themselves. and, most importantly, slaves did not sue. slaves inhabit their master's agendas during enslavement. the subject and quality of their lives was overtaken by their existence as objects and as objects that belong to someone else with a subject of life. slaves were often unnoticed and usually described in the passive voice as having the characteristics of objects. but in this case a, an enslaved man filed a lawsuit. one cannot overstate how rare this is in this species of cases, particularly in this court. this court decided other slavery cases but those cases took place between free persons suing over the heads of slaves. dred scott is the only case to reach the high court that pits a slave directly against his master. the case that comes closest is

the case than concerned its ship and cargo and the issue of freedom was derivative. a slave sues his master. ironically, paying close attention to the stipulated facts does not bring the image into focus. it renders the image less clear. that a missouri slave would sue a new york master for freedom is baffling, to say the least. even more perplexing is the question of how the case ever happened at all. among the famous and famously notorious cases, the circumstances of dred scott are the least well understood. the facts are stipulated on appeal. reading them leaves the unsettling sense that there was something missing. several justices in the opinions written by each of them repeat the fact statement verbatim in texts of their several opinions. and this choice to repeat the stipulated facts verbatim in the

texts signals that perhaps the justices themselves found the facts somewhat incongruous because they did not paraphrase the salient features. they simply repeated the whole. by the time that this case reached the united states supreme court, it had been screened and studio worked by the advocates to the point that the facts had become cartoon representations of the realities of the dispute. the surrounding circumstances were bleached out. the actual parties' motives were so blunted by the trial and appeals so as to prevent such starkly highlighted competing claims. this happens to a certain extent in every appeal. the point that i am making is different than when each viewer raets facts and circumstances from their own perspective. that is true to a certain extent in every collective experience, a more singular claim can be

made about this case. that is, the stipulated statement of fact is so opaque and seems so incongruous as to make little sense from any perspective. if the justices themselves could not condense or isolate the s salient facts, then the resulting pictures one draws from the case is necessarily incoherent. relying on the stipulated facts alone, it is hard to see why the parties would continue to fight for 11 years. the chain of events that brought dred scott and john sanford into conflict simply doesn't ring true. why and how did this litigation ever come about, and how did it stay on the rails as long as it did without meeting some other sort of ending. there is no way to see the actual dynamic behind this conflict. the dispute only makes sense if it is stripped down to such a primitive, almost prosaic dynamic that be slaves will always seek freedom from their masters, and masters, in turn,

will always wish to control sav slaves who represent wealth for them and hence resist. and at that level the case is so overdrawn as to make it only about exploitation, pure and simple. there are a parade of questions why. why did this enslave man ever return to a slave state once he had lived in free land? was he drugged and kidnapped like solomon northrop was? was he strongarmed and shackled? was he tricked or was he a fool? the answer is -- none of the above. there were extenuating circumstances that one cannot read in the case. winter was coming. the troops with whom dred could have found employment were being withdrawn from minnesota. but in advance of their removal, the troops were ordered to engage in a scorched earth policy. stripping the roofs off and burning down the remaining cabins in order to evict squatters from all of the

surrounding land. dred returned to slot. louis, a any reasonable man would have, because he could not survive the winter, and because there was no place on the upper mississippi for him to fall back to. all steamboats led to st. louis. second, why would a slave ever hold fast -- why would a slave owner ever hold fast to a slave who suffered from illness and had reached the end of his productive life? and how could a slave owner ever hold on to a resistant slave from the distance of 1,000 miles away. >> the logistics are baffling and the motives incomprehensible. further, if dred's value was so reduced by his diminished capacity, why didn't the case simply settle? could it be, as generations of dred scott scholars speculated, tlat litigants were ideologically driven by strong political views on the subject of slavery, or, on the other hand, was this a grudge suit

