Dred Scott
Dred Scott (1795-1858) was a slave who sued for his
freedom in court, since he had been taken to a "free" state
(Wisconsin). He lost his case in St. Louis, Missouri, but
won it on appeal. His case was again appealed and Scott
lost. The results of his court case led to major political
upheavals in the USA and, eventually, the Civil War.
Scott's case went on to the Supreme Court : Dred Scott v.
Sandford, presided over by Chief Justice Roger Brooke
Taney, a staunch advocate of slavery and the expansion of
slavery into new US territories. On March 6, 1857, the
Court ruled against Scott on the basis that slaves were not
citizens of the United States (and could never be citizens)
and did not have the right to bring a case to court - since
blacks were "property." In this decision, Taney wrote that
blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to
respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be
reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold
and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and
traffic, whenever profit could be made by it." Referring to
the Declaration of Independence (and the phrase, "all men
are created equal,"), Taney wrote, "it is too clear for
dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to
be included, and formed no part of the people who framed
and adopted this declaration..." The Court did not rule on
the original question of whether or not Scott had a claim to
freedom - they dismissed it.
Associate Justice Benjamin R. Curtis (from Massachusetts),
disagreed so strongly with Taney's decision that he left the
Supreme Court in protest. Shortly after the Supreme Court's
inhuman and shameful decision, Scott was sold and then
freed by his "owner." Scott died from tuberculosis about a
year later.
The decision in the Scott case imperiled all fugitive slaves
and led to the nullification of the Missouri Compromise of
1820. This nullification allowed the expansion of slavery
into formerly free territories and strengthened the growing
movement against slavery. The Dred Scott court case was a
pivotal event in American history, eventually leading to the
election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the US, and to
the Civil War (1861-1865), during which over 300,000
Americans from both the North and the South were killed.
The questions brought up in the Dred Scott case were not
settled until the passage of the 13th Amendment to the
Constitution (freeing slaves in 1865) and the 14th
Amendment (making former slaves citizens of the United
States in 1868).