Rought Draft for NHD on Dred Scott

Sam Scott better known as Dred Scott was an important person during the 1800's. His famous court case helped hasten the arrival of the American Civil War. The court case between Mr. Dred Scott and Stanford was relatively significant during the 1800's because the Northern and Southern states has been struggling for decades about what to do about slavery. Of course the states later came up with a decision that the slaves did not agree with or like. They came up with a series of bills called the Compromise of 1850. This Compromise only allowed certain states like California, Texas and Illinois to be free states while the rest of the sates had to be slave states. Slaves including Dred Scott found this compromise unfair and cruel.

The slaves later began to get so fed up with the Compromise of 1850, that they began rebelling against their masters. Dred Scott even decided to escape from his master James Emerson who was a doctor for the United States soldiers. Dred Scott originally resided in St. Louis Missouri, which obviously was a slave state. But he escaped to Illinois a free state in 1856. He then left Illinois to go to Fort Snelling near Wisconsin Territory, where the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery. The Missouri Compromise was measures passed by the United States Congress to end the first of a series of crisis concerning the extensions of slavery. This was good for the slaves because it gave them an opportunity to escape their slave homes and seek new things in other states. However when Dred Scott decided to take that risk, he accomplished it at first but was later found by his original owner James Emerson. James Emerson found him in Wisconsin and brought him back to Missouri. But what James Emerson did not know was that Dred Scott had married an African American woman named Harriet. So she too had to be bought back to Missouri and had to work for James Emerson and his family.

Once Dred Scott, Harriet Scott and the Emerson family arrived back to Missouri, the Scott's decided to sue for their freedom. It was a long process but they finally made it possible to sue. The first Dred Scott case was first brought to trial in 1847 on the first floor, west wing courtroom of St. Louis' Courthouse. This case was lost because Dred Scott had evidence to prove that he was free, but the jury and judge did not take the Dred Scott case serious. However, the judge granted the Scott's a second trial. The second trial was held in the same courtroom but in the year 1850. By this time James Emerson died and Dred Scott and Harriet Scott was property of James' wife Irene Emerson. She did not want to lose Dred and his wife at all because she claimed that they were great workers and she wanted them to work for her children. So when the Scott's went to the second trial and was granted freedom, Irene decided to take it to the United States Missouri Supreme Ruling in 1852.

This particular trial took place in an Old courthouse, where the judges were cruel and mean. But Dred Scott did not care, he was determined to fight for his freedom. Dred Scott and his wife found a new set of lawyers who absolutely hated slavery and was willing to represent them at no cost. They helped him sue against John F.A. Sanford, Irene's brother in 1854. But since Sanford lived in New York, the case had to be moved again to a Federal District Courtroom because of the diversity in the residence. The trial ruled in favor of Sanford, but Dred Scott still did not give up. He later took it to the United States Supreme Court.

On March 6th, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. Seven of the nine juries agreed that Dred Scott should remain a slave, but Taney did not stop there. He also ruled that as a slave, Dred Scott was not a citizen of the United States, and therefore had no right to bring suit in the federal courts on any matter. In addition, he declared that Scott had never been free, due to the fact that slaves were personal property and that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional, and the Federal Government had no right to prohibit slavery in the new territories. The court appeared to be sanctioning slavery under the terms of the Constitution itself, and saying that slavery could not be outlawed or restricted within the United States. That is when the rest of the United States began to hear about this case. Antislavery groups feared that slavery would spread rapidly. The new Republican Party, founded in 1854 to prohibit the spread of slavery, renewed their fight to gain control of the Congress and the courts. Their well planned political campaign of 1860, coupled with numerous of issues, which split the Democratic Party, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States and South Carolina's secession from the Union. The Dred Scott Decision moved the country to the brink of Civil War.

Ironically, Irene Emerson remarried in 1850 to a man name Calvin C. Chaffee, a northren congressman who was opposed to slavery. After the Supreme Court decision, Mrs. Chaffee turned Dred and Harriet Scott and their two daughters over to Dred's old friends, the Blows, who gave the Scotts their freedom in May 1857. On September 17, 1858, Dred Scott died of tuberculosis and was buried in St. Louis. His grave was moved in the 1860s to Calvary Cemetery in northern St. Louis, and marked due to the efforts of the Rev. Edward Dowling in 1957. Dred Scott did not live to see the fratricidal war touched off at Fort Sumter in 1861, but did live to gain his freedom. The ultimate result of the war, the end of slavery throughout the United States, was not something Dred Scott could have foreseen in 1846, when he decided to sue for his freedom in St. Louis' Old Courthouse.