between parties whose personal relationships had degenerated to such a point that neither would settle. the answer is none of the above. neither of the parties were ideologically driven and the men did not know each other well enough to make a lawsuit personal. john f.a. sanford was a successful financial businessman. he was a washington lobbyist, extremely effective at obtaining lucrative government contracts and government franchises that benefited his family-owned company. he was ceo of one of the nation's largest and most globally integrated companies for the time, the american fur company. john jacob astor had made a fortune in that company before him and sanford was on his way to making a sizable fortune himself. but with the exception of lobbying congress to benefit his investments in both the indian trade and the illinois central railroad, he appears to have had

little interest and no participation in the politics of the day. i should add that neither plaintiff nor defendant was supported by ideological factions until the very day that the appeal was filed to the united states supreme court when it drew public attention. nor could this case have been based on a personal grudge. it is highly unlikely that the two named parties ever met. and certainly not at any time when their personalities could have collided because they were almost never in the same place at the same time. while sanford was in st. louis, dred was serving masters in mill their outposts far away and by the time dred scott returned to st. louis, sanford lived almost exclusively in new york city. eliminating ideology and grudge suit as the motives sustaining litigation for 11 years, one must consider its economics. but that factor is no more

telling. paradoxically etch focus drilling down into the particular details of the circumstances of these two men leads to further cases about the incongruity of it all. economic theory would predict the kate to have settled. dred will d attempt to buy his freedom. dred was not a particularly valuable slave. young, strong, healthy and skilled slave men were highly valued at the time. yet, dred had none of those attributes. aging, male slaves without strength or specialized skills, dred had only ever worked as a valet. were seen by mast earls as more of a financial liability and extra mouth to need, an extra body to clothe. someone not worth their keep. dred also suffered from tuberculosis. he almost died the winter before the supreme court's decision and

the longer the lawsuit lasted the more weakened dred became. he did, in fact, die within 18 months of the decision. moreover, with a master as far away as new york, and he living within sight of free soil just across the river, from the free state of illinois, why didn't he simply make his move by attempting escape rather than going to court? at time that he chose to sue, he might have gotten caught but there was no fugitive slave act. that didn't come until later. third, what did he expect to be the outcome of this case? was it a lawsuit by a slave against a master doomed to fail? even if dred scott didn't know the law, certainly members of the bar would so who would take his case? and yet he did get a lawyer. in fact, he got several. how did he get even one lawyer to represent him? to find the answer to this case, it must be said in three broader

context. first, national geography. second, local law. and third, personal relationships. the first context is geography on the national scale. slaves played a larger role in the nation's expansion and western migration during the period of the frontier than we may have thought. and for slaves, geography was destiny. the second context is local law. aspects of the missouri statute authorizing freedom suits were not invoked in the case once it was filed in federal court but affecting the case creating expectations in the local community that slaves could sue for freedom. and third, the context is to focus on the supplemental people involved in the case who changed the incentives and could exercise influence on whether the case settled. first, setting the case in

geography. there was a steady stream of slave petitioners who satisfied the criteria for freedom by residence. by having lived on free soil before arriving in a st. louis courts in a slave state. persons moving west often stopped along the walk to spend time on free soil. the great majority of those persons suing for freedom in st. louis based their claim just as the scotts did on the rule of freedom by residence. the ohio river was the main corridor of traffic with ports at louisville and cincinnati and st. louis a short stretch up the mississippi river. which was the main steamboat term nis. with the nation free, north of the ohio river, and slave south of the river, western travelers routinely traversed the lines and often remained a while on northern free soil before reaching their destination.

travelers moving west stopped often putting their slaves to work to earn some extra money before moving on. some slaves moved west with military officers, statesmen, lawyers, pioneers, anyone with sufficient wealth to afford a slave found it desirable to have one, to have an extra pair of hands. with a surplus of slaves in virginia anyone who inherited a slave found it better to move them west where labor was in high demand but moving slaves west had to be done along the ohio river corridor and geography was destiny. many litigants continued to serve the very same master that is they traveled west with for weeks and months upon reaching st. louis before a trigger impelled them to sue. these slaves usually stayed with their masters until some incident changed the security of

