The Dred Scott decision was an 1857 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that denied citizenship to all people of African descent and struck down Congress’s power to ban slavery in federal territories. Decided 7–2 and written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, it is widely regarded by legal scholars as the worst decision the Supreme Court has ever issued. It pushed the country closer to the Civil War and was ultimately overturned by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.1National Archives. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
Dred Scott was an enslaved man who, together with his wife Harriet, sued for freedom in St. Louis in 1846. Their claim rested on a principle Missouri courts had long recognized: “once free, always free.” The Scotts had lived for years with their enslaver, army surgeon Dr. John Emerson, at Fort Snelling in the free Wisconsin Territory, and they argued that extended residence on free soil had ended their enslavement permanently. The case reached the Supreme Court as 60 U.S. 393.2National Park Service. The Dred Scott Case
What the Supreme Court Held
Chief Justice Taney delivered the majority opinion on March 6, 1857. The Court answered two questions, and both answers reshaped American law.
No Black Person Could Be a U.S. Citizen
The first question was whether Scott could sue in federal court at all. Under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, federal courts hear cases between “citizens of different states.” If Scott was not a citizen, the Court had no authority to hear his claim.3Constitution Annotated. ArtIII.S2.C1.16.1 Overview of Diversity Jurisdiction
Taney ruled that no person of African descent, enslaved or free, qualified as a citizen of the United States. The opinion held that when the Constitution was adopted, Black people “were not regarded in any of the States as members of the community which constituted the State, and were not numbered among its ‘people or citizens.'” Because they were not citizens, they were not entitled to the rights and protections the Constitution guaranteed, and they could not bring suit in federal court.4Library of Congress. Dred Scott v. Sandford
The holding was absolute. It did not matter that Scott had lived in free territory, that he had been treated as free during those years, or that he had filed in a state that previously recognized freedom claims like his. The Court declared that people of African descent occupied “a separate class of persons” with no legal standing in the federal system.
Congress Could Not Ban Slavery in the Territories
Having concluded Scott could not sue, the Court went further and declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 unconstitutional. That law had drawn a line across the western territories at the 36°30′ parallel: slavery was permitted south of the line and banned north of it. For nearly four decades, it had held the nation together on the question of slavery’s expansion.5National Archives. Missouri Compromise
The majority held that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. Taney reasoned that the federal government held territory as a trustee for the people and could not use that power to strip property rights from citizens who moved into those territories. Any law barring an owner from bringing enslaved people into a territory, the Court ruled, amounted to an unconstitutional confiscation.1National Archives. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
The Fifth Amendment Reasoning
The constitutional hook for striking down the Missouri Compromise was the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which prevents the federal government from depriving any person of property without fair legal process. Taney treated enslaved people as a recognized form of property, no different from any other personal possession. Under that reasoning, a federal law that stripped an owner of this “property” simply because they crossed into a particular territory violated the Fifth Amendment.6Justia. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)
The practical effect was sweeping. If Congress could not ban slavery from any territory, the entire western half of the continent was open to slavery’s expansion regardless of what the people living there wanted. The ruling also undercut popular sovereignty, the idea that settlers in a territory could vote on whether to allow slavery, because if the Constitution itself protected the right to hold enslaved people, no local vote could override it.
The Dissents
Two justices, John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin Robbins Curtis of Massachusetts, issued vigorous dissents. Curtis attacked the majority’s historical claim that Black people were never considered citizens. Free Black men had been recognized as citizens in several states at the time the Constitution was ratified, which undermined Taney’s central argument. If they were citizens of states at the founding, Curtis argued, they were citizens of the United States under the Constitution.
Curtis also took apart the majority’s reading of congressional power over the territories. The Constitution grants Congress authority to “make all needful rules and regulations” for federal territory. Banning or permitting slavery, he argued, fell squarely within that power, and nothing in the Constitution imposed any exception.
Both dissenters also criticized the majority for reaching the merits after concluding the Court lacked jurisdiction. If Scott was not a citizen and the Court had no power to hear his claim, the case should have ended there. By ruling on the Missouri Compromise and the Fifth Amendment anyway, the majority issued what amounted to an advisory opinion on the biggest political question of the era. Curtis felt so strongly that he resigned from the Court shortly afterward.
What Happened to Dred Scott
Scott gained his freedom just months after the Supreme Court declared he had no right to it. A son of the Blow family, Scott’s original owners who had financed much of his legal fight, purchased Dred and Harriet Scott and freed them. Dred Scott worked as a porter at a hotel in St. Louis but lived as a free man for barely a year before dying of tuberculosis in September 1858.6Justia. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)
Why the Decision Mattered
The ruling outraged much of the North. Many viewed it as proof that the slaveholding South had captured the Supreme Court and was using it to force slavery on the entire country. Rather than settling the national debate, the ruling poured fuel on it. The National Archives describes the decision as having “moved the nation a step closer to the Civil War.”1National Archives. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
The ruling became a central issue in the 1858 Illinois Senate race between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Lincoln argued that the decision, combined with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, was part of a coordinated effort to make slavery legal everywhere in the country, including in free states. Those debates raised Lincoln’s national profile and helped lead to his presidential nomination in 1860. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, split over the ruling. Northern Democrats could not reconcile the decision with popular sovereignty, and Southern Democrats demanded that the party fully embrace it. That fracture handed the 1860 election to Lincoln and the Republicans, which in turn triggered secession.
How Dred Scott Was Overturned
The Civil War rendered the Dred Scott decision a dead letter, and the Reconstruction Amendments formally overturned it. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States, eliminating the foundation of the Court’s property-rights reasoning. If no person could be held as property, the Fifth Amendment argument Taney built his opinion on collapsed.7Constitution Annotated. U.S. Constitution – Thirteenth Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, targeted the citizenship holding directly. Its opening sentence reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” That language was specifically intended to repeal the Dred Scott decision’s exclusion of Black Americans from citizenship. It established birthright citizenship as a constitutional principle, ensuring that no future court could strip an entire race of legal standing the way Taney’s opinion had.8Constitution Annotated. Fourteenth Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment also included an equal protection clause and its own due process guarantee, this time directed at the states. Together, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not just reverse one bad ruling. They restructured the constitutional relationship between the individual and the government, making the Dred Scott framework legally impossible to revive.1National Archives. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)