 After ruling on those issues surrounding Scott, Taney continued further and struck down the entire Missouri Compromise as a limitation on slavery that exceeded the US Congress's constitutional powers.Although Taney and several of the other justices hoped that the decision would permanently settle the slavery controversy, which was increasingly dividing the American public, the decision's effect was the complete opposite.Taney's majority opinion "was greeted with unmitigated wrath from every segment of the United States except the slaveholding states," and the decision was a contributing factor in the outbreak of the American Civil War four years later, in 1861.