their lives. their master died, fell upon hard times and moved to sell them or their children. or perhaps they were foreclosed upon by their master's creditors. then they filed for freedom in the st. louis courts. as the transportation hub, st. louis was the natural catchman place for slave that is experienced a mixed pattern of residence and st. louis was something else. it was the center of western legal activity. in that vast area, where judges only rode circuit, one fould always find a justice of the peace in st. louis. these courts cited at connecting transportation hubs functioned as the emergency rooms for persons in transport with legal difficulties. st. louis was the perfect storm. so consider the odds. imagine a black servant suing

that person's white master before a jury and judge of all white men, many of whom were slaveholders themselves, was suing for freedom a lost cause? was it a foregone conclusion that the slave would lose in a slave state? what are the odds of success? surprisingly good. slaves petitioning for freedom in st. louis won more than 100 contested cases. why? because of a second remarkable feature. the unique missouri statue enacted in missouri territorial days and reenacted immediately after statehood specifically enabled slaves to sue for their freedom. with this missouri statute as its basis more than 300 slaves had sued before in similar circumstances in st. louis alone. and the majority who persevered through the obstacles inherent in such a lawsuit usually won.

some historical treatments of the lawsuit make it appear that the plaintiff was raising a novel claim. not only was the scott's loss not a foregone conclusion, the scotts should have won the case and easily so under missouri law in the missouri courts. by the numbers, roughly 300 cases were filed in st. louis involving 239 lit gapts. slightly more lawsuits than litigants because some filed suit more than once. i've assembled 170 signatures. of these freedom litigants here from the case files, that we have been able to discover in the storerooms of the st. louis courtroom, i find this mosaic extremely moving because of what these signatures represent. these signatures were made by persons who were forbidden from learning to read or write by missouri law and this was the

first time that they had ever held a pen. this is their signature indicating their agency. more than 100 times the st. louis circuit court responded to their claims with those precious words declaring that the plaintiff was forever free from their punitive master and all claiming under him. for the most part, these freedom suits were family affairs. whether the litigants sued jointly, in tandem or succession, most of these were clusters of families. a total of 160 of the 239 were clustered in 38 identifiable families and housemate groups. in terms of gender, women were more apt to sue than men and most of the women were mothers. so what was a freedom suit and how did the slave get to court and acquire a lawyer? under the procedure, set out by the missouri statute, the slave

began the lawsuit by orally presenting his or her case before a court official. the clerk of court, a justice of the peace, a judge or even a lawyer. that affidavit told the slave story. i tell 12 of these stories in my forthcoming book "redemption song, suing for freedom before dred scott" expected out next month. the clerk then wrote that story down and the slave signed with the "x" customary for illiterate persons. one remarkable feature of the missouri statute was that such affidavits if approved allowed slaves to be declared paupers and to be appointed lawyers by the judges who reviewed the affidavits. slave freedom suits were unique in this regard in missouri because no other segment of the impoverished public was given a lawyer by simply filing suit and asking for one.

in most states, informal pauper suits as you may know same pli waved the court fees but the slave was actually assigned a lawyer. this meant that the slave did not need to find legal representation themselves. if the slave claimed circumstances sufficient to bring a cognizable claim, a judge would assist in finding a lawyer for him. some slaves did approach lawyers who in turn assisted them in filing the affidavit and other slaves seemed to proceeded to an official on their own. slaves had considerable freedom of movement to accomplish the master's chores. fetching water, doing laundry and running errands routinely took them throughout the city. thus, it was not difficult for a slave to reach a justice of the peace. if no lawyer already stood with the slave, the judge could

assign almost any lawyer, sometimes -- someone who was just present in court that day or other times some lawyer who was routinely assigned these freedom suits. the statute did not provide compensation for the attorneys but nor did it require like the virginia statute that it had to be bun probono, frr free. lawyers could not expect compensation but that that did not mean they did not attempt to extract compensation from their enslaved client in one way or another. slaves were sometimes hired out to their lawyers. dred scott was. and given that the other option was to be auctioned to a stranger or sit out the delay in jail, well, working for one's lawyer was probably not a bad choice. there appears to be little evidence of cause lawyering among the laurels representing slaves. missouri freedom suits were not brought or advanced by

