The Dred Scott Case

"Probably the most thorough study of any Supreme Court decision ever undertaken."--C. Vann Woodward, The New York Review of Books "A masterful reexamination of some of the most complex and enduring American constitutional problems...I know of no other book on the slavery controversy that contributes so much to the specialist's knowledge yet is so readily accessible to the general reader."--David Herbert Donald, Chronicle of Higher Education "Fehrenbacher's book is the best history of a landmark constitutional case ever written, but it is far more: it is a probing and lucid study of slavery in American political and legal history....A masterpiece of the historian's art." --Richard B. Bernstein, Harvard Law Record