Dred Scott v. Sandford
Note: I wrote this paper for my 11th grade U.S. History class. The citations are in MLA style. It's here for reading only; please do NOT quote me, cite me, plagiarize me or do anything stupid like that.
The period before the Civil War was filled with momentous and tumultuous events. As the American people struggled through difficulties with politics, economics, and slavery, the nation took inevitable steps toward conflict. One of the primary causes of division over slavery was the Dred Scott decision of the United States Supreme Court. Springing out of one slave’s desire for freedom, it escalated into a large-scale dispute. Dred Scott v. Sandford was a Supreme Court case about slavery, freedom, and African American citizenship.
Before his suit for freedom, Dred Scott lived the typically uneventful but strenuous life of an African American born into slavery. Not much is known about his beginnings, but he was probably born in Virginia around 1800 as the property of a man named Peter Blow (McPherson 147). In 1833, he was sold to Dr. John Emerson, a surgeon in the U.S. Army. Emerson’s military occupation moved them around the country, to places including the free state of Illinois and Wisconsin Territory (Hall 759). In Wisconsin, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, who came under Emerson’s ownership (Irons 158). Emerson then died in 1843, leaving the Scotts in St. Louis, Missouri, in Mrs. Emerson’s possession (Hall 759).
When Dred Scott eventually began efforts to obtain freedom for himself, his wife, and his two daughters, he did not expect his unexceptional case to become a turbulent and weighty dilemma. In 1846, with the help of abolitionists, he filed a suit against Mrs. Emerson, with the simple intent of gaining his freedom, not of confronting the nation’s current slavery issues (Hall 760). His action did not lack a basis. He was taking advantage of Missouri law, which stated that if a master took a slave into free territory, the slave was emancipated, and returning to Missouri would not make him a slave again (Irons 159). The principle was “once free, always free,” and Scott claimed he deserved freedom because of his brief residence in Illinois and Wisconsin. After a three-year delay, the Missouri court freed Scott as soon as they heard the case (Hall 760). The case should have been finished then and there, but Mrs. Emerson did not want to lose her slaves, so her brother John Sanford appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court to reverse their decision (McPherson 148). Unfortunately, nationwide sectional issues were catching up, and Missouri changed its law, proclaiming itself to be proslavery and saying that antislavery voices should not affect the state’s law (Hall 760). In 1852, the Missouri Court said that Scott was still enslaved (Irons 160). This was what led him to bring a new suit to federal courts, against Sanford, who had claimed ownership of the Scott family (162).
The case was presented to a tough U.S. Supreme Court, and circumstances began to look unfavorable for Scott. The suit Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sandford—Sanford’s name was misspelled through an uncorrected clerical mistake—was brought to allow the Supreme Court to define how much a state could change the “once free, always free” law (Hall 760). Because the Constitution’s Diversity of Citizenship Clause gave federal courts power in disputes between citizens of different states, Sanford, who lived in New York, was made the defendant (Irons 162). The Chief Justice at that time was Roger Taney, a southerner from a slave-owning family, who was likely to try to end slavery disputes once and for all by handing down a strict ruling (163). Also, a majority of five out of nine justices were from southern slave states, so they would be predisposed to making a proslavery decision, in favor of the defendant (164).
When the Supreme Court began debating the case, it grew to include many more issues than just one man’s freedom. Additional questions that Sanford’s lawyers urged the Court to consider were whether Scott was a citizen with the right to sue, and whether he was ever free (Hall 760). The citizenship issue was central because the Diversity Clause said that only a citizen of one state had the ability to sue a citizen of another state. Scott’s lawyers argued that he was a Missouri citizen, but his opponents said that he was only a resident (Irons 166). Moreover, the question of freedom required the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to be taken into account. The Missouri Compromise had allowed slavery in Missouri, while prohibiting it in territories above a certain line of latitude. In the arguments over the Dred Scott case, it was pointed out that the Constitution gave Congress the ability “to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States” (174). Sanford’s lawyers contended that when Congress prohibited slavery in the territories in 1820, it exceeded the power given to it because the decision was not “needful” (169). In the process of arriving at a decision about these issues, the Supreme Court argued twice, in February and December of 1856 (McPherson 150). Chief Justice Taney finally wrote the Court’s opinion, and only two of the nine justices dissented (146). On March 6, 1857, Taney delivered the decision. Ironically, neither Scott nor Sanford were present—Scott was in St. Louis, while Sanford was in an insane asylum in New York, where he died two years later (145).
The decrees of the Dred Scott decision, besides ruling that Scott was still a slave, had more implications for the nation. The first point made by the Court was that under the Constitution, slaves were not considered citizens, but property. Taney said that when the Constitution was written, blacks were “regarded as beings of an inferior order . . . they had no rights that the white man was bound to respect” (Irons 173). Because a slave was “an ordinary article of merchandise,” he stated, slave owners had the right to take their “property” anywhere without it being taken away (177). Therefore, since Scott was never a citizen, he had no right to sue in federal courts, so his suit was tossed away (Hall 760). Secondly, the Court decided that Scott never had been free, because the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. Taney resolved that the Territory Clause of the Constitution did not give Congress power to make laws for the territories, but only to dispose of the land (Irons 175). Consequently, because slavery should have been allowed in the territories, Scott’s brief residence in Wisconsin Territory never gave him freedom. Also, he was not a citizen, so he could not argue in court that he gained freedom in Missouri by living in Illinois (176). Chief Justice Taney had hoped to end the slavery question for good, but the one-sidedness of his decision caused an instant uproar (177).
The decision made an immense impact on the nation’s development, causing further sectional differences and contributing to the sentiments which led to the Civil War. There were widespread, angry reactions and disagreements. Southerners who supported slavery boasted their victory: “The nation has achieved a triumph, sectionalism has been rebuked, and abolitionism has been staggered and stunned,” said a newspaper called the Richmond Enquirer (McPherson 152). “Opposition to southern opinion . . . is now . . . treason against the Government,” declared the Constitutionalist in Georgia. However, northerners and abolitionists condemned Taney’s “mean and skulking cowardice” and “detestable hypocrisy,” as the New York Tribune remarked. One New York minister cautioned, “If the people obey this decision, they disobey God” (Irons 177). People who opposed slavery feared that the next step would be the national legalization of slavery (McPherson 153). Abraham Lincoln also resisted what he called the “erroneous” decision, saying that the Court should overrule it (Irons 179). It was an unstable decision right when the nation most needed stability. It compounded attitudes that led to the Civil War, compelling the North and South to keep separating. It wasn’t until after that devastating war that the 13th and 14th Amendments were made, overriding the Dred Scott ruling by abolishing slavery and granting citizenship to any person born in the U.S. (Hall 761).
In the end, Dred Scott himself enjoyed freedom for a year before his death in 1858. Although the Supreme Court had ruled he was a slave, his former owner Peter Blow’s sons purchased the Scott family and set them all free. Roger Taney lived long enough to see his decision accomplish exactly the opposite of what he had intended, because it launched forces that led to emancipation of all slaves (McPherson 155). The Dred Scott decision proved to be one of the most short-sighted that the Supreme Court ever made. The Court didn’t consider the terrible outcome their prejudices might have caused. Their ruling was one of many catalysts that heightened the tension leading to the Civil War.
Works Cited
Hall, Kermit L., ed. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Irons, Peter. A People’s History of the Supreme Court. New York: Viking Penguin, 1999.
McPherson, James M., and Alan Brinkley, eds. Days of Destiny: Crossroads in American History. New York: Dorling Kindersley Publishing, Inc., 2001.
