Dred Scott

Dred Scott
Scott c. 1857
Born	Sam Scott (possibly) c. 1799 Southampton County, Virginia
Died	September 17, 1858 (aged c. 59) (Tuberculosis) St. Louis, Missouri
Nationality	American
Known for	Dred Scott v. Sandford

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Dred Scott (c. 1799 – September 17, 1858) was an enslaved African American man in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott case". Scott claimed that he and his wife should be granted their freedom because they had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years, where slavery was illegal and their laws said that slaveholders gave up their rights to slaves if they stayed for an extended period.

In a landmark case, the United States Supreme Court decided 7–2 against Scott, finding that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States, and therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court under diversity of citizenship rules. Moreover, Scott's temporary residence outside Missouri did not bring about his emancipation under the Missouri Compromise, as the court ruled this to have been unconstitutional, as it would "improperly deprive Scott's owner of his legal property".

While Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had hoped to settle issues related to slavery and Congressional authority by this decision, it aroused public outrage, deepened sectional tensions between the northern and southern states, and hastened the eventual explosion of their differences into the American Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments—nullified the decision.

The Scotts were manumitted by a private arrangement in May 1857. Dred Scott died of tuberculosis a few months later.

Life[edit]

Dred and Harriet Scott's restored quarters at Fort Snelling

Dred Scott was born into slavery c. 1799 in Southampton County, Virginia. It is not clear whether Dred was his given name or a shortened form of Etheldred.^[1] In 1818, Dred was taken by Peter Blow and his family, with their five other slaves, to Alabama, where the family ran an unsuccessful farm in a location near Huntsville; this site is now occupied by Oakwood University.^[2][3][4]

The Blows gave up farming in 1830 and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where they ran a boarding house.^[5] Dred Scott was sold to Dr. John Emerson, a surgeon serving in the United States Army, who planned to move to Rock Island, Illinois. After Scott learned this, he attempted to run away, his decision to do so was spurred by a distaste he had developed for Emerson. Scott was temporarily successful in his escape as he, much like many other runaway slaves during this time period, "never tried to distance his pursuers, but dodged around among his fellow slaves as long as possible." Eventually, he was captured in the "Lucas Swamps" of Missouri and taken back.^[6] (Blow died in 1832, and historians debate whether Scott was sold to Emerson before or after Blow's death. Some believe that Scott was sold in 1831, while others point to a number of slaves in Blow's estate who were sold to Emerson after Blow's death, including one with a name given as Sam, who may be the same person as Scott.^[7])

As an army officer, Emerson moved frequently, taking Scott with him to each new army posting. In 1836, Emerson and Scott went to Fort Armstrong, in the free state of Illinois. In 1837, Emerson took Scott to Fort Snelling, in what is now the state of Minnesota and was then in the free territory of Wisconsin. There, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, a slave owned by Lawrence Taliaferro; the marriage was formalized in a civil ceremony presided over by Taliaferro, who was a justice of the peace. Since slave marriages had no legal sanction, supporters of Scott later noted that this ceremony was evidence that Scott was being treated as a free man, but Taliaferro transferred ownership of Harriet to Emerson, who treated the Scotts as his slaves.^[5]

Emerson moved to Jefferson Barracks in 1837, leaving the Scott family behind in Wisconsin and leasing them out to other officers. In February 1838, Emerson met and married Eliza Irene Sanford at Fort Jesup in Louisiana, whereupon he sent for the Scotts to join him. While on a steamboat on the Mississippi River, between the free state of Illinois and the Iowa district of Wisconsin Territory, Harriet Scott gave birth to their first child, whom they named Eliza after their mistress, they later had a daughter, Lizzie. They later had two sons, but neither survived past infancy.^{[5][8][self-published source]}

The Emersons and Scotts returned to Missouri, a slave state, in 1840. In 1842, Emerson left the Army. After he died in the Iowa Territory in 1843, his widow Irene inherited his estate, including the Scotts. For three years after Emerson's death, she continued to lease out the Scotts as hired slaves. In 1846, Scott attempted to purchase his and his family's freedom, offering $300, about $8,000 in current value.^[9] Irene Emerson refused his offer. Scott and his wife separately filed freedom suits to try to gain their freedom; the cases were later combined by the courts.^[10]

Dred Scott case[edit]

The Dred Scott case of the U.S. Supreme Court denied Scott his freedom by ruling that African-slave descendants were not U.S. citizens. It was the last in a series of freedom suits from 1846–1857, that began in Missouri courts, and were heard by lower federal district courts; the Supreme Court overturned the lower courts' rulings, which had upheld the precedent of "once free, always free." Missouri had generally abided by the laws of free states and territories, which had held that a person voluntarily bringing a slave to that jurisdiction and staying for an extended period of time, gave up their ownership of the slave. And if the slave achieved freedom in a free state, that freedom could be confirmed by the court after return to a slave state. Dred Scott had gained freedom for about 2 years, but it was overturned by the last decision to the Supreme Court.

