The Dred Scott Decision and Its Bitter Legacy

1. The Dred Scott Decision and Its
Bitter Legacy

2. Portrait of Dred Scott (Courtesy
New-York Historical Society)
Dred Scott was born a slave in Virginia
around 1800 and died a free man in Missouri
in 1858. Most contemporary accounts
describe his life and habits as typical for
someone of his place and time. Yet along
the way, he gave his name to what has
become the most infamous Supreme Court
decision in American history.

3. Scott’s freedom suit, 1846,
(Courtesy Washington University
Library)
The Dred Scott case began in St. Louis
Circuit Court in 1846 when Scott and his
wife Harriet, 28, filed separate freedom suits
against their owner, Irene Emerson. In that
era, freedom suits or legal actions claiming
wrongful enslavement were quite rare but
still possible under most state laws

4. Dred Scott and Harriet Scott, from
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper,
June 27, 1857 (Courtesy Missouri
Historical Society)
We really don’t know why Harriet and Dred
Scott chose that moment to file for their
freedom. They had lived in free states or
territories while serving Mrs. Emerson's late
husband, an army surgeon, but had never
before asserted the "once free, always free"
doctrine.

5. Detail from Dred Scott’s Signed
Petition of 1846 (Courtesy
Washington University Library)
Yet for some reason, on April 6, 1846, Dred
Scott, an illiterate slave, bravely made his
mark on a petition designed to "establish his
right to freedom" in an American court of
law. This action began a legal odyssey that
didn’t end until eleven years later in the U.S.
Supreme Court.

6. Broadside protesting re-capture of
fugitive slaves, 1854 (Gilder
Lehrman Collection, GLC 07887)
When Dred Scott's case reached the
Supreme Court in late 1854, the country was
experiencing an unprecedented crisis over
slavery. Battles over fugitive slaves and the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which
had previously restricted the spread of
slavery, now threatened to transform Scott's
personal claims into a critical national test

7. James Buchanan, Robert Grier
and Roger Taney (Courtesy
Dickinson College)
Concerned by the crisis, the court delayed a
decision until after the 1856 election.
President-Elect James Buchanan then
secretly discussed the deliberations with
some of the justices. At his inauguration,
Buchanan urged respect for the verdict
"whatever this may be." Two days later, on
March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney
read the profoundly pro-slavery decision.

8. Chief Justice Taney (Courtesy
Dickinson College)
Even though all nine justices wrote separate
opinions, Taney was generally acknowledged
to have spoken for a 7-2 majority against
Dred Scott. The Chief Justice made two
major pronouncements: 1) Blacks, whether
slaves or free, had never been U.S. citizens,
and 2) Congress could not prohibit slavery
in the territories

9. Report of the Decision of the Supreme
Court of the United States, and the
Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the
Case of Dred Scott Versus John F. A.
Sandford, 1857. (Gilder Lehrman
Collection, GLC 00267.058)
Chief Justice Taney employed unusually
blunt language and racist arguments to
contend that by the time the U.S.
Constitution was adopted, African
Americans had been universally regarded as
"an inferior order" that "had no rights which
the white man was bound to respect."

10. Missouri Compromise (1820)
(Courtesy the National Archives)
But the biggest surprise and gravest
disagreement came over Taney's second
pronouncement, that Congress had no
power to prohibit territorial slavery. This
opinion meant that the Missouri
Compromise of 1820 had been
unconstitutional and suggested that the
platform of the new Republican Party which
urged the containment of slavery might be
illegal.

11. Dred Scott’s Daughters, from Frank
Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, June
27, 1857 (Courtesy Missouri
Historical Society)
The Taney Court's attempt to resolve the
sectional crisis over slavery in favor of
southern slaveholders moved the country
closer to Civil War. But in the decision's
aftermath, something equally unexpected
occurred. Dred and Harriet Scott lost the
case but weeks later, having been sold to
new owners, were granted their freedom by
manumission

12. Newspaper attack on Justice
Taney (Courtesy Dickinson
College)
Meanwhile, the national reaction to the
ruling proved explosive. Republicans
denounced Taney bitterly, arguing that his
opinions were dictum or non-binding
because by denying Dred Scott a citizen’s
standing to sue in federal court, the rest of
the ruling was superfluous. Democrats,
especially southerners, rallied angrily to the
Court’s defense

13. Two Speeches by Frederick
Douglass, 1857 (Gilder Lehrman
Collection, GLC 07591)
Frederick Douglass, a former slave, spoke
for many anti-slavery northerners when he
denounced the Taney Court as "not the only
power in this world." "The Supreme Court
of the Almighty is greater," he said defiantly
in May 1857, calling on his audience to
continue the fight against slavery and
demand a different interpretation of the
Constitution.

14. Lincoln's 'House Divided' Speech
(Gilder Lehrman Collection,
GLC 2533)
Abraham Lincoln spoke out against the
Dred Scott decision as a disaster for the
country. In this speech of December 1857,
he also began for the first time to call the
nation, "A House Divided" that could not
"endure permanently, half slave, and half
free."

15. Dred Scott Political Cartoon
(Courtesy Library of Congress)
Along with events such as the Lecompton
Constitution in Kansas and John Brown’s
raid in Virginia, the Dred Scott Case
contributed to the escalating political crisis
which turned the 1860 election into a bitter
contest that resulted in victory for Lincoln
and the Republicans, and secession for the
Deep South.

16. New York Resolution Ratifying
Fourteenth Amendment (Gilder
Lehrman Collection, GLC 14556)
President Lincoln refused to accept southern
secession or to compromise over his
rejection of the Taney Court's rulings about
slavery. The result was a Civil War that
devastated the country, but ultimately ended
slavery in America. Post-war constitutional
amendments then overturned the major
precedents of the Dred Scott decision.