Dred Scott V. Sanford 1858
Julien Mercier and Kendal Kulp
Background
• Dred Scott was born a slave in Missouri
• His owner, John Emerson, moved with him
to Illinois and what is now Minnesota.
• John Emerson dies and Dred Scott sues
for his freedom
First attempt
• Dred Scott first tried to buy his freedom
with abolitionist help
• He won a suit for his freedom in a Missouri
court against Emerson’s widow
• The decision was then overturned in the
Missouri supreme court
New suit
• Dred Scott files a second suit in federal
district court; Mrs. Emerson’s brother,
John Sanford of New York acted as her
attorney
• The federal district court ruled that Scott
was still a slave
• He appealed to the US supreme court
Supreme Court justices
• 5 of the justices were slave owners, another 2
supported the south
• Chief justice Rodger B. Taney was a flaming
racist
• “The African in the United States even when
free, are everywhere a degraded class and
exercise no political influence. The privileges
they are allowed to enjoy are accorded to them
as a matter of kindness and benevolence rather
than right…”
The case in SCOTUS
• Three issues- Whether
Scott was a citizen,
whether he had gained
freedom by moving to free
land, whether the Missouri
Compromise applied to
where he lived
• First ruling was that Dred
Scott was not a citizen
because he was black
• Taney went on to say that
congress had no power to
regulate slavery anyway
Aftermath
• Northerners decided that
slavery was not nearly as
tolerable now that
congress had no power to
regulate it
• The north feared that
slavery would expand into
all the western territories
• The case brought both the
north and south to the point
where they would be willing
fight over slavery
Sources
• Primary Chief justice Robert B. Taney- Opinion
of the court in Dred Scott, plantiff in error v. John
F. A. Sanford March 6,1857
• Secondary Supreme court case studies by
McGraw-hill companies, inc.
• Cozzens, L. (1999, October 31). Impact of dred
scott. Retrieved from
http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/scott/im
pact.html