abolitionist societies as they were in many northeastern states. advocating abolitionism in missouri was a crime after 1837. and even before advocacy was outlawed, abolitionism was extremely unpopular. you may recall that in 1836, lovejoy's printing press was burned out in missouri after which he moved across the river to alton where he was burned out again. among the lawyers who represented slaves in these suits, there's no direct evidence of anti-slavery sentiment at all. most continued to own slaves and as attorney edward bates said in representing lucy delany, he proudly stated, i am a slaveowner myself in court. and instead the lawyers who represented slaves most often seemed to be trial lawyers. just that. men who supported themselves by arguing cases on a number of

issues and who were sometimes assigned by the judge before whom they practiced to represent a slave petitioner. so if these cases are to be considered civil rights cases, and indeed i believe they should be, there's no evidence of a civil rights bar here at all. how did a statute with these relatively unique features ever come about in the slave state of missouri? it is because missouri took its role as part of the missouri compromise very seriously. designated to be the slave state to balance the entry of the state of maine, as the free state, missouri saw itself as preserving the balance upon entering the united states. the missouri statute sorted things out. it separated those entitled to freedom from those who were not. the division between free and slave territories and missouri

saw that keeping of the balance as the covenant upon which they had entered the union. now, the interesting second and third order legal questions here have to do with rules of law. and how it is that the rule of law that recognized slaves claims to freedom held up in the face of contrary social norms and the pressures of a slave state of missouri. conventionally, one of the most important purposes of law is to protect the weak from the strong. the rule of law is expected to hold that line. the rule of law is going to be in greatest tension when it's not supported by surrounding norms and supplemental legal structures. in st. louis, the e mans pa tori rule ran at odds not only with the prevalent social norm that slavely was both legal and desirable but with the presumption of slavery over

freedom for black persons. acknowledging -- pardon me. now, this conflicting tension in the rule of law tested the strength of the rule of law in protecting vulnerable populations. hence it's all the more remarkable the statute lasted as long as it did and function as effectively as it did in delivering grants of freedom more than 100 times. yet, in no legal system can precedent that runs squarely against social norms hold. without experiencing larger background pressures that are mounting about its core. and when the case cannot hold, when the rule cannot hold, it can be broken abruptly in a single case. like dred scott's case. and when it collapsed, it silenced a great many other tenuous protections for

vulnerable populations. the dred scott decision reverberated not only in st. louis and missouri, but other parts of the nation, as well. and rights held or enjoyed by black persons were more fragile after the dred scott decision than they had been before. there is still yet a third context. persons. hidden parties. in 19th century american legal history there are many hidden parties. persons of diminished circumstance are overlooked. persons of diminished circumstance like slaves, paupers, married women are either consciously excluded or unconsciously neglected. in fact, many of the recent advances in american legal history have come by way of looking for these individuals. seeking out their possible influence on legal processes in court cases. including them in the pattern of american mosaic. realizing that they were not

simply ciphers, placeholders in the american legal landscape. these persons were not furnit e furniture, even if they were chatt chattel. they were individual actors with agendas, ideas and interests of their own. like subatomic particles in physics, not directly observed, they're often first noticed by the affect that they exert on the dynamics of events. in this case, the three hidden parties were the plaintiffs, mrs. dred scott, harriet, and the scott's daughters, ely za and lizzy. acknowledging their existence is real rant voluntary the lawsuit and recognizing they had interests perhaps independent of and perhaps supplemental to dred's interest changes the terrain and the incentive structure. it reconstitutes this case in many important ways. harriet was married to dred on free soil in a ceremony

performed by her own master at the very point he relinquished all interest in her and left the territory. simultaneously it should be noted her master abandoned the obligation to provide for her. eight years and two children later, harriet filed suit in her own name the same day as dred with same lawyers. yet as lawyers and judges advanced the two cases, harriet's lawsuit was repeatedly overlooked both unconsciously and on a conscious level. the clerk failed to even enter a judgment in harriet's case the first time it was tried. he failed to record her name in the court's day book at all. until that error was noticed and cleaned up at the end of term of court. after that oversight, the cases were consolidated. the lawyers for both parties consciously stipulated her case into his agreeing that the result in her case would follow the ultimate outcome of his.

