Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, Opinion of the Court in Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error v. John F. A. Sandford
(excerpts)
March 6, 1857
The question is simply this: Can a Negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen? . . . We think they [people of African ancestry] are not [citizens] and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for secures to citizens of the United States. . . . They had for more than a century [before the framing of the Constitution] been regarded as beings of an 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; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery. . . . And upon a full and careful consideration of the subject, the court is of opinion, that, . . . Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, and not entitled as such to sue in its courts; and consequently, that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction of the case…
The act of Congress [the Missouri Compromise], upon which the plaintiff relies, declares that slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, shall be forever prohibited in all that part of the territory ceded by France, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, and not included within the limits of Missouri. [But] . . . [was Congress] authorized to pass this law under any of the powers granted to it by the Constitution[?] . . . The power to expand the territory of the United States by the admission of new States is plainly given; and in the construction of this power . . . it has been held to authorize the acquisition of territory, not fit for admission at the time, but to be admitted as soon as its population and situation would entitle it to admission. . . . But until that time [of statehood] arrives, it is undoubtedly necessary that some Government should be established, [by Congress] in order to organize society, and to protect the inhabitants in their persons and property. . . . But the power of Congress over the person or property of a citizen . . . [is] regulated and plainly defined by the Constitution itself. . . . Thus the rights of property are united with the rights of person, and placed on the same ground by the fifth amendment to the Constitution, which provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, and property, without due process of law. And an act of Congress which deprives a citizen of the United States of his liberty or property, merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular territory of the United States and who had committed no offence against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law.
It is contended, on the part of the plaintiff [Scott], that he is made free by being taken to Rock Island, in the State of Illinois, . . . and being made so free, he was not again reduced to a state of slavery by being brought back to Missouri. The principle on which [our ruling] depends was decided in this court, upon much consideration, in the case of Strader et al.
v.
Graham [1850]. In that case the slaves had been taken from Kentucky to Ohio, with the consent of the owner, and afterwards brought back to Kentucky. And this court held that their
status
or condition, as free or slave, depended upon the laws of Kentucky, when they were brought back into that State, and not of Ohio; and that this court had no jurisdiction to revise the judgment of a State court upon its own laws. . . . So in this case. As Scott was a slave when taken into the State of Illinois by his owner, and was there held as such, and brought back in that character, his
status
, as free or slave, depended on the laws of Missouri, and not of Illinois. . . . Upon the whole, therefore, it is the judgment of this court, that it appears by the record before us that the plaintiff in error [Scott] is not a citizen of Missouri, in the sense in which that word is used in the Constitution; and that the Circuit Court of the United States [federal court] had no jurisdiction in the case, and could give no judgment in it.
Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis, Dissenting Opinion in Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error v. John F. A. Sandford
(excerpts)
March 6, 1857
To determine whether any free persons, descended from Africans held in slavery, were citizens of the United States . . . at the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, it is only necessary to know whether any such persons were citizens of either of the States under the [Articles of] Confederation, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. Of this there can be no doubt.
At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, all free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors [right to vote] on equal terms with other citizens . . . [In Massachusetts] . . . persons of color, descended from African slaves, were by [the 1780 state] Constitution made citizens of the State and such of them as have had the necessary qualifications, have held and exercised the elective franchise, as citizens, from that time to the present . . . [similar examples are provided for other states] Did the Constitution of the United States deprive them [free African-Americans] or their descendents of citizenship?
That Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States, through the action, in each State, of those persons who were qualified by its laws to act thereon, in behalf of themselves and all other citizens of that State. In some of the States, as we have seen, colored person were among those qualified by law to act on this subject. These colored persons were not only included in the body of “the people of the United States,” by whom the Constitution was ordained and established, but in at least five of the States they had the power to act, and doubtless did act, by their suffrages [right to vote], upon the question of its adoption. It would be strange, if we were to find in that instrument [the Constitution] anything which deprived of their citizenship any part of the people of the United States who were among those by whom it was established . . .
It has often been asserted that the Constitution of the United States was made exclusively by and for the white race. It has already been shown that in five of the original thirteen states, colored persons then possessed the elective franchise [right to vote], and were among those by whom the Constitution was ordained and established. If so, it is not true, in point of fact, that the Constitution was made exclusively by the white race. And that it was made exclusively for the white race is, in my opinion, not only an assumption not warranted by anything in the Constitution, but contradicted by its opening declaration, that it was ordained and established by the people of the United States, for themselves and for their posterity. And as free colored person were then citizens of at least five states, they were among those for whom and whose posterity the Constitution was ordained and established . . .
