief Justice Taney held that Scott was still a slave, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that Congress did not have the authority to ban slavery from a federal territory. In effect, Taney’s decision meant that slavery was legal in every state in the union, nullifying numerous state laws and denying the legitimacy of abolitionist sentiment. In a part of the decision that shocked many northerners, Chief Justice Taney also held that Blacks could never be citizens of the United States and that they had no rights under the Constitution. With notorious bluntness, Taney declared that Blacks were “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The decision was criticized by many northerners and built support for the new Republican Party, founded in 1854 in large part on a platform of abolitionism. While it is an exaggeration to say the case caused the Civil War, Chief Justice Taney’s decision certainly inflamed sectional tensions. It also helped lead to the nomination and election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, which in turn led to secession and the war.