NARRATIVE

Prior to the 1857 United States Supreme Court decision of Scott v. Sandford, pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces throughout the country and in the Congress fought with each other on whether or not slavery would exist in new territories and states. The 1787 Northwest Ordinance had declared that all principal northern territories were closed to slavery. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 designated all of the United States north of the latitude 36 degrees, 30 feet North as non-slave lands. Pro-slavery forces began to fight back with the passage of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Bill which allowed that once these two territories became states, the citizens would decided if they were to be slave or free. Because slavery had probably become the most important issue facing the country, both pro and anti-slavery forces wanted a final solution to the problem of extending the institution west of the Mississippi River. What should have been a simple case of granting freedom to slave who had lived in free territory, (prior precedent already having been established in numerous cases) became famous because of its timing and the ruling by the heavily pro-slavery Supreme Court. That ruling added to the already volatile feelings which were leaning towards a violent solution to the conflicting views.

Dred Scott was born in Southampton County, the slave of Peter Blow, a Virginia planter who migrated with his family to St. Louis and settling there in 1830. Upon Blow's death in 1832, the estate administrator, his son-in-law Joseph Charles, Jr., sold Scott for five hundred dollars to Dr. John Emerson, a U.S. Army surgeon. In 1834, Emerson received orders to report to Rock Island, Illinois, a free state, and then to the Wisconsin Territory also free by the provision of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance [map link], and the Missouri Compromise of 1820 [map link]. In 1836, Scott married Harriet Robinson, whose master, Major Lawrence Taliaferro, transferred her ownership to Emerson. This union resulted in the birth of two daughters, Eliza, born aboard the steamboat "Gipsey" in free northern waters on the Mississippi River and Lizzie, born approximately 1845 in Missouri.

Scott returned with Emerson to Missouri in 1838, remaining in Emerson's service until 1846 when Emerson died. Scott proceeded to sue Irene Emerson, in an attempt to secure freedom for himself and his family on the grounds of there residence in free states and later in a free territory. Because of legal technicalities, it took two trials before Scott and his family were granted freedom in 1850.

Since Mrs. Emerson remarried during this time, and the administration of her first husband's estate passed to her brother, John F.A. Sanford (the case is known as Scott v. Sandford because of a misspelling when the suit was filed), who immediately appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court to reverse the freedom decision of the lower court, which it did on March 22, 1852. Since Sanford resided in New York, Scott's lawyer sued in the U.S. circuit court in Missouri on the grounds that the litigants resided in different states. This verdict also went against Scott and his lawyer appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

With its decision to return Scott to slavery, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the long-standing law and principle of granting slaves who had resided in free states or territories their freedom. "Once free always free" became "once free maybe always free," in Missouri. The question was if a slave traveled to a free state, thus attaining his freedom, and returned to a slave state, could that freedom be lost? The U.S. Supreme Court had side stepped this question previously in the case of Strader v. Graham which ruled that the Court would abide by the decision of a state's supreme court as the definitive arbiter of the state's law.

Realizing that the U.S. Supreme Court could simply revert back to Strader if the case were appealed directly, Scott's lawyer attempted to attain his freedom by getting the Supreme Court to examine the case's merits; he had to institute a case in a lower federal court and appeal from it to Washington thus possibly eliminating Strader as a precedent. This he did in St. Louis in 1853, the case being tried in 1854, in the Old Court House, first floor west court room, the same year that Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act [map link]. On the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court however, Scott's opposition introduced two additional arguments for the highest court to consider. In addition to "once free always free," the question of Scott's citizenship, and the Constitutional protection of private property as it related to Congressional power was challenged. The U.S. Supreme Court would once again have to address some of the most controversial issues confronting the country.

