Dred Scott v. Sandford’s Historic Civil Rights Implications

Dred Scott was a Black American who brought a landmark case to the United States Supreme Court to seek freedom from enslavement. Here is a brief overview of the events that led up to Scott’s Supreme Court case.

• Early life: Scott was born into slavery around 1800 in Virginia, in the United States. He moved to Alabama, then St. Louis, Missouri—where slavery was legal—with his enslaver Peter Blow. Blow died in 1832, and Dr. John Emerson, an army surgeon, purchased Scott and took him to Illinois. At the time, the United States Ordinance forbade the holding of enslaved people as property in Illinois, in accordance with the Missouri Compromise, which outlawed slavery in all states of the Louisiana Purchase above the 36°30’ parallel, the border between Tennessee and Kentucky border. The verbiage in the Illinois State Constitution only prevented initiating slavery, meaning that hundreds of enslavers could keep already enslaved people as property.
• Travel to Wisconsin: In 1836, Dr. Emerson and Scott traveled to Fort Snelling in the Wisconsin Territory, which—according to the Missouri Compromise—was a free state where slavery was also illegal. There, Scott married an enslaved woman named Harriet Robinson, and Emerson became her owner. In Scott’s time in Wisconsin, Dr. Emerson traveled out of the territory and hired out Dred and Harriet for profit—even though initiating slavery was technically illegal in the state. Dred and Harriet Scott’s brief time in the free territory of Wisconsin would lay the foundation for their fight for freedom.
• Transfer to Eliza Emerson: Dr. Emerson died in 1843, after which ownership of Scott transferred to Emerson’s wife, Eliza (Irene) Emerson. Dred and Harriet traveled back from the free territory of Wisconsin to the slave territory of Missouri to resume ownership under the Emerson family. Scott attempted to purchase his freedom from Eliza Emerson multiple times after this, but she declined his offers.
• First suit for freedom: Both Dred and Harriet brought separate suits to the St. Louis, Missouri Circuit Court in 1846 for their freedom. They received financial help from the family of Dred’s former enslaver Peter Blow to pay the legal bills. They used the 1824 Missouri Supreme Court decision, Winny v. Whitesides—which established the common rule, “once free, always free”—as precedent for their argument. The first suit took place in Missouri in 1847, but the court dismissed it on a technicality because Scott lacked the papers to prove that Irene was his enslaver.
• Retrial and subsequent suits: The Missouri Circuit Court granted Scott and his wife freedom in a second court case, Scott v. Emerson, in 1850. However, the Supreme Court of the state of Missouri overturned the decision. The Missouri Supreme Court was, at the time, made up of enslavers and proslavery justices. The case garnered national attention and became a pointed example of the mounting tensions between the free North and the South, where slavery was legal. After appealing to Missouri’s circuit courts in 1853, Scott took his case to the United States Supreme Court.

Here is a brief overview of Dred Scott v. Sandford, a landmark Supreme Court case that historians point to as one of many catalysts for the American Civil War. The case attracted political attention, with abolitionists backing Scott and enslavers hoping for a victory for Sanford.

• Appeal to Supreme Court: In 1854, Scott appealed his case to the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. At this point, Irene’s brother John F. A. Sanford claimed to own Scott and his wife, but a clerk misspelled Sanford’s name as “Sandford” in the appeal, and the error was never corrected. The trial began on February 11, 1856. Lawyers Montgomery Blair and George Ticknor Curtis represented Scott, and Reverdy Johnson and Henry S. Geyer represented Sanford.
• The Dred Scott decision: On March 6, 1857—nearly a year after the appeal—the justices of the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Sanford with a seven to two vote. Conservative Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who wrote the final majority opinion of the court, extrapolated that Americans of African descent could not legally hold citizenship under the United States Federal Government. Therefore, they had no protections under the Constitution and could not sue in Federal Court. Taney also wrote that the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution protected an enslaver’s property, with enslaved people being considered the legal property of their owners at the time. Justices John McLean and Benjamin Robbins Curtis were the only two justices to dissent from the majority, both stating that there was no legal basis for the argument that Black Americans could not hold citizenship. The Library of Congress now houses all of the Justice’s written opinions.
• Aftermath: Mrs. Emerson remarried during the trial to a famous Massachusetts abolitionist named Calvin Chaffee, who convinced Irene to sell Scott and his wife to Scott’s original owners, the Blow family. Taylor Blow, Peter’s son, made Scott a free man and freed the entire Scott family two months after the Supreme Court’s decision.

The Dred Scott decision remains one of the most infamous federal court decisions in the history of the United States. Here are some of the implications of this Supreme Court decision:

1. 1. Invalidation of the Missouri Compromise: Taney’s interpretation of this Supreme Court Decision invalidated the Missouri Compromise, which prevented the spread of slavery to new US territories above the 36°30’ line. Southern slave states subsequently jockeyed for more territory and political power.
2. 2. Federally sanctioned racism: The Supreme Court ruling and Justice Taney’s written interpretation effectively stated that anyone with Black skin living in the United States was not a citizen and could not receive constitutional protection. This federal decision set a precedent that nullified the personhood of Black Americans at the time, reducing them to property.
3. 3. Rising tensions around slavery: Chief Justice Taney believed the decision would lessen the political tensions around slavery in the United States to rest. However, the decision had the exact opposite effect and further divided the citizens of the United States. Heightened tensions between the North and South—exacerbated by the decision of Scott v. Sandford—led to the American Civil War. The decision outraged abolitionists, and antislavery arguments spread. In 1860–61, eleven Southern states seceded from the Union to maintain their right to practice slavery. The secession strengthened the resolve of Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party to end slavery and reunite the Union.
4. 4. Impetus for abolition: In 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the Sixteenth President of the United States, and the abolition of slavery was one of his primary goals. In 1862, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which outlawed slavery in the United States other than as a punishment for crimes. Three years later, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery.

There’s a lot of information that history textbooks don’t cover, including the ways in which systems of inequality continue to impact everyday life. With the MasterClass Annual Membership, get access to exclusive lessons from Angela Davis, Dr. Cornel West, Jelani Cobb, John McWhorter, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Sherrilyn Ifill to learn about the forces that have influenced race in the United States.