Answer
In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, could not be U.S. citizens and therefore had no legal standing to sue in federal court. This decision was widely criticized by abolitionists, including Adlai Stevenson I (1835-1914), who denounced it as a "monstrous wrong" that denied African Americans their basic rights as human beings.