The case centered on Dred and Harriet Scott (top) and their children, Eliza and Lizzie.

In 1846, having failed to purchase his freedom, Scott filed a freedom suit in St. Louis Circuit Court. Missouri precedent, dating back to 1824, had held that slaves freed through prolonged residence in a free state would remain free when taken back to Missouri; the doctrine was known as "Once free, always free". Scott and his wife had resided for two years in free states and free territories, and his eldest daughter had been born on the Mississippi River, between a free state and a free territory.^[11]

Dred Scott was listed as the only plaintiff in the case, but his wife, Harriet, played a critical role, pushing him to pursue freedom on behalf of their family, she was a frequent churchgoer, and in St. Louis, her church pastor (a well-known abolitionist) connected the Scotts to their first lawyer; the Scott children were around the age of ten at the time the case was originally filed, which was the age when younger slaves became more valuable assets for slave owners to sell. To prevent the family from being broken up, Harriet urged Dred to take action.^[12]

The Scott v. Emerson case was tried in 1847 in the federal-state courthouse in St. Louis. Scott's lawyer was originally Francis B. Murdoch and later Charles D. Drake. As more than a year elapsed from the time of the initial petition filing until the trial, it happened that Drake had moved away from St. Louis during that time. Samuel M. Bay tried the case in court.^[13] The verdict went against Scott, as testimony that established his ownership by Mrs. Emerson was ruled to be hearsay, but the judge called for a retrial, which was not held until January 1850. This time, direct evidence was introduced that Emerson owned Scott, and the jury ruled in favor of Scott's freedom.

Irene Emerson appealed the verdict. In 1852, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down the lower court ruling, arguing that, because of growing antislavery sentiment in the free states, Missouri no longer had to defer to the laws of free states.^[14] By this decision, the court overturned 28 years of precedent in Missouri. Justice Hamilton R. Gamble, who was later appointed as governor of Missouri, sharply disagreed with the majority decision and wrote a dissenting opinion.

In 1853, Scott again sued for his freedom; this time under federal law. Irene Emerson had moved to Massachusetts, and Scott had been transferred to Irene Emerson's brother, John F. A. Sanford. Because Sanford was a citizen of New York, while Scott would be a citizen of Missouri if he were free, the Federal courts had diversity jurisdiction over the case.^[15] After losing again in federal district court, the Scotts appealed to the United States Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford. (The name is spelled "Sandford" in the court decision due to a clerical error.)

On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the majority opinion. Taney ruled, with 3 major issues, that:

1. Any person descended from Africans, whether slave or free, is not a citizen of the United States, according to the U.S. Constitution.
2. The Ordinance of 1787 could not confer either freedom or citizenship within the Northwest Territory to non-white individuals.
3. The provisions of the Act of 1820, known as the Missouri Compromise, were voided as a legislative act, since the act exceeded the powers of Congress, insofar as it attempted to exclude slavery and impart freedom and citizenship to non-white persons in the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase.^[16]

The Court had ruled that African Americans had no claim to freedom or citizenship. Since they were not citizens, they did not possess the legal standing to bring suit in a federal court; as slaves were private property, Congress did not have the power to regulate slavery in the territories and could not revoke a slave owner's rights based on where he lived. This decision nullified the essence of the Missouri Compromise, which divided territories into jurisdictions either free or slave. Speaking for the majority, Taney ruled that because Scott was considered the private property of his owners, he was subject to the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the taking of property from its owner "without due process".^[17]

The Scott decision increased tensions between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in both North and South, further pushing the country towards the brink of civil war. Ultimately after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution settled the issue of Black citizenship via Section 1 of that Amendment: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside ..."^[18]

Dred Scott's grave in Calvary Cemetery (St. Louis)

Abolitionist aid to Scott's case[edit]

Scott's freedom suit before the state courts was backed financially by Peter Blow's children, who had turned against slavery in the decade since they sold Dred Scott. Henry Taylor Blow became a Republican Congressman after the Civil War, Charlotte Taylor Blow married the son of an abolitionist newspaper editor, and Martha Ella Blow married Charles D. Drake, one of Scott's lawyers who became a Republican Senator. Members of the Blow family signed as security for Scott's legal fees and secured the services of local lawyers. While the case was pending, Scott was leased out by the St. Louis County sheriff, who held the payments in escrow. In 1851, Scott was leased by Charles Edmund LaBeaume, whose sister had married into the Blow family.^[5] Scott worked as a janitor at LaBeaume's law office, which was shared with Roswell Field.^[19]

