Dred Scott Decision report

Essay by dmjackson3sCollege, UndergraduateA+, December 2008

download word file, 6 pages 0.0

The Dred Scott Decision was a very remarkable and historic case in the United States. The trial involved slave Dred Scott and his wife Harriet which were both slaves, suit against their widowed owner Mrs. Emerson. The trail first took place in a St. Louis Circuit court which eventually ended up the in the U.S Supreme Court eleven years later. The U.S Supreme Court issued that the decision that Scott and his wife were still to be slave. This decision contributed to the already heated stress between the northern and the southern states of the union may have been the key catalyst to spark the American Civil War.

Dred Scott was born in Virginia in or around 1799 as a slave to the Peter Blow family. Scott’s life was full of travel which led him through Alabama, Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri. In 1830 just after arriving in St. Louis his slave owner Peter Blow died and the remaining Blow family sold Scott to an U.S

army surgeon by the name of Dr. John Emerson. Over the next twelve years Scott accompanied Emerson everywhere mostly the many military posts. Some in Illinois and then two years in the Wisconsin territory were Emerson was repositioned. Slavery wasn’t allowed in either Illinois or the Wisconsin territory due to Illinois being a free state and the Missouri Compromise which was a free territory. During Emerson’s time in Wisconsin Scott married slave Harriet Robinson, whose ownership was there by transferred to Emerson. “Dred and Harriet would proceed to have two children in the next few years. Shortly after the ownership change Emerson was sent on a military tour in Louisiana where he married Eliza Irene Sanford in 1939.” 4 Since Mrs. Eliza family resided in St. Louis Emerson decided to move back to St. Louis...