The Dred Scott Decision (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857) was the infamous ruling of the United States Supreme Court that, according to the US Constitution, Black people were not and could not be considered citizens of the United States of America and, further, that "no slave or descendant of a slave had any 'rights which the white man was bound to respect'" (Delbanco, 331).
The decision, which was intended by the Supreme Court to put the issue of slavery in the United States to rest, only increased tensions between slave and free states, contributing to the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Today, it is regarded as the worst ruling in the history of the United States Supreme Court.
The case began as a simple freedom suit filed by the slave Dred Scott (circa 1799-1858) and his wife Harriet Scott (née Robinson, circa 1820-1876) against Irene Emerson, widow of Dr. John Emerson (their owners) arguing that, since Dr. Emerson had taken the Scotts (and their two daughters) into free states, where they had taken up residence, they were free. The suit was filed in April 1846 and dragged on for eleven years until it was heard by the US Supreme Court, which ruled 7-2 that the Scotts could not sue for their freedom because they were not citizens of the United States and were, therefore, not entitled to the rights and protections of US citizens.
The Scotts were soon after purchased and freed by one Taylor Blow, son of the man who had owned Dred Scott before Emerson. Dred Scott lived as a free man with his wife and children for over a year before dying of tuberculosis in November 1858.
Political Background
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 expanded the United States by 828,000 square miles (2,144,510 km²), nearly doubling its territory westward. Disputes arose almost immediately over the slavery issue in these new territories and whether they would eventually be admitted to the Union as free or slave states. Northern free states wanted to limit the spread of slavery westward, while Southern slave states opposed this policy.
In 1787, Congress had passed the Northwest Ordinance, which prohibited the spread of slavery into the Northwest Territory, but, after the Louisiana Purchase, White settlers began traveling to this region to settle, and many of them brought their slaves. In 1812, Louisiana joined the Union as a slave state, and by 1819, there were enough settlers in the Missouri Territory to qualify it for admittance to statehood. If Missouri were admitted as a slave state, however, it would upset the present balance of power in government between free and slave states.
This problem was addressed by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state while prohibiting slavery north of the parallel 36°30′. Any slave brought into "free state territory" could claim their freedom since, legally, slavery did not exist there.
Dred Scott
Dred Scott was born into slavery in Southampton County, Virginia, circa 1799, and, by 1818, was owned by one Peter Blow (who may have been his original owner). Scott's first name may have originally been Sam, and it is thought he later chose Dred (a short form of Etheldred) for himself to honor an older brother of that name who had died.
By 1830, the Blow family was living in St. Louis, Missouri, and sold Dred Scott to a US Army surgeon, Dr. John Emerson, circa 1831. Scott disliked Emerson and ran away, but was caught and returned to him. In 1833, Emerson was posted to Fort Armstrong in Illinois, a free state, and then received orders to report to Fort Snelling in Wisconsin Territory (also a free state region) in 1837, bringing Scott along to both posts.
In Wisconsin Territory, Scott met Harriet Robinson and married her. Harriet had been the slave of US Army officer Lawrence Taliaferro (1794-1871), best known for his efforts on the part of the Dakota Sioux and the trust placed in him by Native American leaders such as Little Crow (circa 1810-1863). Taliaferro officiated at the wedding and gave Harriet to Emerson so the couple could live together.
Emerson was sent to Fort Jesup in Louisiana in 1837 but left the Scotts behind at Fort Snelling, hiring their services out to others. Under this arrangement, the slave could keep a small part of their earnings while most were handed over to their master, and so it was with the Scotts. In 1838, Emerson met Irene Sanford, married her, and sent word for the Scotts to join them. He was soon sent back to Fort Snelling, however, and the Scotts came with them; their two daughters, Eliza and Lizzie were born in free state territory.
In 1840, Emerson and his wife, with the Scotts, returned to Missouri. Emerson died in 1843, and Irene Sanford Emerson inherited the Scotts as part of his estate. Dred and Harriet worked for her for three years until Dred had saved up $300 (roughly $10,500 today) to purchase freedom for him and his family. Irene considered them too valuable, however, and refused. In 1846, Dred Scott filed freedom suits in the Missouri court for himself and his wife. These suits, later combined, would eventually become Dred Scott v. Sandford, or the Dred Scott Decision.
