Dred Scott
Dred Scott biogrophy
in its 1857 decision that stunned the nation US supreme court said that the Missouri Compromise was to be unconstitutional. All of this was a result of April 1846 action when Dred Scott innocently made his mark with an X signing a petition in a pro forma Initially, Scott's case for freedom was routine and relatively insignificant, like hundreds of others that passed through the St. Louis Circuit Court. The cases were allowed because a Missouri statute stated that any person, black or white, held in wrongful enslavement could sue for freedom. The petition that Dred Scott signed indicated the reasons he felt he was entitled to freedom. Scott's owner, Dr. John Emerson, was a United States Army surgeon who traveled to various military posts in the free state of Illinois and the free Wisconsin Territory. Dred Scott traveled with him and, therefore, resided in areas where slavery was outlawed. Because of Missouri's long-standing "once free, always free" judicial standard in determining freedom suits, slaves who were taken to such areas were freed-even if they returned to the slave state of Missouri. Once the bonds of slavery were broken, they did not reattach.Dred Scott was born to slave parents in Virginia sometime around the turn of the nineteenth century. His parents may have been the property of Peter Blow, or Blow may have purchased Scott at a later date. The mystery of exact ownership is one that would follow Dred Scott, and later his family, throughout their lives as slaves. With few records extant, it is difficult to identify exactly when ownership of the family was transferred to various parties. By 1830, Peter Blow had settled his family of four sons and three daughters and his six slaves in St. Louis. This was after having moved from Virginia to Alabama, to attempt farming near Huntsville, and, when that failed, a move from Alabama to Missouri. In St. Louis, Peter Blow undertook the running of a boarding house, the Jefferson Hotel. Within a year, though, his wife Elizabeth died and on June 23, 1832, Peter Blow passed away.
Thy Supreme Court Case
The Dred Scott Decision, officially Scott v. Sandford, was an 1857 Supreme Court case that ruled the already superseded Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, neither Congress nor territorial legislatures could limit slavery in U.S. territories, that people of African ancestry were not entitled to citizenship or constitutional protections, and that slaves were not freed if they were taken into jurisdictions that banned slavery. Scott sued for his freedom on the basis that he had been taken into Illinois, a free state, and the Wisconsin Territory, also declared free by Congress. The decision upset the balance between free and slave states, led to fears that slavery would be extended to free states, and contributed to the Civil War. The decision was made moot by the 14th amendment
the supreme court ruling
In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all of the country's territories.
abolitionist movement efect
The Dred Scott decision was a landmark case in that it drew a clear line of how the government stood on the issue of slavery, and further inflamed passions surrounding an already divisive topic within American politics.While southerners were ecstatic at the outcome, the massive abolitionist campaign to aid Scott led many southerners to claim that abolitionists were anti-southern and thus, enemies of a greater Union.Southern slave owners, as well as supporters of slavery, saw the Dred Scott case as a crucial precedent.It gave them a sense of legal standing to be able to say that the supreme law of the land had not only upheld the idea of slavery, but also dealt a crushing blow to the wildly unpopular Missouri Compromise.That act had sought to limit the spread of slavery into the new territories of the west and maintain the racial balance of power between North and South.
slave effects
slaves free or not free were captured and given to a slave owner in any southern state
slave owners effects
the slave owners got a lot more slaves to do a lot more work to make a lot more money