Status across Borders: Roger Taney, Black British Subjects, and a Diplomatic Antecedent to the Dred Scott Decision.

In this essay, the author traces the origins of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney's decision in the case Scott v. Sandford, in which he essentially declared that African Americans could not be U.S. citizens, to his opinion as U.S. Attorney General on a diplomatic matter between the U.S. and Great Britain regarding the rights of black British sailors. He argued to U.S. President Andrew Jackson that the sailors did not have rights the needed to be respected by Anglo-American treaties.