Almost everyone trashes the Dred Scott decision. Graber argues that the decision was, in fact, quite true to the Constitution, whose point was to come up with a governmental structure that would keep the North and the South together in one nation by preventing either section from being able to control what happened in the other. E.g., the slavery question was at the heart of not only the three-fifths compromise and the fugitive slave clause, but also the structure of the U.S. Senate.



It is, however, very difficult to read if you come to it as a layperson new to the field. The whole first half of the book is a "critique of the critiques," i.e., his criticism of what other scholars have written about the decision. If you are not already fairly familiar with what those other people said, plowing through Graber's criticisms of them is tough going.