The Letter From Inside the Crate
Dred Scott
Dred Scott was born into slavery in Virginia around 1799. He was sold several times across multiple states and noticed something along the way.
THE LAW
When his enslaver took him to Illinois, a free state, and then to Wisconsin Territory where slavery was banned by the Missouri Compromise, Scott took note. In 1846, he filed suit for his freedom in St. Louis. He asked the law to keep its own promise.
ELEVEN YEARS
The case was dismissed, retried, won, appealed, and lost over eleven years. On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 against him. Chief Justice Taney wrote that Black Americans had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.
THE CONSEQUENCE
The ruling hardened Northern opposition to slavery, energized the Republican Party, and helped propel Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. Scott was freed just ten weeks after the verdict and died 18 months later in 1858, long enough to taste freedom but not long enough to see what his case set in motion.
“He never stopped insisting that the law should mean what it said.
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