ALS, one page, 5 x 7.75, February 25, 1857. Handwritten letter to E. H. Wade, in part: "I have your letter desiring to know whether in my opinion the 'Missouri Compromise was constitutional or not.' I understand this question is now pending before the Supreme Court of the United States, where it has been ably argued and will soon be decided. Under such circumstances it would be arrogance in me to assume to give an opinion. My duty is to submit to that decision as the last appeal known to our Constitution." In fine condition.
As president, Millard Fillmore had been instrumental in passing the Compromise of 1850, which defused tensions between north and south and led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery. Central to the Compromise of 1850 was the 'Missouri Compromise,' enacted in 1820, which admitted Missouri as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and declared a policy of prohibiting slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36°30′ parallel. The Compromise of 1850 also carried the controversial Fugitive Slave Act, which required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned under penalty of law.
In 1857, the hot-button subject came to a head in the landmark Dred Scott v. Sandford case, argued before the Supreme Court from February 11–14, 1856, reargued December 15–18, 1856, and decided on March 6, 1857—just nine days after Fillmore's letter. The Court held that the Constitution did not extend the rights of citizenship to those of black African descent, and declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as unconstitutional. The disastrous decision dramatically inflamed tensions leading to the Civil War; Charles Evans Hughes, a future chief justice, called the Dred Scott decision the Court's 'greatest self-inflicted wound.'
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