1857
THE DRED SCOTT DECISION: “SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”
On March 6, 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down one of its most controversial and far-reaching opinions. Dred Scott v. Sanford, the case that resulted in what is commonly known as “the Dred Scott decision,” infamously ruled that African-Americans had no rights under the Constitution. Often referred to as one of the worst and most important decisions ever issued by the Supreme Court, Dred Scott sparked intense debate over the future of slavery in the United States and helped catapult the country toward civil war.
Dred Scott was born into slavery and sold to an army surgeon who moved frequently and took Scott with him to each new army posting. Scott lived for several years in Illinois and Minnesota, where slavery was illegal, before moving to Missouri, a slave state. He brought his case to a Missouri state court in 1846, claiming that he, his wife, and his two daughters were legally entitled to freedom; because he and his family had lived on free soil in Illinois and Minnesota for several years, they had become free, he argued, and remained so despite returning to Missouri.
After 11 years of victories and reversals in the court system, Scott’s appeal finally reached the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote for the majority in a 7-2 decision, which went well beyond the issue of Scott’s right to freedom. Encouraged by President-elect James Buchanan, the Court, with a stroke of a pen, attempted to quash the debate once and for all between North and South over the issue of slavery.
Taney presented several major conclusions. First, he held that Black people and their descendants were not protected by the Constitution and thus could not be citizens. Second, as noncitizens, Blacks had no privileges granted by the Constitution and were not entitled to sue in court. Taney could have stopped there, dismissing Scott’s case on his lack of standing alone. However, he went on to rule that Congress had no authority to regulate slavery in the territories, thereby invalidating the 1829 Missouri Compromise. Finally, he stated that enslaved people were private property and thus should be treated as any other property and could not be seized without due process.
A slave-holder himself, Taney claimed to be following the Constitution’s “true intent and meaning when it was adopted.” Because the framers considered Blacks “a subordinate and inferior class of beings,” he reasoned, they had “no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.” As the framers had not expressly granted Blacks any rights to citizenship, the Court could not recognize any.
The decision relegated all Blacks to a permanent legal status of inferiority, dashing the hopes of antislavery reformers.
Sources
Henry Lous Gates Jr., Life Upon These Shores: Looking At African American History 1513-2008, 1st ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 113.