By cadet r' hun

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• By cadet r. hun

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Dred scott decision

• In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a
  landmark decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford, a
  decision that galvanized a budding Republican
  Party, polarized a young nation, and set the
  stage for the Civil War. For black Americans, the
  decision radically undermined their legal rights
  and their faith that God was leading the country
  toward a true interpretation of American
  democracy.

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His birth
Born into slavery in 1799, Scott was illiterate
and nearly penniless when he and his wife Harriet
first brought their case to the St. Louis Circuit
Court in 1846. Like his parents, Scott had been
the property of Peter Blow, a prominent
Virginian. Scott moved from Virginia to Missouri
with the Blow family. There he was sold to a
military surgeon, Dr. John Emerson, in 1830.
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What he did

• For the next twelve years, Scott traveled the
  mid-west with Dr. Emerson, moving between
  Missouri, Illinois, and the Wisconsin Territory.
  During that time, Dred Scott, his wife Harriet,
  and daughters Lizzie and Eliza, lived enslaved in
  a land that outlawed slavery.

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Decisions made

• The opinion handed down on March 6, 1857, by
  Chief Justice Roger Taney was sweeping in its
  pro-slavery findings. Seven of the nine justices
  found that Dred Scott should remain enslaved.
  Taney's opinion argued that Scott, as an enslaved
  person, was not a citizen and thereby had no
  grounds to bring suit in federal court.

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• As he put it, 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."

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How it ended up

• In the end, Dred Scott and his family did win
  their freedom. Emerson's widow remarried to a
  northerner, Calvin Chaffee, who was staunchly
  anti-slavery. In deference to her new husband's
  wishes, Mrs. Emerson sold the Scotts to the Blow
  family, their original masters. The Blow family
  had supported Scott both emotionally and
  financially throughout the lengthy ordeal, and in
  May 1857 they gave Scott and his family their
  freedom.

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• A scant sixteen months later, Dred Scott died
  of tuberculosis. His epitaph reads "Dred Scott
  Subject of the decision of the Supreme Court of
  the United States in 1857 which denied
  citizenship to the Negro, voided the Missouri
  Compromise, became one of the events that
  resulted in Civil War."

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His death
The war, of course, is another story, but the
Dred Scott story ends on a happier note. The
Widow Emerson decided to turn Dred, Harriet and
their daughters back over to their original
owners, the Blow family, soon after the Supreme
Court ruling. The Blows then set them free.
Unfortunately, Dred died 16 months later of
tuberculosis, but his wife and daughters lived
through the Civil War that their court case
partially inspired
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