Dred Scott

Peter Blow moved him twice before he was 30 — from Southampton County, Virginia, where he was born around 1799, to a farm near Huntsville, Alabama that failed, and then to St. Louis when the Blows quit farming in 1830. Sold to an Army surgeon named John Emerson, he ran once and was caught in the Lucas Swamps. Emerson's postings carried him north instead: Fort Armstrong in free Illinois in 1833, Fort Snelling in the free Wisconsin Territory in 1837. There he married Harriet Robinson in a civil ceremony performed by the Indian agent Lawrence Taliaferro, who was also a justice of the peace. Enslaved people did not get legal marriages. His supporters would point to that later.

He tried to buy his freedom first. Failing that, he went to the St. Louis Circuit Court in 1846, and Harriet filed her own petition. The court joined them, and she was the one who kept the family suing. He lost in 1847 on a rule of evidence, won before a jury in 1850, and lost again in 1852 when the Missouri Supreme Court discarded 28 years of its own precedent. The federal suit came back from Washington on March 6, 1857. BriefHistory has the ruling and the wreckage it made. This page is the ordinary life underneath it.

Eleven years of litigation had a price, and it fell on him directly. While the case was pending the St. Louis County sheriff took charge of his hire, leasing him out and holding the payments in escrow — for those years he worked for a court. The legal fees were secured by the adult children of Peter Blow, the man who had enslaved him and whose family had turned against slavery in the interval. The woman who legally owned him throughout the federal case was Irene Emerson, remarried in 1850 to Calvin Chaffee, a Massachusetts abolitionist elected to Congress in 1854 and hammered by pro-slavery papers for owning slaves. John Sanford, the defendant whose misspelled name is on the case, never legally owned him at all. A historian established that a century later.

The Chaffees deeded the family to Taylor Blow, who manumitted them on May 26, 1857, 11 weeks after the ruling. Scott worked as a porter in a St. Louis hotel and died of tuberculosis on September 17, 1858, free for about 16 months. He was buried in Wesleyan Cemetery, and when it closed nine years later Blow moved the coffin to an unmarked plot in Calvary. The grave was located again in 1957, at the centennial of the decision, and visitors began leaving Lincoln pennies on the stone. A cenotaph went up for Harriet in 1999, a bronze of the two of them outside the Old Courthouse in 2012, and a monument over the grave on September 30, 2023.

Dred Scott's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Harriet Scott's petition for freedom case
  Filed separately and joined to his. She was the one who pressed the family to sue. 1846
• Scott v. Emerson, St. Louis Circuit Court case
  A jury freed him on the retrial. The verdict did not survive appeal. 1850
• Scott v. Emerson, Missouri Supreme Court case
  Overturned 28 years of once free, always free precedent 1852
• Dred Scott v. Sandford case
  A clerk misspelled the defendant's name and the error is permanent 1857

• 1818 aged ~18 Peter Blow takes him and five other enslaved people to Alabama The farm near Huntsville failed. The Blows moved on to St. Louis in 1830.
• 1833 aged ~33 Taken to Fort Armstrong in Illinois, a free state He had already run once and been caught in the Lucas Swamps.
• 1837 aged ~37 Marries Harriet Robinson at Fort Snelling The Indian agent Lawrence Taliaferro performed the ceremony as a justice of the peace.
• 1846 aged ~46 Files for freedom in the St. Louis Circuit Court Harriet filed her own petition. The court combined them.
• January 1850 aged 50 A St. Louis jury rules that he and his family are free
• 1852 aged ~52 The Missouri Supreme Court reverses and discards its own precedent Justice Hamilton Gamble dissented.
• March 6, 1857 aged 57 Chief Justice Taney delivers the majority opinion against him Seven to two. Benjamin Robbins Curtis wrote one of the two dissents.
• May 26, 1857 aged 57 Manumitted by Taylor Blow after the Chaffees deed the family to him
• September 17, 1858 aged 59 Dies of tuberculosis in St. Louis He had been working as a hotel porter and had been free about 16 months.

• Roger B. Taney 1777–1864
  Chief justice whose Court shaped federalism but is principally remembered for the disastrous Dred Scott decision. ruled against by
• Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865
  16th President who preserved the Union during the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. gave him a national argument
• Stephen A. Douglas 1813–1861
  Illinois senator whose popular-sovereignty doctrine and debates with Lincoln framed the crisis over slavery. defended the ruling
• Charles Sumner 1811–1874
  Massachusetts senator and abolitionist leader who pressed for Reconstruction-era civil rights legislation. attacked the ruling in the Senate
• Thurgood Marshall 1908–1993
  First African American Supreme Court Justice and lead attorney in Brown v. Board of Education. the answer three generations later