Complications & the Supreme Court
Scott, aided by anti-slavery legal counsel and financially supported in his case by the family of Peter Blow, sued Irene Emerson for his freedom on the grounds that Dr. Emerson had taken him, for extended periods, into free state territory where he had hired Scott out for work.
There was legal precedent for Scott's suit in that many former slaves had won their freedom in court through a similar argument: they had been residents of a free state in which they had been employed. If a slaveholder brought a slave into a free state, the slave could claim their freedom. All Scott had to establish was that he had lived and worked in free state territory from 1833 to 1837 and from 1838 to 1840.
Further, the Scotts' marriage, officially on record, weighed heavily in their favor. Slave marriages were not considered legally binding unions, but the Scotts' marriage was officiated by a White US Army officer and duly sworn justice of the peace, evidence that they must have been considered free Blacks in Wisconsin Territory.
This evidence, as well as testimony supporting Scott's claim, failed to convince the jury, which ruled in favor of Irene Emerson in 1847. Scott's attorneys filed for a new trial, and the case dragged on through 1850. The 1850 trial ended in favor of Scott, and he, Harriet, and their children were free. Emerson's attorney filed a bill of exceptions, resulting in an appeal.
Irene Emerson got married in 1850 and left St. Louis, Missouri, for Springfield, Massachusetts, leaving her brother, John F. A. Sanford (1806-1857), to handle her business interests and legal affairs. The case then moved to the Supreme Court of Missouri.
In 1852, the trial ended with Judge William Scott reversing the earlier judgment and declaring Dred Scott and his family still enslaved. Judge Scott argued along the lines that, just because a slave was brought into free territory, this did not entitle that slave to freedom any more than, if someone brought a hoe or a rake to another person's home, it could legally be taken from them. He also rejected the concept of "once free, always free" in that, by returning to a slave state with the Emersons, the Scotts had forfeited whatever freedom they could have claimed in Wisconsin Territory.
The case then moved to the United States Supreme Court, with John F. A. Sanford as defendant. A clerical error gave his name as Sandford, and, as this was never corrected, the case remains "Dred Scott v. Sandford." The Blow family was no longer able to pay Scott's legal costs; he lost both his attorneys, and the case was picked up by attorney Roswell Field, who agreed to work pro bono. Scholar Andrew Delbanco comments:
Despite the odds, Scott's counsel pressed on. Much of the argument went back and forth over whether Scott had been merely a sojourner in Illinois and Wisconsin, and therefore remained legally enslaved under the laws of Missouri, or whether his residency in a free state and territory rendered him free.
If those had remained the key questions, the Dred Scott case would be a footnote in history. But in the course of the argument, counsel for Sanford made the fateful decision to claim that the exclusion of slavery from the Wisconsin Territory was invalid because congressional exclusion of slavery from federal territory, as prescribed by the Missouri Compromise, was unconstitutional. The case was thereby transformed from a private suit into a public dispute of huge consequence. At stake now was the question of whether Congress had the authority to exclude slavery from any federal territory at all.
(331)
The court's ruling was 7-2 in favor of Sanford, with Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1777-1864) writing the majority opinion. Not only did Taney conclude that Dred Scott was still a slave but also that his lawsuit – and any other like it – was invalid because Blacks were not United States citizens and so had no claim to rights, privileges, and protections under the US Constitution.
The Ruling
Taney's ruling reads, in part:
DECEMBER TERM, 1856.
DRED SCOTT
versus
JOHN F. A. SANDFORD.Dred Scott, Plaintiff In Error, v. John F. A. Sandford.
I.
Upon a writ of error to a Circuit Court of the United States, the transcript of the record of all the proceedings in the case is brought before this court and is open to its inspection and revision.
When a plea to the jurisdiction, in abatement, is overruled by the court upon demurrer, and the defendant pleads in bar, and upon these pleas the final judgment of the court is in his favor–if the plaintiff brings a writ of error, the judgment of the court upon the plea in abatement is before this court, although it was in favor of the plaintiff–and if the court erred in overruling it, the judgment must be reversed, and a mandate issued to the Circuit Court to dismiss the case for want of jurisdiction.
In the Circuit Courts of the United States, the record must show that the case is one in which by the Constitution and laws of the United States, the court had jurisdiction–and if this does not appear, and the court gives judgment either for plaintiff or defendant, it is error, and the judgment must be reversed by this court–and the parties cannot by consent waive the objection to the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court.
