Dred Scott

American slave

• Born: c. 1795
• Birthplace: Southampton County, Virginia
• Died: September 17, 1858
• Place of death: St. Louis, Missouri

Perhaps the most famous slave in American history, Scott instigated a legal challenge to the definition of “citizenship” for black people in the United States. His challenge led to the Supreme Court’s 1857Dred Scott v. Sandforddecision, which became a step toward Civil War and the end of slavery.

Early Life

Dred Scott was born a slave in Virginia, and little information about him exists in the official record until he reached adulthood. He probably arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1830 from Virginia and Alabama, accompanying his owner, Peter Blow, Blow’s wife Elizabeth, and their children. The Blows had been farmers in Virginia and Alabama, but when they arrived in Missouri, they tried their hand as owners of a boardinghouse, which was only barely successful.

Scott is described in the record as being about five feet tall and dark skinned. He was illiterate. It is likely that Scott had been a slave to the Blows since his adolescence, if not his childhood, and the emotional connections Scott made with the sons of Peter and Elizabeth proved to be helpful to the Scott family later. During the series of trials that began with Scott’s suit to be recognized as a citizen of the United States, a St. Louis newspaper reporter interviewed Scott and reported that, although he was illiterate, he was “not ignorant” and that it was clear that he had learned much from his travels. Scott had most likely led a life of hard work and little else. By 1832, however, both Peter and Elizabeth had died; thereafter, Scott entered the history books.

Life’s Work

After Peter Blow’s death, Scott was purchased by an army officer named John Emerson. Scott traveled with Emerson to Illinois when Emerson was transferred to an army base there in 1833. There is almost no written record of what Scott actually thought or felt about this major change in his life since neither Scott nor Emerson spoke or wrote about their experiences or their relationship with each other. Emerson had been born in Pennsylvania and had studied medicine there, and the two men were approximately the same age. Scott’s primary duties centered on being Emerson’s personal servant, but part of Scott’s work also included clearing a parcel of land that Emerson had purchased in Iowa (then part of the Wisconsin Territory).

Sometime in 1836, Scott went with Emerson to Fort Snelling in an area that later became St. Paul, Minnesota, a region where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise. While he was in Minnesota, Scott married a woman named Harriet who was about half his age and who was also a slave in the territory. Scott’s wife may have been purchased for him by Emerson, or she may have been given to him as a gift by a man who ran a trading post or worked as a liaison to American Indians in the territory. During their twenty-year marriage, Dred and Harriet Scott had four children: two sons who died in infancy and two daughters.

In 1837, Emerson transferred back to St. Louis, but he left the Scotts in Minnesota. Emerson had expected to send for the Scotts shortly after his return to Missouri, but he was almost immediately transferred again to Louisiana, where he married Eliza Irene Sandford, a woman about fifteen years his junior. Emerson then sent for the Scotts, who traveled to Louisiana unchaperoned and arrived as they had agreed by riverboat. By the time Scott and his wife packed and moved out of Minnesota to be reunited with Emerson, they had lived for one year or more on their own in free territory. This would eventually become the basis of their case in the Supreme Court.

About six months after their journey down the Mississippi River to Louisiana, the Scotts and the Emersons returned to Minnesota. The Scotts’ first daughter was born during this trip, while they were still in free territory. They named her Eliza, after Emerson’s wife. In December, 1843, Emerson died about one month after the birth of his own daughter. The chain of events ignited by his death changed the lives of Scott and his family and, perhaps, changed the course of American history as well.

In his will, Emerson bequeathed his earthly goods to his wife and, after her death, to his daughter. The will allowed Eliza to sell whatever she needed from the estate in order to support herself and her daughter. Eliza’s brother, John Sandford, was named an executor for Emerson’s will, although Eliza’s father, Alexander Sandford, was administrator of record for the will in the state of Missouri. When her father died in 1848, Eliza took over the details of handling her husband’s will. During the few years between the death of Emerson and the first court case brought by Dred and Harriet Scott, the couple traveled to Texas to work for Eliza’s brother-in-law, who was also in military service. The Scotts returned to St. Louis in 1846, and shortly after their return, they put in motion the process that would eventually affect race, law, and politics in the United States.

