He signed documents with an “X” and left no known recorded quotes or memoir of his experiences.
Yet because of his determination to be free, we know his name: Dred Scott, the intrepid slave who battled an unjust system through a Supreme Court case that shook the United States to its core..jpg)
Before embarking on the series of court cases that argued for his freedom, Scott’s life was the rootless existence typical of many slaves. Born around 1799 in Virginia, he moved with his owner Peter Blow to Alabama and eventually to St. Louis, where he was sold to U.S. Army Dr. John Emerson in the early 1830s.
Like many antebellum officers, Emerson was transferred from post to post through Western states and territories. During those journeys, Scott married a slave woman named Harriet Robinson in 1836. When Emerson died in 1843, Scott, by then the father of two children, likely hoped the doctor’s will would manumit him—and his family—but it did not. Scott then offered Emerson’s brother-in-law and executor, J.A. Sanford, $300 hoping to buy his own freedom. But the offer was turned down. Scott decided to take the matter to the courts.
By 1846, Scott was living in St. Louis in service to Emerson’s widow. He filed suit with the state of Missouri, claiming that since he had lived with Emerson in Illinois—where slavery was outlawed by the 1787 Northwest Ordinance—and Fort Snelling in Minnesota—where the Missouri Compromise outlawed slavery in 1820—he was entitled to his freedom. In an interesting twist, the children of Peter Blow, Scott’s first owner, provided the slave family financial assistance.
Scott actually triumphed when the suit was decided in 1850, but Mrs. Emerson
appealed, and the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the ruling. Undaunted, Scott, aided now by a team of sympathetic lawyers, took his case to the highest court in the land, which heard it in 1856. Montgomery Blair, a Maryland lawyer who later served as Abraham Lincoln’s postmaster general, argued Scott’s case.
In a 7-2 decision, the judges ruled on March 6, 1857, that Scott was to remain a slave—that he was a piece of property like any other purchased by his owner, who had a right to take Scott wherever he wanted. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the opinion, and further expounded that slaves were not citizens and had no right to bring suits in the court system. Scott’s 11-year-long fight for freedom had failed.
The decision succeeded in fostering political turmoil. Northerners, even those not morally opposed to slavery, worried the ruling would allow slavery anywhere in the country, rendering null and void any previous compromises on the matter. Republicans, committed to a platform of “Free Soil, Free Labor and Free Men,” got a boost from the decision as thousands of concerned men rushed to join the party.
Dred Scott was sold back to the Blow family, who set him free in May 1857. He had little more than a year to enjoy his liberty before he died from disease in September 1858. Today, the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation in Florissant, Mo., preserves the legacy of the man who rose from the anonymity of slavery to challenge federal law.
