Congress Bans Slavery in U.S. Territories
Congress passed a joint resolution on June 19, 1862, prohibiting slavery in all current and future U.S. territories, effectively nullifying the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, which had ruled that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories. The law was part of a series of anti-slavery measures passed during the Civil War while Southern members were absent from Congress. Chief Justice Roger Taney's Dred Scott opinion had declared that Black people "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect" and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. The territorial slavery ban preceded the Emancipation Proclamation by six months and the Thirteenth Amendment by three years, demonstrating how the war rapidly accelerated the dismantling of slavery's legal framework.
June 19, 1862
164 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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