this turned out to be a strategic error because the case of the plaintiffs -- the case that the plaintiffs' laurels chose was the weaker one. harriet's was the stronger unone and she should have been the lead plaintiff. not only could she argue as dred did prix dom by residence, harriet's master admitted relinquishing her marrying her to dred and promptly left free territory. this favor her an additional claim that she had been man mitted by the master on free soil or at least abandoned by him. she would have won on this basis in the missouri courts alone. yet, harriet was married to dred, a man whose claim was based on freedom by residence and thus her case was subordinated into his as they were consolidated. those strategically flawed, the lawyers had reason to expect by long dent of precedent that freedom of residence would hold

up. it had held up for 30 years but when it crumbled and brought down dred, it brought down harriet, as well. her other basis had been jet sonned for convenience. the lawyers' choice was in some ways predictable. the practice of subordinating the wife to the husband drew structure and support from the legal rule of kof which you are which legally covered the wife in marriage similarly ab do kating her interest to his. it would have been surprising if the laurels hadn't chosen the husband as the lead plaintiff. as a legal rule, though, kof which you are hid a remarkable array of complex realities. and interesting dynamics with explanatory power. it hid this by nullifying the wife's legal presence in the case in which she might have had a substantial interest and even practical influence. recovering these facts is difficult for legal historians because the very recording practices are imbued with the

notion of kofture. married women, children and servants were counted but never named. yet, harriet's position as a mother rendered her more legally relevant to the family's stability than she was in her position as wife of dred. the legal rule of by which the state is the child determined by the sta kus of mother meant that the children's fates would follow their mother's eventual designation in the lawsuit's outcome. the status of the scott daughters hinged on the determination of the status of harriet, their mother. in this paired and paralleled litigation, the rule had considerable significance for their children. the sta chus of their father was legally irrelevant to their claim of freedom. dred's victory or loss was only relevant to the status of the three other members of his family. because the lawyers joint

stipulation to treat them as such made it relevant. so recognizing harriet and the children provides some extenuating circumstances that explain the lawsuit's outcome and its incentive structure. and yet, by the principle of coverture. the wife was subordinated to the husband. recognizing the family's influence in the case explains why dred sued rather than ran. if dred had chosen to run away, it would mean separating from that family that he by his actions demonstrated he wished to remain with. after all, he had had opportunities to escape before. he spent nearly 18 months assigned to an officer in louisiana and texas in advance of the mexican-american war before returning to his family. he traveled alone by steamboat to reach his family in st. louis

and the family had sued within weeks of being reunited. suing for freedom had two advantages for him. first, it permitted him to remain in the company of his family. and second, delivering freedom to his family would put them beyond the clutches of any owner with the authority and prerogative to separate them. delivering freedom papers would also protect the girls against any kidnapper who illegally tried to strongarm them. yet, dred as their father could not deliver them from that evil even if he had won. only harriet's victory could do that. it would provide the girls freedom papers. what the plaintiffs hoped to achieve by the litigation was not merely dred's freedom from chattel slavery. it was preserving their liberty to remain together as a family and to give their children a future and freedom. adding harriet and the girls reconfigures the defendants'

incentives, as well. the valuable human assets in the economic equation were the young, healthy girls growing to womanhood. and their mother. by connecting dred to the children, through control of harriet, the value of the human property at issue increased substantially. one can speculate that when widow emerson claiming to have inherited dred refused to sell him his freedom she was looking past dred to see the value that his daurls would bring to her own daughter when she came of age. slave children were considered legacies for master's children. with harriet, lie za and lizzy making a difference to the desire to pursue the case, consider the defendant's family network, as well. among all the defendant masters in these some 300 lawsuits, 1 family of slaveholders was the

