2001
Dred Scott documents go on the web
Efforts to preserve the court records of
Dred Scott's unsuccessful challenge of Missouri slavery law, which helped
push the nation toward civil war, move to the Internet. The Missouri State
Archives worked with St. Louis Circuit Court and Washington University
to put 170 pages of the original Scott documents on a Web site at http://www.library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott
inaugurated on this Martin Luther King Day. Preservation efforts are vital
because some records in the Scott case have been lost, and many court
records from the same period are crumbling into dust.
In 1857, the US Supreme Court struck down
a ban on slavery in the territories and denied
Scott his freedom.
On 6 Apris 1846 slave Dred Scott had filed
a declaration according to which, two days earlier, his owner had "beat,
bruised, and ill-treated him" and imprisoned him for twelve hours. Scott
adds that he claims to be a free man by virtue of his past residence in
free territories.
Scott's beginnings were quite humble. Born
somewhere in Virginia around 1800, he was taken by his owner, Peter Blow,
to Alabama and then, in 1830, to St. Louis, Missouri. Two years later
Peter Blow died; Scott was subsequently bought by army surgeon Dr. John
Emerson, who later took Scott to Fort Armstrong in the free state of Illinois.
In the spring of 1836, after a stay of two and a half years, Emerson moved
to Fort Snelling in the Wisconsin Territory (closed to slavery by the
Missouri Compromise of 1820), 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 Fort Jessup in 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 1600 km, apparently unaccompanied,
down the Mississippi River to meet their master.
Only after Emerson's death in 1843, 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. Louis -- for $300. The offer was refused.
Scott then sought freedom through the courts, starting the legal process
with the declaration he made on April 6, 1846. He had strong legal backing
for his claim to freedom; the Supreme Court of Missouri had freed many
slaves who had traveled with their masters in free states. In the Missouri
Supreme Court's 1836 Rachel v. Walker ruling, it decided that
Rachel, a slave taken to Fort Snelling and to Prairie du Chien in Illinois,
was free.
Despite these precedents, Scott lost the
first Scott v. Emerson trial, in June 1847, 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 the case should
be retried. In an 1850 retrial, the St Louis circuit court ruled that
Scott and his family were free.
By the early 1850's, however, sectional
conflict had arisen again and uglier than ever, and most Missourians did
not encourage the freeing of slaves. Even judicially Scott was at a disadvantage;
the United States Supreme Court's Strader v. Graham decision
(1851) set some precedents that were unfavorable to Scott, and two of
the three justices who made the final decision in Scott's appearance before
the Missouri Supreme Court were proslavery. As would be expected, they
ruled against Scott in 1852, with the third judge dissenting.
Scott and his lawyers then took his case
out of the state judicial system and into the federal judicial system
by bringing it to the US Circuit Court for the District of Missouri. In
1854, the Circuit Court upheld the decision of the Missouri Supreme Court.
There was now only one other place to go.
Scott appealed his case to the United States Supreme Court. The nine justices
of the Supreme Court of 1856 certainly had biases regarding slavery. Seven
had been appointed by pro-slavery presidents from the South, and of these,
five were from slave-holding families. Still, if the case had gone directly
from the state supreme court to the federal supreme court, the federal
court probably would have upheld the state's ruling, citing a previously
established decision that gave states the authority to determine the status
of its inhabitants.
But, in his attempt to bring his case to
the federal courts, Scott had claimed that he and the case's defendant
(Mrs. Emerson's brother, John Sanford, who lived in New York) were citizens
from different states. The main issues for the Supreme Court, therefore,
were whether it had jurisdiction to try the case and whether Scott was
indeed a citizen.
The Dred
Scott v. Sandford decision of the US Supreme court was read in
March of 1857. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney -- a staunch supporter of
slavery -- wrote the "majority opinion" for the court. It stated that
because Scott was black, he was not a citizen and therefore had no right
to sue. The decision also declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820, legislation
which restricted slavery in certain territories, unconstitutional.
This decision concerned whether African-Americans
could be considered United States citizens and capable of bringing suit
in federal courts. The Court relied upon historic discrimination which
denied African-Americans the rights of citizens. The Court's most conclusive
example (their terms) was New Hampshire's 1815 laws which denied militia
participation to African-Americans: "Nothing could more strongly mark
the entire repudiation of the African race." (P. 415)
Among the resulting parade of horribles should African-Americans
be considered citizens, the Court enumerated the rights of citizens and
included the right to arms: "It would give to persons of the negro race,
... the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ... the
full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon
which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political
affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went." (P. 417)
Asserting the federal government had no power to enact Territorial laws
which would infringe property rights (slaves as property), the court listed
rights individuals possess upon entering a Territory destined to become
a state and again mentioned the right to arms: "... no one, we presume,
will contend that Congress can make any law in a Territory respecting
the establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof, or abridging
the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people of the
Territory peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for the
redress of grievances." "Nor can Congress deny to the people the right
to keep and bear arms, nor the right to trial by jury, nor compel any
one to be a witness against himself in a criminal proceeding.... The powers
over person and property of which we speak are not only not granted to
Congress, but are in express terms denied, and they are forbidden to exercise
them." (Pp. 450-51)
In this respect the Dred Scott decision is similar to its contemporary,
Cooper and Warsham v. Savannah, 4 Ga. 68,
72
(1848). It is likewise similar to other Supreme Court decisions which
list individual rights and include the right to arms. (Robertson v.
Baldwin, 165 US 275,
281-282
(1897); United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 US 259,
265
(1990)) Other points of interest could be the Court's profession
of duty to interpret the Constitution "according to its true intent and
meaning when it was adopted." (p. 405);
quoting "an American patriot" for the point that "European sovereigns
give lands to their colonists, but reserve power to control their property
and liberty" whereas the "American government sells lands belonging to
the people of the several states ... to their citizens, who are already
in possession of personal and political rights, which the Government did
not give, and cannot take away." (P. 513)(Campbell
concurring). For further information on Dred Scott, visit Sonja's
Dred Scott page (includes a photo of Mr. Scott) and Lisa Cozzens'
Dred
Scott: Introduction.]
While the decision was well-received by
slaveholders in the South, many northerners were outraged. The decision
greatly influenced the nomination of Abraham Lincoln to the Republican
Party and his subsequent election, which in turn led to the South's secession
from the Union.
Peter Blow's sons, childhood friends of
Scott, had helped pay Scott's legal fees through the years. After the
Supreme Court's decision, the former master's sons purchased Scott and
his wife and set them free. Dred Scott died nine months later.
2000
Elian Gonzalez, with his cousin Marisleysis and great uncle Lázaro
González, enjoys the clowns at the Barnum and Bailey Circus in the
Miami Arena. 
1951 Frenada por fuerzas de la ONU la ofensiva comunista en Corea.
Deaths
Finns
advance in Salla 
