Dred Scott, The Case That Cracked the Republic

Dred Scott had lived in freedom for years before a court told him he had never been free at all. He was born enslaved in Virginia around eighteen hundred, had been taken to Illinois, a free state, and then to Wisconsin Territory, free under the Missouri Compromise, by his owner, Army surgeon John Emerson. Scott worked, traveled, married Harriet Robinson in a legal ceremony in Wisconsin Territory, and eventually returned with Emerson to Missouri.

When Emerson died, Scott attempted to purchase his own freedom from Emerson's widow. She refused. In eighteen forty-six, Scott filed suit for freedom in the Saint Louis Circuit Court, arguing that his years of residence in free territory had made him a free man.

The case worked its way through the courts for eleven years, losing, winning on appeal, losing again, until it reached the United States Supreme Court in eighteen fifty-six. Chief Justice Roger Taney delivered the majority opinion in March of eighteen fifty-seven. It was a document of extraordinary reach.

The Court ruled that Scott, as a person of African descent, was not a citizen of the United States and had no standing to bring suit in federal court. It went further: the Missouri Compromise itself was unconstitutional, because Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories. The ruling invalidated the central legislative compromise that had kept the republic nominally at peace for thirty-seven years.

Dred Scott was freed by his new owner, Taylor Blow, two months after the decision. He worked as a hotel porter in Saint Louis and died of tuberculosis in November of eighteen fifty-eight, a free man for less than two years. The decision bearing his name helped precipitate the war that eventually, and too late for him, resolved what the Court had refused to resolve.