Dred Scott Vs Stanford Case

According to the Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776, "[...] all men are created equal, [and] they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." One would then expect that every man, would be entitled to their freedom, and it was true, for all white men. African-Americans, however, faced a very different reality. They were still forced into slavery, they were deprived of those rights that all men were meant to have. While the north states opposed slavery, it was permitted in the south, and as the slavery issue raged on, one man would stand to fight for his freedom. His case, would go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court's decision would

Around the 1850’s, tension between the Northern states and the Southern states was rising. The issue of slavery was a conflict that greatly contributed to this tension. The Northern and Southern people had very different views on slavery. Most of the Northern people thought that slavery was wrong, while the Southern people thought that slavery was justified. During this time, a court case filed by a black slave against his white slave master occurred and it widened the gap between them even more. The idea of a black man suing for his freedom was ridiculous to most of the Southern people. My second paragraph is about Dred Scott’s life. It will mostly be about his life before the case. The third paragraph will be information about the case

Sandford). Chief Justice Taney, who happened to be a former slave owner, gave the majority opinion, 7-2, ruling against Dred Scott. He also said as a person of African descent, Dred Scott was not a citizen and could not sue in federal court. He added that Scott had never been free, since slaves were considered personal property (Dred Scott v. Sanford 63).

We are so accustomed to waking up every day without a care in the world. We can basically go wherever we like, eat wherever we like, sit wherever we like, and not have to worry about another person controlling our every move (unless it’s our parents of course)! Imagine a time, not too long ago, when just because of the color of your skin, you had an “owner” and were treated as a piece of property, instead of another human being. A time where you couldn’t go into certain places, sit in certain areas, let alone use the restroom, unless it was in a designated place for your particular skin color. You weren’t labeled as people, but as black or white. Dred Scott was born a slave in Virginia and had to face these hardships his whole entire life. When he finally walked on to free soil where slavery was prohibited, he stayed and chose to still be with his owner. Once his owner died, he and his wife decided to sue for their freedom. Little did they know, that the rules only applied to certain people when they wanted them to.

Dred Scott (c. 1799 – September 17, 1858) was an enslaved African American man in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott Decision". Scott claimed that he and his wife should be granted their freedom because they had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years, where slavery was illegal. The United States Supreme Court decided 7–2 against Scott, finding that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States, and therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court under diversity of citizenship rules. Moreover, Scott 's temporary

In April of 1846, Dred and Harriet Scott filed a suit for "freedom" against Irene Emerson in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County, obviously under the jurisdiction of Missouri law. The established legal principle of Missouri at this time regarding slavery was "once free, always free". In other words, to the Missouri courts, what Scott was doing was perfectly acceptable due to the precedent of the Missouri case Rachael v. Walker (1837), which basically stated that if a slave was taken by his or her master to a free state that slave was then "entitled to freedom by virtue of residence in the free state or territory" [Oxford, 761]. On account of this alone, Scott and his wife would have been freed when the case came to trial in 1847, however there was a problem of hearsay evidence in the case and the judge declared it a mistrial. It was not until three years later in 1850 that the court was able to correct the problem and unfalteringly sided with the Scott's and ordered them freed, citing that once he had been in free territory, he was indirectly freed and remained freed. By this time Mrs. Emerson had married, moved to New England with her new husband, and left these affairs and ownership of the Scotts to her brother, John F. A. Sanford. After Scott was declared free by the courts, Sanford sought an appeal from the Missouri Supreme Court. In 1852 in, Scott v. Emerson, the Missouri Supreme Court reversed the decision by the lower court seeing this case now not as the

The Dred Scott case was a large part of the Debates of 1858. This was a case about a slave named Dred Scott who lived in a free state (slavery was prohibited) but was not entitled to his freedom. The Dred Scott decision was that blacks could not sue in the U.S courts and that congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories of the west. Lincoln was opposed to the Dred Scott decision and would not submit to it because it “deprives the negro of the rights and privileges of citizenship.” (book). He openly criticized the decision and stated that blacks were entitled to the same freedom whites have. He did use this opportunity to endorse his colonization idea though. Douglas’s view on this case was a bit different. Douglas supported the Dred Scott decision but advocated popular sovereignty which contradicted one another. Douglas responded to accusations of this contradiction by reformulating his popular sovereignty idea. His reformulation became known as the Freeport Doctrine which stated that settlers would exclude slavery from a territory by not adopting local legislation. What he meant is that even if territorial governments supported the supreme court decision in the case of Dred Scott and did not prohibit slavery, municipalities could still do so by failing to support government. In the first debate on August 12th Douglas supported his supporting of the Dred Scott case with this statement: “I ask you, are you in favor of conferring upon the negro the rights and

family of Missouri. Emerson soon died in 1846 making Scott sue for his freedom. He soon lost the case in a state

Scott’s second set of attorney’s, Alexander P. Field and David N. Hall filed the appeal in hopes of another hearing being denied, so the case could be elevated to the United States Supreme Court. For Example, they

1) What were the legal issues in this case? What did the appeals court decide?

In 1846, a slave living in Missouri named Dred Scott, sued for his freedom on the basis that he had lived for a total of seven years in territories that were closed to slavery. Scott's owner had been an army doctor named John Emerson. Emerson's position had required him to move several times in a relatively short amount of time. During his time with Emerson, Scott had lived in the state of Illinois, which was

A landmark case in United States Law and the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States,

The Court asked the question, was the closing of the state pools an action that denies “equal protection of the laws” to Blacks. They felt the answer was no since both races received the same treatment. The Courts also felt that neither the 14th amendment nor any Act of Congress purports to impose a duty on a State to begin to operate or to continue to operate public swimming pools. They felt that since this was not a case where whites are permitted to use public facilities while blacks were denied, nor a case where a city is maintaining different sets of facilities for blacks and whites and enforcing them to remain separate that there was no reason to force the city to reopen the swimming pools. They felt that it was constitutional because the city showed that integrated pools could not be maintained safely and economically.

In the March of 1857 Dred Scott, a slave who had lived in a free state for many years, came before the Supreme Court to argue that he was entitled to emancipation. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that no black

It was the year of 1857 and a robust wind blew through the South as the air was filled with both victory and horrific disappointment. An ordinary man named Dred Scott began his journey for his rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Scott’s struggle for freedom would come to make him one of the most famous plaintiffs in American history and a worldwide symbol for emancipation. Scott happened to be of African descent which was an extremely difficult obstacle to live with in early America. The Dred Scott decision made by the supreme court in March of 1857 negatively impacted the United States by empowering the South, contributing to the secession, and expediting the Civil War.