most active. the st. louis chateau family. patrick arks from the close-knit family owned newseum raus slaves, more than anyone else in the city. and in the freedom suits, as slaveholders, the chateaus were repeat players in the words of mark galanter. this is important to recognize because john f.a. sanford was the wealthy family's loyal son-in-law. john f.a. sanford was the defendant who dred scott hardly knew, hardly could have known. yet, sanford had fallen into the role as executor of an estate that dred was part of. years later, in a "the new york times" interview, mrs. emerson chaff if i was asked why the case didn't settle. mrs. emerson chaffey agreed it would have settled if not for the chateaus.

they wanted it pursued. if dred scott would not give up because the freedom of his entire family was on the line, sanford did not give up even though he seemed to care very little about the lawsuit because his in-laws wanted a win. so, how did this all come to bear on the scott family? the precedent was well established. the scotts had witnesses, a lawyer, they met the elements of the case and they should have won in state court under missouri state law as 100 litigants had before them. suing for prix dom was difficult. make no mistake about it. these enslaved persons exposed themselves to risks in suing their masters. they had to publicly declare that their masters were acting in violation of the law by keeping them enslaved. some were kidnapped and hustled aboard steamboats as soon as they filed suit. anticipating trouble, the judges routinely admonished the

defendants not to remove the slave or retaliate against him because of the lawsuit and yet some did. so, by filing suit, enslaved litigants risked it all. they couldn't be expected to be granted freedom immediately. it would require a lengthy trial, although never as long as the scotts' trial and if they lost, they could expect some kind of retribution for bringing trouble to their masters. going to trial brought increased anxiety and intense anxiety to the slave litigants. the scotts went to trial three times. they lost the first case in a mistrial. they won the second trial in a jury verdict only to have it reversed by the missouri supreme court. changing the rules. and then they went to trial in federal court a third time. although the statute entitled them to an attorney, they were passed off between seven attorneys in the course of the

litigation. each time, of a transfer, there was a delay. in the missouri courts, though, the scotts had very bad luck. they could not have foreseen the missouri supreme court would change the rules on them. in 1852, the missouri supreme court reversed the rule of freedom by residence. the state supreme court had been relatively stable until that point a three-judge bench had held for years but they then underwent a changed electoral process. the new judges elected seemed to be less committed to the 30-year precedent that the supreme court had followed since statehood. in essence, the missouri supreme court changed the rules on them after their case had already been in litigation for six years and they had won a jury verdict. this reversal was applied retroactively to the scotts in their cases.

the scotts experienced the years of litigation by time spent in jail, auctioned by the sheriff on the courthouse steps to temporary masters generating wages that they could not reach and dred's near death from tuberculosis one cold winter after the appeal had been docketed with the united states supreme court. i'm sorry to say there's even more. they were subjected to the trials of job. devastations of almost biblical proportion occurred in st. louis in the decade the case was in limbo. this affected all the city's residents but whereas others could leave town to avoid the devastation the scotts were under court order to remain. a massive cholera outbreak swept the city producing the city's worst epidemic. like the plagues of europe, people had to be con stripted to bury the dead.

no one could be found to impanel a jury because no one would respond to the call and the courts went on indefinite suspension for an entire year. if that weren't bad enough, a massive fire burned several dozen steamboats at the wharfs consuming them. the warehouses along the shore and then spreading to consume 16 square blocks, the core of the city. persons remaining in the city were again conscripted. this time to clear the charred remains of what had once been the city's main buildings. during the months and years of continuances, delays, lawyer substitutions, fires and epidemics, missouri changed around them. rather, the nation changed around missouri. with national turmoil over the fugitive slave law, a civil war in kansas, and new militancy on both sides, missouri, the compromise state, which had

