Dred Scott was probably born in Southampton County, Virginia, in the late 1700’s. He was born to parents who had been enslaved by a man named Peter Blow, who also became his owner. About thirty years later, Blow and his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri. They took Dred Scott and several other slaves with them. Blow died a few years later and Scott was sold to Dr. John Emerson, an army physician. At this point, Dr. Emerson was living in Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. He was later transferred to Illinois and Wisconsin, taking Dred Scott with him. According to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Missouri was a slave state, while Illinois and Minnesota were part of a free territory, where slavery was illegal.
When Dr. Emerson returned to Missouri, he brought Scott, his wife, and two daughters with him. Although they had lived in free states, they were still deemed slaves. Dr. Emerson died, leaving the Scotts to his widow, who in turn gave them to the sons of their original owner. These sons, Henry and Taylor Blow, were opposed to slavery. Although they had the authority to free the Scott family, they chose to finance a lengthy legal battle of behalf of Scott, to have he and his family gain their freedom through the courts. The Blows knew that winning such a legal battle in the highest court in the land would deal a death blow to the system of slavery.
The basis of Scott’s suit, filed in 1846,was that he and his family had lived in a free territory for a period of years, and that his residency should have made him a free man upon his return to Missouri, a slave state.
This case went on for years, until finally a lower court decided in his favor. In 1852, however, a Missouri State Supreme Court reversed the decision. By this time, Scott’s title had been transferred to the brother-in-law of his former owner, Dr. Emerson. The case appeared again in court in 1854. This time, it went to the Missouri Federal Circuit Court as Scott V. Sandford.
When the Dred Scott case came before the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney was one of the five justices from states where slavery was legal. These five justices were the majority on the court, and believed that although the Missouri Compromise existed, a slave owner had the right to take his slaves anywhere he wished without fear that someone would remove his property from him. It was their feeling that regardless of the fact that Dred had lived in so called “free states,” he was still his owner’s property.
On March 6, 1857, Justice Taney stated that Dred Scott had no right to bring a law suit in Federal Court, because the Constitution only afforded that right to U.S. citizens. Since Scott was a slave, he was not a citizen. He went on to say that the founding fathers, who authored the Constitution, “agreed that Negroes were beings of inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” (1) Although Taney tried to make it clear that these were not necessarily his views, but those of the framers of the constitution, these words were very explosive.
After the Supreme Court decided against Dred Scott, he was given his freedom by his owner, who had held him as a slave in name only.
