Dred: The Blow Family

Stephen, despite being in shock but wanting to honor his dad, went anyway to San Antonio to give the loan for the enterprise. He arrived in August 1821, and the governor allowed Stephen to colonize under his dad’s grant. Stephen headed back to New Orleans where he got the terms published and was telling colonists where his colony would be located (on the Brazos and Colorado rivers). In the month of December of the same year, Stephen found out that Mexico did not approve the grant, because it did not fall under the general immigration law. Hearing this, Stephen went to Mexico City to fulfill the law. On January 3,1823 the law was fulfilled, and within the years 1825-1828, Stephen had settled 900 families in addition to his 300. In the year of 1830, congress prohibited immigration. Stephen tried to tell colonists about the evils of slavery but failed. Under the law of 1833, Texas had to be a slave state, and because Texas was now a slave state, it had problems with Mexico. Stephen F. Austin then held the Convention of 1833 in hopes of fixing the problems with Mexico. Much happened at the Convention of 1833, because Texas wanted its own independence, but Mexico refused. This led to a fight for independence. On October the 2nd, 1835 the battle of Gonzales took place. Stephen F. Austin was elected to command the volunteers there to help Texas go into battle. Texas won in the

In A Judgement for Solomon: The d’Hauteville Case and Legal Experience in Antebellum America, Grossberg outlines the complex legal experiences of the d’Hauteville family and the effect their experiences have on Antebellum America. On August 22, 1837, Ellen Sears and Paul Daniel Gonzalve Grand d’Hauteville were married and moved to Switzerland. By the winter of 1838, Ellen became pregnant and pleaded with Gonzalve to let her return to America to give birth to her child. Eventually, Gonzalve gave in and let Ellen leave; however, after giving birth, Ellen refused to return to Switzerland, citing cruel treatment from Gonzalve as her reason for staying away. Later, Ellen realized it was an informal separation that she sought. However, soon the

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).

Brown was born the son of Owen Brown, a tanner, in the town of Torrington, Connecticut. The Browns were conventional evangelicals, and John went to school in Massachusetts to become a Congregationalist minister. Unfortunately he ran out of money and returned to his family and opened his own tannery with his brother. He soon started a family and his tannery was growing to a very successful business. A few years came to pass, and tragedy struck his family. One of his sons died, Brown became very sick, he incurred a tremendous amount of debt, and his wife passed shortly after the death of a newborn son. A year later he would marry 16 year old Mary Ann, and have 13 children, creating a total of 20 children of which only 11 would survive into adulthood. After moving his family to the town of Franklin Mills, Ohio, he opened a new tannery but soon fell victim to the Panic of 1837, leaving him in more debt. He took up horse and sheep breeding, as well as many other efforts to relieve himself of his debts. Brown was even

Dred Scott was born as a slave in the state of Virginia around the year 1800. His owners for most of his young life were Peter and Elizabeth Taylor Blow. In 1818, the Blow family and some of their slaves including Scott moved to a cotton plantation in Alabama where they lived for the next twelve years (“Dred Scott”). In 1830, the Blow family and there slaves relocated to St. Louis Missouri. The Blow family had given up plantation farmers and decided to open a hotel called the Jefferson Hotel (“Dred Scott”). In the next two year both Peter and his wife Elizabeth Blow died and Dred was sold to U.S. Army doctor named John Emerson were he became his servant (“Dred Scott Biography”).

In 1846 Scott sued his master for his freedom, asserting that his sojourns in free jurisdictions made him free. After numerous delays, trials, and retrials, the case reached the Supreme Court in 1856. The court responded with nine separate opinions, and Chief Justice Roger Brook Taney delivered the deciding opinion. The ruling was both complex and controversial: the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was ruled unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress did not have authority to limit the expansion of slavery; slavery was found to be legal in the territories until the citizens voted for or against it; and Africans and their descendants were found to be ineligible for citizenship in the United States as the framers of the Constitution had not viewed Africans as citizens. Since African Americans were not viewed by the court as citizens, they could not file suit. Despite the finality of the court 's

Missouri state court declared Scott to be a free man in 1850. During the time that the

Louis, Missouri, where they ran a boarding house.[6] Dred Scott was sold to Dr. John Emerson, a surgeon serving in the United States Army. After Scott learned he would be sold to Dr. Emerson and relocated to Rock Island, Illinois, he attempted to run away. His decision to do so was spurred by a distaste he had previously developed for Dr. Emerson. Scott was temporarily successful in his escape as he, much like many other runaway slaves during this time period, "never tried to distance his pursuers, but dodged around among his fellow slaves as long as possible." Eventually, he was captured in the "Lucas Swamps" of Missouri and taken back.[7] Blow died in 1832, and historians debate whether Scott was sold to Emerson before or after Blow 's death. Some believe that Scott was sold in 1831, while others point to a number of slaves in Blow 's estate after his death were sold to Emerson, among them was one with a name given as Sam, who may be the same person as Scott.[1]

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

Court issued the 1857 Dred Scott decision that essentially opened up the West to unlimited expansion of slavery,

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

Stewart was appointed district attorney for Nevada County by Democratic attorney general John R. McConnell and from June to December of 1854 he served as acting attorney general. Soon afterwards, he joins a law firm in San Francisco and a year later he marries, Former U.S Senator Henry Foote daughter, Annie Elizabeth Foote. In 1855, after failing to win the American Party (Know Nothing ) nominating for state attorney general he moved back to Nevada to continued his partnership with McConnell. In 1860, a year after the discovery of the Comstock Lode, he relocated to Virginia City, Nevada where he continued specializing in mining law. He became the area attorney, in which he was involved in complicated lawsuits for favoring large corporation against independent operations.

He made his way to the lodge of Oolooteka in what is now day Oklahoma to live once again in self-imposed exile among the Cherokees, this time for three years. Among the Indians, he initially drank heavily and secluded himself from contacts with white society. He quickly became active in Indian affairs, was granted Cherokee citizenship, and under Cherokee law, married Diana Rogers Gentry, an Indian woman of mixed blood.

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

was still not free after Emerson died in 1843 leaving the Scott family to his wife Scott tried to buy his freedom but was still