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and the Supreme Court announced its decision on March 6, 1857. It declared that Dred Scott was still a slave, for several reasons. (1) Although blacks could be citizens of a given state, they could not be and were not citizens of the United States with the associated right to sue in the federal courts. Scott's suit therefore was dismissed because the Court lacked jurisdiction. (2) Scott was still a slave because he never had been free to begin with. Slaves were property protected by the Constitution, and Congress exceeded its authority when it passed legislation forbidding or abolishing slavery in the territories. The Missouri Compromise was such an exercise of unconstitutional authority and was accordingly declared invalid. (3) Whatever the status of a former slave may have been while he was in a free state or territory, if he voluntarily returned to a slave state, his status there depended upon the law of that slave state as interpreted by its own courts. Since the Missouri high court had declared Scott to be still a slave, that was the status and law which the U.S. Supreme Court would accept and recognize. "Once free always free" was abolished.

Of the nine justices hearing the case, only two presented dissenting opinions. Justice Benjamin R. Curtis of Massachusetts argued if Dred Scott had no right to sue in federal court, the Supreme Court should have dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction. Justice John McLean of Ohio argued that once Dred Scott became free, he was free forever, and the Missouri Supreme Court could not change that status. Their views were lauded by republican sources, and denounced by democrats, further splitting of the pro and anti-slavery sides of the argument. (Photo of B.R. Curtis)

The infamous "Dred Scott Decision" unleashed hostile passions in both the North and the South, merging with those already building toward separation and war. The countries' pulpits, halls of Congress and the press reverberated with condemnations and defenses of the Court's action. The New York Times provided citizens with a detailed account of the proceedings, and condemned the preliminary verdict, while the Pittsburgh Post agreed with the decision of the high court concerning the unconstitutional status of the Missouri Compromise stating, "Such then, is the end of the 'great commotion'," (March 14, 1857). In disagreement with the New York Times, the Washington, D.C. Union argued that the court's decision was not an attack upon individual rights (March 21, 1857).

The largely Republican press in the free state of Illinois were almost unanimous in their condemnation of the verdict. An editorial in the Chicago Daily Tribune denounced the court's action of covering points not relevant to the specific case by calling the ruling ". . .part of the grand conspiracy against Freedom." (March 17, 1857).

Editorials in small town newspapers like the Alton Courier in Madison County, admitted previous respect for the Supreme Court, added, "but the truckling, time-serving nature of the majority decision in this case, must lower those who subscribe it in the estimation of all honorable men and pure patriots" (March 20, 1857). The Belleville Advocate, in southwest St. Clair County, upheld the general feeling within Illinois about the court and its ruling calling it a ". . . degenerated tribunal" (March 11, 1857) on one occasion, and stating that ". . . slavery is national, and the time honored immunities of personal liberty are done away" (March 18, 1857), on another. The Advocate also praised the dissenting judges saying, "But Judges McLean and Curtis, in opinions that will stand among the proudest monuments of the Court, met every point, which had been presented, and by the most positive demonstration, completely annihilated the positions of the majority" (March 25, 1857). Within the same town however, the Belleville St.Clair Tribune expressed that their readers were ". . . heartily tired of 'niggers,' and '36 30,' and 'slavery,' and 'Missouri Compromise,' and so forth. The question is settled forever" (March 20, 1857). Illinois newspapers were representative of the emerging conflict in the nation concerning the expansion of slavery.

For Dred Scott and his family, the court opinion continued their slave status for the time being, however, on May 21, 1857, he and his family were freed by Peter Blow, Jr., the son of his first owner [freedom paper link]. On September 17, 1858, Dred Scott died in his home of tuberculosis. His wife Harriet followed Scott to her grave on January 14, 1859, both being buried in the Blow family plot, and neither living to see the fruit of their long struggle. Their final resting place is in the Catholic Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. (D. Scott's headstone Frt) (Rear)

The expansion of slavery issue would continue to plague the country until the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln as President, South Carolina's succession from the Union in December 1860 followed by six other Deep South states the next year, and the bombardment of Fort Sumter by the Confederates in April of 1861. The resulting Civil War and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution finally settled the question of the further expansion of slavery and citizenship. Somehow an obscure freedom case had provided some of the fuel that ignited that long period of violence and suffering known as the Civil War.