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Chief Justice Taney hoped that he was avoiding secession and civil war by settling the contentious slavery issue in favor of slave owners. In fact, he only enraged free state men. Democrats were attempting to introduce slavery into every state.

As Lincoln said in 1858: "A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South. "