A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a "citizen" within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.
When the Constitution was adopted, they were not regarded in any of the States as members of the community which constituted the State and were not numbered among its "people or citizen." Consequently, the special rights and immunities guaranteed to citizens do not apply to them. And not being "citizens" within the meaning of the Constitution, they are not entitled to sue in that character in a court of the United States, and the Circuit Court has not jurisdiction in such a suit.
The only two clauses in the Constitution which point to this race, treat them as persons whom it was morally lawful to deal in as articles of property and to hold as slaves.
Since the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, no state can by any subsequent law make a foreigner or any other description of persons citizens of the United States, nor entitle them to the rights and privileges secured to citizens by that instrument.
A State, by its laws passed since the adoption of the Constitution, may put a foreigner or any other description of persons upon a footing with its own citizens, as to all the rights and privileges enjoyed by them within its dominion, and by its laws. But that will not make him a citizen of the United States, nor entitle him to sue in its courts, nor to any of the privileges and immunities of a citizen in another State.
The change in public opinion and feeling in relation to the African race, which has taken place since the adoption of the Constitution, cannot change its construction and meaning, and it must be construct and administered now according to its true meaning and intention when it was formed and adopted.
The plaintiff having admitted, by his demurrer to the plea in abatement, that his ancestors were imported from Africa and sold as slaves, he is not a citizen of the State of Missouri according to the Constitution of the United States and was not entitled to sue in that character in the Circuit Court.
This being the case, the judgment of the court below, in favor of the plaintiff of the plea in abatement, was erroneous. (National Archives, 1)
Controversy
The Compromise of 1850 included the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which compelled officials, law enforcement, and private citizens in free states to report freedom seekers and to assist slave-catchers in their arrest and return to enslavement. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was extremely unpopular in the North, as people who may have never given a thought to the issue of slavery, as well as those actively opposed to it, were now threatened with prison terms and fines for non-compliance.
Although Taney and the other seven of nine Supreme Court justices believed they were settling the "slavery problem" once and for all, their decision was even more unpopular than the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, as it gave greater power to the slave states. Delbanco writes:
The chief justice further denied not only to Congress but also to any territorial government the power to exclude slavery, on the grounds that such exclusion would violate the slave owner's right to due process under the Fifth Amendment.
Whatever its force as legal precedent, Taney's opinion had an incendiary effect on the tinderbox nation. By vindicating southerners, it drove anti-slavery northerners to new heights of outrage at what seemed the wholesale takeover of the federal government by the Slave Power. It aligned the Supreme Court with Congress in effectively repudiating the Missouri Compromise as an overreach of congressional power, and it went even further in disallowing the prohibition of slavery by any territorial legislature, popularly elected or not.
(332)
Abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), William Still (1819-1902), Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), Passmore Williamson (1822-1895), Harriet Tubman (circa 1822-1913), and John Brown (1800-1859) denounced the ruling as did the newly formed Republican Party and the up-and-coming Republican politician Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865).
The 1856 ruling, decided on 6 March 1857, did nothing to resolve the slavery issue but only increased tensions between slave and free states. The Dred Scott Decision encouraged greater resistance in the North to slavery and encouraged John Brown in his militancy, leading to his raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 and steadily heightening tensions in the United States in the years leading up to the American Civil War.
Conclusion
Although Irene Emerson had refused to free the Scotts in 1846, after she married the abolitionist Calvin C. Chaffee in 1850, she seems to have had a change of heart. It was too late by this time for her to do anything about the case, as it was now her brother's problem. John F. A. Sanford developed mental illness toward the end of the case, dying in an asylum in May 1857.
That same year, Irene and Calvin Chaffee transferred the deed of ownership of the Scott family to Henry Taylor Blow, whose family had financially supported the Scotts, and Blow filed the legal documents of manumission the same month that Sanford died. Dred and Harriet Scott and their two daughters were finally free through the actions of a woman who could have freed them in 1846.
Dred Scott worked as a porter in a St. Louis hotel, and Harriet as a washerwoman. They lived as a free couple in Missouri for over a year until Dred died of tuberculosis on 7 November 1858. Harriet lived until 17 June 1876, witnessing the American Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, granting anyone born in the United States citizenship, both superseding the Dred Scott Decision and relegating it to its infamous standing as the worst Supreme Court ruling in United States history.