After the Missouri Supreme Court decision, the Blow family concluded that the case was hopeless and decided that they could no longer pay Scott's legal fees. Roswell Field agreed to represent Scott pro bono before the federal courts. Scott was represented before the U.S. Supreme Court by Montgomery Blair, an abolitionist who later joined Abraham Lincoln's cabinet as Postmaster General, and George Curtis, whose brother Benjamin sat on the Supreme Court and wrote one of the two dissents in Dred Scott v. Sandford.^[5]

In 1850, Irene Emerson remarried and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, her new husband, Calvin C. Chaffee, was an abolitionist who was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1854. Chaffee was fiercely attacked by pro-slavery newspapers for his apparent hypocrisy in owning slaves. In response, Chaffee claimed that neither he nor Mrs. Chaffee even knew about the case until it was "noticed for trial" and wrote to Montgomery Blair, "my wife ... desires to know whether she has the legal power and right to emancipate the Dred Scott family."

The strange circumstances of the Dred Scott case raised suspicions at the time of collusion to create a test case. Abolitionist newspapers charged that slaveholders colluded to name a New Yorker as defendant, while pro-slavery newspapers charged collusion on the abolitionist side,^[20] it was shown a century later that John Sanford never owned Dred Scott, nor did he serve as executor of Dr. Emerson's will,^[19] it was unnecessary to find a New Yorker to secure diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts, as Irene Emerson Chaffee had become a resident of Massachusetts. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Roswell Field advised Dr. Chaffee that Mrs. Chaffee had full powers over Scott.^[20] However, Sanford had been involved in the case since the beginning, as he'd secured a lawyer to defend Mrs. Emerson in the original state lawsuit, before she married Chaffee.^[10]

Post-case freedom[edit]

Posthumous painting of Scott, presented to the Missouri Historical Society

Plaque on Dred Scott case outside the Old Courthouse, St. Louis, MO.

Following the ruling, the Chaffees deeded the Scott family to Taylor Blow, who manumitted them on May 26, 1857. Scott worked as a porter in a St. Louis hotel, but his freedom was short-lived; he died from tuberculosis^[21] in September 1858,^[22] he was survived by his wife and his two daughters.

Scott was originally interred in Wesleyan Cemetery in St. Louis; when this cemetery was closed nine years later, Taylor Blow transferred Scott's coffin to an unmarked plot in the nearby Catholic Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, which permitted burial of non-Catholic slaves by Catholic owners.^[23] A local tradition later developed of placing Lincoln pennies on top of Scott's gravestone for good luck.^[23]

Harriet Scott was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Hillsdale, Missouri, she outlived her husband by 18 years, dying on June 17, 1876.^[5]

Prelude to Emancipation Proclamation[edit]

The newspaper coverage of the court ruling and the 10-year legal battle raised awareness of slavery in non-slave states; the arguments for freedom were later used by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln; the harsh words of the decision built popular opinion and voter sentiment for his Emancipation Proclamation and the three constitutional amendments ratified shortly after the Civil War: the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, abolishing slavery, granting former slaves citizenship, and conferring citizenship to anyone born in the United States and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" (excluding those subject to a foreign power such as children of foreign ambassadors).^[24]

Legacy[edit]

