LAD/Blog #19: The Dred Scott Decision


LAD/Blog #19: The Dred Scott Decision

The Dred Scott Case (final decision) took place in 1857, and hurried the beginning of the Civil War. The case was over Dred Scott and his wife filing suit against Irene Emerson for their freedom. Dred Scott had been sold to John Emerson (Irene’s husband), and under him had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery had been prohibited due to the Missouri Compromise. In 1846, after being hired out, he filed suit for living in free territories without being granted freedom. He may have been dissatisfied with being hired out, about to be sold, or offered to buy freedom and was refused- any of these reasons could have lead to his pushback. John Anderson and the Blow family (Dred’s first owners) helped him during the litigation. In 1846, whether or not they deserved freedom was less important than considering property rights- if they were valuable, could they be taken away because of where the owner took them?

The Dred Scott decision, or Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, ruled that a slave who had lived in a free state/territory was not entitled to his freedom, that African Americans would and could not never be American citizens, and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. The decision is widely considered the Supreme Court’s worst ever. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney “ignored precedent, distorted history, imposed a rigid rather than a flexible construction on the Constitution, ignored specific grants of power in the Constitution, and tortured meanings out of other, more-obscure clauses.” Taney could have been accused of just faulty reasoning, but he was determined to have a judicial “solution” to the controversy over slavery. Also, Taney maintained that as Scott was not a citizen, he could not sue in federal courts. Ultimately, this case hastened the start of the Civil War (the North was furious), even though Dred Scott was eventually freed.

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Dred Scott
Image result for 3/5 compromise
Three-Fifths Compromise (synthesis)
The three-fifths compromise was similar to the Dred Scott case in that both said that African Americans were not citizens, and didn't really take into account that they were real human beings- they just took away their rights.

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