Having lived as free people, the Scotts were no longer content to quietly accept their status of slavery. On April 6, 1846, they filed individual requests in the Missouri court to bring suit for their freedom based upon their long residence in free territory. These first requests were granted, and the Scotts then filed suit against Eliza for damages for “ill-treatment” and “false imprisonment” based upon the Scotts’ contention that they were, in fact, free people. Because Scott was barely literate and a man of insubstantial means, it has been suggested that antislavery activists were at the bottom of this seminal case in an effort to mount a test case that would ignite the antislavery movement. However, the Scotts had observed the changing times and were also aware from their conversations with Peter Blow’s son Taylor that other former slaves who had brought similar suits had been declared free based on the finding that taking a slave into free territory to reside amounted to an act of emancipation.

The basis of the case seemed clear-cut: Dred sued based on his long residence in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, while Harriet based her claim on her residence in the Wisconsin Territory. The cases filed later by the Scotts’ daughters were based on the fact that the first daughter was actually born in free territory and the second daughter was born to a free mother. The Missouri court in St. Louis, following well-established precedent, found that the Scotts, based on their long residence in free territory, were indeed free.

In 1852, the Missouri Supreme Court disagreed and reversed the lower court’s decision. The sons of Scott’s former owner, Peter Blow, were sympathetic and helped Scott by contributing the fee for a new lawyer to represent the Scotts’ appeal before the United States Circuit Court of Missouri. The motive for the Blows’ long and steady support of Scott and his family seems to have been based on fond recollections of growing up with Scott, because Taylor Blow and his brother were strongly prosouthern in their politics. In any event, in 1854, the US Circuit Court upheld the Missouri Supreme Court’s finding that Dred and Harriet Scott should, and would, remain slaves. It was a remarkable coincidence of historical timing that brought the Scott case to the stage of national events; ultimately, the case had a significant impact on the hearts and minds of people around the world.

In 1855, Americans were concerned with the events in “Bloody Kansas” as settlers on both sides of the slavery question attempted to decide by violent means whether the Kansas-Nebraska Territory would be free or slave. Because of this, the Dred Scott case moved up on the docket of the Supreme Court. In early 1856, the matter of Dred Scott v. Sandford finally came up for argument in the Supreme Court, but jurisdictional and other technical matters were not resolved until December. After several months of debate, the Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 that Dred Scott was not a citizen of the United States. The language of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s finding in the Dred Scott decision was clear:

Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported… and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community… brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges… guaranteed by that instrument to the citizen?

The Taney Court’s answer was a resounding “no,” because they found that black people

were not intended to be included, under the word “citizen” in the Constitution, can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges… that instrument provides.… On the contrary, they [are]… considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who have been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority… [and were] so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

The response to the decision, delivered by Chief Justice Roger Taney and his associate justices to a standing-room-only crowd of newspaper writers and many others interested in the outcome of the case, was swift and divided along regional and political lines. Abolitionists centered in the North denounced the finding as immoral, while many southerners expressed satisfaction with the decision.

The sons of Peter Blow refused to accept the judgment of the court and purchased Scott and his family, then freed them almost immediately. Dred and Harriet Scott continued to live and work in St. Louis, although the state required that they post a bond in the amount of $1,000 to ensure their good behavior. Again, Taylor stepped in to help, using his property as security for the Scotts’ bonds. However, Scott’s free status was short-lived: he died on February 17, 1858, and was buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.

Significance

The life of Dred Scott had an ordinary beginning, and yet the flash point of pre-Civil War politics was the 1857 Supreme Court finding in Dred Scott v. Sandford, instigated by an illiterate, middle-aged black man who refused to accept slavery as his obligatory status in life. The Supreme Court found in Dred Scott v. Sandford that black people were not citizens of the United States and thus had no rights that white citizens were bound to respect. After the Civil War, in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which ensured citizenship rights for black Americans, directly reversed this finding. Dred Scott, the man whose case against the Supreme Court was undoubtedly the catalyst to an organized fight against slavery, died in St. Louis, Missouri, before the citizenship of black Americans was clearly set out in the Constitution.

Bibliography

Erlich, Walter. They Have No Rights: Dred Scott’s Struggle for Freedom. Bedford: Applewood, 2007. Print.

Fehrenbacher, Don E. Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective. New York: Oxford UP, 1981. Print.

Finkelman, Paul. Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford, 1997. Print.

Kaufman, Kenneth C. Dred Scott’s Advocate: A Biography of Roswell M. Field. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1996. Print.

Konig, David Thomas, Paul Finkelman, and Christopher Alan Bracey. The Dred Scott Case: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Race and Law. Athens: Ohio UP, 2010. Print.