In , he moved with his owner Peter Blow to Alabama, then in he moved to St. Louis, Missouri —both slave states—where Peter ran a boarding house. After Blow died in , army surgeon Dr. John Emerson purchased Scott and eventually took him to Illinois, a free state, and then to Fort Snelling in Wisconsin Territory where the Missouri Compromise had outlawed slavery. There, Scott married Harriet Robinson, also enslaved, in a rare civil ceremony; her owner transferred ownership of Harriet to Emerson.
In late , Emerson returned to St. Louis but left Dred and Harriet Scott behind and hired them out. Emerson then moved to Louisiana , a slave state, where he met and married Eliza Irene Sandford in February ; Dred Scott soon joined them. In October , Emerson, his wife Irene and their enslaved workers returned to Wisconsin.
After the army honorably discharged Emerson in , he and Irene returned to St. Louis with Scott and his family which now included two daughters , but they struggled to find success and soon moved to Iowa. Louis to be hired out. She returned to St.
Louis to live with her father and hired out Scott and his family. Scott tried multiple times to purchase his freedom from Irene, but she refused. For unknown reasons, Dred and Harriet Scott never tried to run away or sue for freedom while living in or traveling through free states and territories.
In April , Dred and Harriet filed separate lawsuits for freedom in the St. One statute allowed any person of any color to sue for wrongful enslavement. The other stated that any person taken to a free territory automatically became free and could not be re-enslaved upon returning to a slave state. Neither Dred nor Harriet Scott could read or write and they needed both logistical and financial support to plead their case. They received it from their church, abolitionists and an unlikely source, the Blow family who had once owned them.
Since Dred and Harriet Scott had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory — both free domains — they hoped they had a persuasive case. When they went to trial on June 30, , however, the court ruled against them on a technicality and the judge granted a retrial.
The Scotts went to trial again in January and won their freedom. By this time, Irene had transferred Scott and his family to her brother, John Sandford although it was determined later that she retained ownership. On May 15, , the federal court heard Dred Scott v. Sandford and ruled against Scott, holding him and his family in slavery. The trial began on February 11, By this time, the case had gained notoriety and Scott received support from many abolitionists, including powerful politicians and high-profile attorneys.
But on March 6, , in the infamous Dred Scott decision , Scott lost his fight for freedom again. Taney became best known for writing the final majority opinion in Dred Scott v. In , after laboring and saving for years, the Scotts sought to buy their freedom from Sanford, but she refused. Dred Scott then sued Sanford in a state court, arguing that he was legally free because he and his family had lived in a territory where slavery was banned. In , the state court finally declared Scott free.
However, Scott's wages had been withheld pending the resolution of his case, and during that time Mrs. Emerson remarried and left her brother, John Sanford, to deal with her affairs. Sanford, unwilling to pay the back wages owed to Scott, appealed the decision to the Missouri Supreme Court. The court overturned the lower court's decision and ruled in favor of Sanford.
Scott then filed another lawsuit in a federal circuit court claiming damages against Sanford's brother, John F. Sanford, for Sanford's alleged physical abuse against him. The jury ruled that Scott could not sue in federal court because he had already been deemed a slave under Missouri law. Scott appealed to the U. Supreme Court, which reviewed the case in Due to a clerical error at the time, Sanford's name was misspelled in court records.
Taney , ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to take Scott's case because Scott was, or at least had been, a slave. First, the Court argued that they could not entertain Scott's case because federal courts, including the Supreme Court, are courts of "peculiar and limited jurisdiction " and may only hear cases brought by select parties involving limited claims. Constitution, federal courts may only hear cases brought by "citizens" of the United States.
John Emerson, who later took Scott to the free state of Illinois. In the spring of , after a stay of two and a half years, Emerson moved to a fort in the Wisconsin Territory, taking Scott along. While there, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, a slave owned by a local justice of the peace. Ownership of Harriet was transferred to Emerson. Scott's extended stay in Illinois, a free state, gave him the legal standing to make a claim for freedom, as did his extended stay in Wisconsin, where slavery was also prohibited.
But Scott never made the claim while living in the free lands -- perhaps because he was unaware of his rights at the time, or perhaps because he was content with his master. After two years, the army transferred Emerson to the south: first to St Louis, then to Louisiana. A little over a year later, a recently-married Emerson summoned his slave couple.
Instead of staying in the free territory of Wisconsin, or going to the free state of Illinois, the two travelled over a thousand miles, apparently unaccompanied, down the Mississippi River to meet their master. Only after Emerson's death in , after Emerson's widow hired Scott out to an army captain, did Scott seek freedom for himself and his wife. First he offered to buy his freedom from Mrs. Emerson -- then living in St. The offer was refused. Scott then sought freedom through the courts.
Scott went to trial in June of , but lost on a technicality -- he couldn't prove that he and Harriet were owned by Emerson's widow. The following year the Missouri Supreme Court decided that case should be retried.
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