In Dred Scott v. Sandford, decided March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that no person of African descent could claim United States citizenship, that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in federal territories, and that enslaved people were property protected by the Fifth Amendment.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Dred Scott v. Sandford It is remembered as one of the worst decisions the Court has ever issued, and it was overturned only by constitutional amendment after the Civil War.
What the Court Held
Chief Justice Roger Taney’s majority opinion did three things, any one of which would have made the case notorious.
First, it declared that Black people, whether enslaved or free, could never be citizens of the United States. Because Scott was not a citizen, Taney reasoned, he had no standing to sue in federal court in the first place.2National Archives. Dred Scott v. Sandford
Second, it struck down the Missouri Compromise of 1820, holding that Congress lacked the constitutional power to ban slavery in the federal territories.
Third, it held that enslaved people were property, and that the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause barred the federal government from stripping slaveholders of that property when they entered free territory.3Oyez. Dred Scott v. Sandford
The jurisdictional finding alone should have ended the case. If the Court had no jurisdiction, it had no business ruling on the Missouri Compromise or the Fifth Amendment question. Taney pressed forward anyway, and that overreach became one of the decision’s most criticized features.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
Dred Scott was born into slavery in Virginia and later became the property of John Emerson, an army surgeon. In the mid-1830s, Emerson took Scott from Missouri, a slave state, first to Illinois, a free state, and then to Fort Snelling in the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was barred by both the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise.2National Archives. Dred Scott v. Sandford Scott married Harriet at Fort Snelling in 1836, and the couple had two daughters.
After Emerson’s death, his widow began hiring the Scott family out. Scott offered to buy his family’s freedom for three hundred dollars. She refused. In 1846, Dred and Harriet each sued in the St. Louis Circuit Court, arguing that their years on free soil had made them legally free.4National Park Service. The Dred Scott Case Missouri courts had followed a doctrine since 1824 known as “once free, always free”: an enslaved person taken to live in a free state or territory became free, and that status survived a return to Missouri. Scott won at trial in 1850. But in 1852 the Missouri Supreme Court reversed course, breaking with nearly three decades of its own precedent. The case then moved into federal court because the defendant, John Sanford, lived in New York while Scott lived in Missouri.
Taney’s Reasoning on Citizenship
Taney argued that at the time the Constitution was written, 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 citizen.'”2National Archives. Dred Scott v. Sandford The framers, he wrote, viewed Black individuals as so far beneath the political community that they had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” From that historical claim, Taney concluded that no person of African descent could ever become a citizen through any act of Congress or state legislature.
Striking Down the Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise had drawn a line across the federal territories at 36°30′: slavery could exist south of it and was banned to the north. Taney declared the compromise unconstitutional. The constitutional clause giving Congress power to “make all needful rules and regulations” for the territories, he wrote, applied only to territory the United States held in 1789. Congress therefore had no authority to regulate slavery in land acquired afterward.5National Archives. Missouri Compromise
This was only the second time the Supreme Court had struck down a federal statute. The first was Marbury v. Madison in 1803, which established judicial review itself.6Justia. Marbury v. Madison The framework of sectional compromise that had held the Union together for a generation was, in a single opinion, declared void.
Enslaved People as Property
The final holding rested on the Fifth Amendment. The Court treated enslaved people as constitutionally recognized property and held that any federal law stripping a slaveholder of that property simply because he crossed into a particular territory violated the due process clause.3Oyez. Dred Scott v. Sandford
The implication reached beyond the federal government. If the Constitution itself protected the enslaver’s property right throughout the territories, then no territorial legislature could interfere either. The status of an enslaved person would follow the enslaver everywhere. For Scott personally, the ruling was total defeat. His years on free soil counted for nothing.
The Dissents
Every justice on the nine-member Court filed a separate opinion, a rare occurrence that reflected how fractured the bench was. Justices Benjamin Curtis and John McLean wrote the principal dissents.
Curtis went directly at the citizenship holding. When the Constitution was ratified, he pointed out, free Black men were recognized as citizens and could vote in at least five states: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina.3Oyez. Dred Scott v. Sandford Men who helped ratify the Constitution could not have been categorically outside the political community it created. Curtis also criticized the majority for reaching the merits after concluding it had no jurisdiction. He resigned from the Court shortly afterward.7Supreme Court of the United States. Guardian of the Constitution – The Counter Example of Dred Scott
McLean argued that slavery was a purely local institution, existing only where positive law authorized it. The Constitution called enslaved people “persons,” not property. Congress plainly had power under Article IV to prohibit slavery in the territories, and Missouri itself had recognized for nearly thirty years that an enslaved person taken to free soil became free.
Political Fallout
The ruling was supposed to settle the slavery question. It did the opposite. Northern newspapers and politicians denounced it. The young Republican Party pointed to it as proof of a “slave power” grip on the federal government. And it gutted the doctrine of popular sovereignty championed by Senator Stephen Douglas, which had asked settlers in each territory to decide the slavery question themselves. If the Constitution protected slaveholders’ property rights in every territory, there was nothing for settlers to decide.8National Park Service. The Freeport Doctrine
Abraham Lincoln used that contradiction against Douglas during their 1858 Senate debates. At Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln forced Douglas to say whether a territory could effectively exclude slavery despite the ruling. Douglas answered that territories could discourage it through unfriendly local legislation, a position that satisfied almost no one. The resulting split between Northern and Southern Democrats produced two separate presidential candidates in 1860, clearing the way for Lincoln’s victory and Southern secession.8National Park Service. The Freeport Doctrine
How the Decision Was Overturned
The Civil War did what the courts would not. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States except as punishment for a crime.9Congress.gov. Thirteenth Amendment Three years later, the Fourteenth Amendment directly overturned Taney’s citizenship holding in its opening line: “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.”10Congress.gov. Fourteenth Amendment Where Taney had said no person of African descent could ever be a citizen, the Fourteenth Amendment made citizenship automatic by birth on American soil. Its due process and equal protection clauses later became the foundation of modern civil rights law.
What Happened to Dred Scott
Scott did gain his freedom, though not through the Court. Emerson’s widow had remarried a congressman, and the political embarrassment led her to transfer the Scott family to Taylor Blow, a son of Scott’s original owner. On May 26, 1857, less than three months after the ruling, the Blow family formally freed Dred and Harriet Scott and their two daughters. Scott worked as a hotel porter in St. Louis. He died of tuberculosis on September 17, 1858, barely a year after gaining the freedom he had spent more than a decade fighting for in court.