Aftermath

The immediate reaction

The decision did not settle the territorial question. It inflamed it. Republican newspapers treated the opinion as evidence of a slaveholding conspiracy reaching into the judiciary; Southern papers treated it as a final constitutional settlement that the North was bound to accept. Both readings made compromise harder.

Lincoln's response, in the House Divided speech of 1858 and through the debates with Douglas, was to argue that the decision was one step in a sequence that would end with slavery lawful everywhere, including in the free states. Whether he believed the conspiracy claim literally is disputed. It was effective either way.

The Douglas problem

The ruling damaged Stephen Douglas more than anyone. Popular sovereignty — letting territorial settlers decide — could not survive a holding that no government could bar slavery from a territory. His attempt to square the two at Freeport in 1858 held Illinois for him and cost him the South in 1860. The Democratic Party split, and the split elected Lincoln.

What became of the Scotts

Dred and Harriet Scott were manumitted in May 1857, two months after losing, by the family that had come to own them. Dred Scott died of tuberculosis in September 1858, about eighteen months later. Harriet lived until 1876. Their daughters' descendants have been traced and some have spoken publicly about the case.

How it was overturned

The decision was never overruled by the Court. It was overturned by constitutional amendment, which is a different and more emphatic thing.

Why it still gets cited

Mostly as an example — of substantive due process used to strike down social legislation, of originalist reasoning producing a monstrous result, of judicial overreach. It appears in modern opinions as a warning rather than as authority, and has been invoked by justices of quite different commitments to make quite different points.