regarded itself as part of that national balance, became swept up in the national debate over slavery. for years missouri had regarded this turmoil somewhat detachedly as occurring at some distance. after all, there were no abolitionists in missouri. news reached missouri slowly by steamboat. but with the telegraph alarming messages of media sy pummeled the city with the news that the sides were lining up. when the case went national, the scott family was caught up just as specks of dust in the larger storm. ely za and lizzy were never flamed parties and their parents sent them into hiding for their own protection. so in march 1857, in a 7-2 decision, the united states supreme court ruled against dred scott. from the context of missouri laws, you can see that chief

justice taney by stating the words that blacks persons never had rights that white persons were obligated to respect. black persons were entitled to freedom by residence for 30 years. further more, black persons had had the right to an attorney to redeem that entitlement and the rule of law had held. that small degree of protection alone had been a remarkable thing. in the face of resistance of white slaveholders the st. louis courts sustained the rule of law to protect a vulnerable and otherwise friendless population. chief justice taney's statement became the sentence most often associated with the state. it was hyperbole but it was dangerous hyperbole. thereafter, no black persons could use the federal courts. did they have any legal rights at all?

chief justice taney said not. accept to accept it enshrined a concept of racial inequality that was not present in those racial terms in the constitution's language despite passages of slaves and slavery pivotal to chief justice taney's argument. the sentence invited greater legal disability to be imposed on black persons through law and several state legislatures responded accordingly. there was pushback almost immediately. senator henry wilson of massachusetts who would become one of the strongest republican advocates of the reconstruction amendments publicly tested the limits the day after the decision. senator wilson attempted to procure a passport for his friend, a black massachusetts doctor who wished to travel abroad. senator wilson told the press that he wanted to see whether the federal government would

issue one. the state department refused. citing dred scott. john f.a. sanford probably knew that he had won. by the time of the decision, sanford had gone mad and was confined to a mental institution. the st. louis chateau family sent mrs. emerson in massachusetts some money related to the litigation. most likely it was the wages that dred and harriet earned those 11 years which had been impounded by the sheriff. it came as an embarrassment to congressman clifford c. chaffeyy of massachusetts to learn that by kofrture he was the owner of the nation's most famous slave. he owned the scotts because he married john emerson's widow. they were transported by quick claim deed to someone in massachusetts because only a missouri resident could free a missouri slave. thus the scotts finally granted

the freedom not by operation of law but by the 'em barragement of a congressman of massachusetts. though dred lived two years after the case and the family remained together, harriet and her daurls survived the civil war. lizzy married and had children of her own. eliza never did but she stayed with her mother and did laundry. it was not simply chief justice taney's writing for the court that baerls responsibility for the outcome although his written decision cornually worsened the result. the united states constitution failed the provide redress for the most basic human right and it left citizenship and access to the federal courts up to the states. our constitution, 1789 with all of its brilliance, could not protect them. the united states supreme court's most discredited opinion was not overturned by the court. it was overturned by

constitutional amendment. understanding the scott's lawsuit is useful in seeing the arc of the reconstruction amendments but today in our limited time i can only point out a few stars in that constellation. first, the scott's lawsuit sharpened the sides. it became the rallying point in lincoln douglas and the halls of congress in newspapers and conversations throughout the nation's. su session prompted the civil war but the case lit the fuse. second, the supreme court decision cat lized the process of constitutional amendment. president lincoln's emancipation proclamation was a start to ending slavery but many questioned its legality and only applied in states in rebellion which did not include missouri. amending the constitution was necessary to abolish slavery and erase the lingering cloud of the dred scott decision. third, the opinion not only

highlighted the constitution's deficiencies, it also highlighted the text and structures by which to fix it. those remarkable amendments, particularly the 13th and the 14th, draw on the language of those subjects of the dred scott case, the 13th amendment language that neither slavery nor involuntarily servitude shall exist was taken directly from the northwest ordinance that chief justice taney had declared invalid and if there was any remaining doubt that congress had the authority to supplement the amendment, well, section 2 provided that. section 1 of the 14th amendment granted citizenship to all persons born orion american soil rather than leaving citizenship up to the states. granting citizenship did more than ensure the ability to use the federal courts. and once the momentum got