Dred Scott was a slave who was property of Dr. John Emerson. When Emerson died, his wife Irene Sanford hired out the Scotts to work for other families. Desiring freedom, on April 6, 1846, the Scotts filed a lawsuit against Irene Emerson. Scott had been in free states before, so he hoped to become free based on the policy Missouri had previously followed of "once free, always free."
Although Scott was finally declared free in 1850, the verdict was reversed in 1852 by the Supreme Court because the system of "once free, always free" was invalidated.
Emerson's estate was soon given over to John F.A. Sanford, and Scott's lawyers swiftly filed a suit against him in the U.S. Federal Court, which found Sanford in favor.
When this reached the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Robert Brooke Taney avoided every aspect of antislavery constitutional thought and ruled Scott not free. He argued that whatever status Scott may have had while in a free state or territory, once he returned to Missouri his status was based solely on local law, and therefore he was no longer free.
This case relates to the Missouri Compromise because it declared the Compromise unconstitutional, declaring that slaves could never be U.S. citizens and would therefore never be free. As a result, the Missouri Compromise fell and the idea of "once free, always free" disappeared once and for all.
Taney was firmly against Dred Scott's ability to sue in the first place. He argued that African Americans could not sue the Federal Court because they were not citizens of the U.S.
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| Chief Justice Robert Brooke Taney |
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| Dred Scott |
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Plessy v. Ferguson can be compared to the Dred Scott Decision because both cases resulted in a bias ruling by the Supreme Court. In the Dred Scott Decision, the Court ruled Scott not free because of their bias, and the Plessy v. Ferguson case upheld segregation laws based on their bias. In addition, the case replaced the gains from post-Civil War reconstruction with Jim Crow laws.
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