Dred Scott was an enslaved African man in the United States who became the central figure in one of the most infamous Supreme Court cases in American history, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). His life began in bondage, and it would end with freedom denied by the nation’s highest court, but not before he spent eleven long years challenging the system that claimed ownership of his body and denied his humanity.
Dred Scott was born around 1799 in Virginia, a place where Black men and women were property before they were anything else. He was sold and resold, eventually ending up in Missouri, a slave state, under the ownership of Dr. John Emerson, a U.S. Army surgeon. Emerson’s military career took him to free territories, including Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, both places where slavery had been outlawed.
While living in Louisiana, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson in 1837. Together, Dred and Harriet would have four children, two of whom survived into adulthood: Eliza and Lizzie.
By law, living in these free territories should have made Scott a free man. But America’s laws were always selective, designed to serve the interests of those in power. When Emerson died in 1843, his widow Irene inherited his estate, including the Scotts. For three years, Emerson’s late widow leased them out as hired slaves, pocketing the profits.
In 1846, desperate for a way out, Dred Scott offered to purchase his family’s freedom for $300. Irene Emerson refused. That same year, Dred and Harriet filed separate lawsuits for their freedom in St. Louis, later combined into one case.
Their claim rested on a principle long recognized in Missouri: “once free, always free.” The idea was simple, if an enslaved African had lived in a free state or territory, they could not legally be re-enslaved upon returning to Missouri. And Scott’s case was strong. He had lived in both Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, and his eldest daughter, Eliza, had even been born on a steamboat north of Missouri, between free soil and free waters.
For 11 years, Scott’s case crawled through the courts. He won in a lower court, only to have the decision reversed. He appealed again and again, holding onto the faint hope that the law, which white Americans claimed to honor, would finally acknowledge his humanity.
By 1857, his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. What came next was not justice, but one of the darkest rulings ever delivered in the nation’s history.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, speaking for the Court, declared that Dred Scott was not a citizen of the United States and never could be. He declared that enslaved Africans were legally considered private property, protected by the Fifth Amendment, and that their status as property remained no matter where they were taken. According to the Court, Black people, whether enslaved or free, had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
This was more than a rejection of Scott’s plea. It was a declaration that Black humanity had no standing in America’s highest court. The ruling also struck down the Missouri Compromise, opening the door for slavery to spread into western territories. Instead of settling the debate over slavery, the decision inflamed it, pushing America closer to the Civil War.
Throughout his legal battles, Scott was supported by the Blow family, who had once owned him but later turned against slavery. They helped fund his lawsuits and secured lawyers on his behalf. Later, abolitionist attorneys like Roswell Field and Montgomery Blair took up his case, the latter even presenting arguments before the Supreme Court.
Ironically, Irene Emerson eventually remarried an abolitionist congressman, Calvin Chaffee. After the Supreme Court’s ruling, Irene Emerson’s new husband, arranged for Scott and his family to be transferred to the Blow family, the very family who had once enslaved him decades earlier. The Blows granted the Scotts their freedom on May 26, 1857.
For the first time in nearly sixty years, Dred Scott was legally free. But the victory was bittersweet and short-lived. He worked briefly as a porter in a St. Louis hotel but died of tuberculosis in September 1858, just over a year after gaining his freedom. He was buried at Wesleyan Cemetery and later reinterred at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, where his grave has since become a site of remembrance.
To this day, the Dred Scott decision is remembered as one of the darkest stains on the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. It revealed, in cold legal language, that the nation’s institutions were willing to protect slavery at any cost, even if it meant denying the basic humanity of millions.
Yet, the case also became a turning point. The outrage it generated fueled the abolitionist movement, sharpened the divide between North and South, and hastened the outbreak of the Civil War. Eleven years after Dred Scott first walked into a St. Louis courthouse, America itself was on the road to war over the very issue his case had exposed.
In 1868, the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment finally overturned the Court’s ruling, granting citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” It was a promise that came too late for Dred Scott, but one that carried his name into history.
Harriet Scott outlived her husband by 18 years, dying in 1876. Their daughters carried on the family legacy, with their descendants still living in St. Louis today. In September 2023, a towering new monument was unveiled at Dred Scott’s grave, led by his great-great-granddaughter, Lynne M. Jackson.
Sources:
https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/africanamerican/scott/scott.asp
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/scott-dred-1795-1858/
