A Sublimity of Impudence

Becoming Lincoln

The Scott family's decade-long fight to claim the freedom owed to them under the law ran into state and federal judges determined to close the courts -- and broader citizenship -- to Black Americans. For white Americans like Abraham Lincoln, the Dred Scott ruling forced them to consider how denial of rights to one group of people could leave everyone else's rights open to question.
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Wilentz, Sean, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. W.W. Norton and Company, 2005.