• One daughter, Eliza, married and had two sons. Her sister Lizzie never married but, following her sister's early death, helped raise her nephews. One of Eliza's sons died young, but the other married and has descendants, some of whom still live in St. Louis as of 2010.^[25]
• 1957, Scott's gravesite was rediscovered and flowers were put on it in a ceremony to mark the centennial of the case.^[26]
• 1977, the Scotts' great-grandson, John A. Madison, Jr., an attorney, gave the invocation at the ceremony at the Old Courthouse (St. Louis, Missouri) for the dedication of a National Historic Marker commemorating the Scotts' case.^[26]
• In 1997, Dred and Harriet Scott were inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.^[27]
• 1999, a cenotaph was installed for Harriet Scott at her husband's grave to commemorate her role in seeking freedom for them and their children.^[26]
• 2001, Harriet and Dred Scott's petition papers were displayed at the main branch of the St. Louis Public Library, following discovery of more than 300 freedom suits in the archives of the circuit court.^[26]
• 2006, Harriet Scott's gravesite was proven to be in Hillsdale, Missouri and a biography of her was published in 2009.^[26]
• 2006, a new historic plaque was erected at the Old Courthouse to honor the roles of both Dred and Harriet Scott in their freedom suit and its significance in U.S. history.^[26]
• May 9, 2012, Scott was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians; a bronze bust by sculptor E. Spencer Schubert is displayed in the Missouri State Capitol Building.^[28]
• June 8, 2012, a bronze statue of Dred and Harriet Scott was erected outside of the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis, MO, the site where their case was originally heard.^[29]
• In 1971 the city of Bloomington, Minnesota dedicated the 48 acre Dred Scott Playfield at 10820 Bloomington Ferry Rd 55438. In July 2013, with the help of human rights activist, Frank White, the city of Bloomington installed four plaques teaching who Dred Scott was and the impact the Dred Scott Decision had on the abolishment of slavery.
• March 6, 2017 — the 160th Anniversary of the Dred Scott Decision — on the steps of the Maryland State House next to a statue of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, his great-great grand nephew Charlie Taney apologized on his behalf to Scott's great-great granddaughter Lynne Jackson and all African-Americans "for the terrible injustice of the Dred Scott decision."^[30] During the ceremony, Kate Taney Billingsley, Charlie Taney's daughter, read lines regarding the court's decision from the play "A Man of His Time".^[31]

In popular culture[edit]

• Shelia P. Moses and Bonnie Christensen, I, Dred Scott: A Fictional Slave Narrative Based on the Life and Legal Precedent of Dred Scott (2005)^[26]
• Mary E. Neighbour, Speak Right On: Dred Scott: A Novel (2006)^[26]
• Gregory J. Wallance, Two Men Before the Storm: Arba Crane's Recollection of Dred Scott and the Supreme Court Case That Started the Civil War (2006), novel^[26]
• In their 1997 album Chapter 2: World Domination, American hip hop group Three 6 Mafia allude to Dred Scott in the song "Spill My Blood" in the lyric "yes the consequences, are your choice, my dred."^[32]
• Dred Scott is mentioned in the song "Voice of the Voiceless" by American band Rage Against the Machine in their 1999 album The Battle of Los Angeles. The song is about Mumia Abu-Jamal who was convicted of killing a police officer, his supporters argue he received an unfair trial and Scott is referred to in the lyric "watch the decision of Dred Scott as it reverses."^[33]
• American hip hop group Little Brother relates their daily lives to Dred Scott in the song "Speed" with the lyric "take a rest stop cause my job got me slaving like I'm Dred Scott." The song is from their 2003 album The Listening.^[34]

See also[edit]

• Polly Berry
• Charlotte Dupuy
• Freedom suits
• Slavery in the United States
• List of slaves

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Allen, Austin (2006). Origins of the Dred Scott Case: Jacksonian Jurisprudence and the Supreme Court, 1837-1857. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-820326-53-5.
• Fehrenbacher, Don E. (1978). The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-195024-03-6.
• Shurtleff, Mark (2009). Am I Not a Man? The Dred Scott Story. Orem, UT: Valor Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-935546-00-9.
• Swain, Gwenyth (2004). Dred and Harriet Scott: A Family's Struggle for Freedom. Saint Paul, MN: Borealis Books. ISBN 978-0-873514-83-5.
• Tsesis, Alexander (2008). We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300118-37-7.
• Ehrlich, Walter. They have no rights: Dred Scott's struggle for freedom. No. 9. Praeger Pub Text, 1979.
• Swain, Gwenyth. Dred and Harriet Scott: A Family's Struggle for Freedom. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2004.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dred Scott.

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (January 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

• Dred and Harriet Scott in Minnesota in MNopedia, the Minnesota Encyclopedia
• "St. Louis Circuit Court Records", A collection of images and transcripts of 19th century Circuit Court Cases in St. Louis, particularly freedom suits, including suits brought by Dred and Harriet Scott. A partnership of Washington University and Missouri History Museum, funded by an IMLS grant
• "Freedom Suits", African-American Life in St. Louis, 1804–1865, from the Records of the St. Louis Courts, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, National Park Service
• Revised Dred Scott Case Collection
• Christyn Elley, "Biography of Dred Scott", Missouri State Archives
• Full text of the Dred Scott v. Sandford, Supreme Court decision Findlaw
• Dred Scott v. Sandford and related resources, Library of Congress
• "Dred Scott Chronology", Washington University in St. Louis
• Dred Scott Heritage Foundation
•  "Scott, Dred" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.
• Works by Dred Scott at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Dred Scott at Internet Archive