Dred Scott v. Sandford was an 1857 Supreme Court decision that held Black Americans, whether free or enslaved, were not citizens of the United States and could not sue in federal court. In the same ruling, the Court struck down the Missouri Compromise of 1820, declaring that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The 7–2 decision, issued on March 6, 1857, is widely regarded as one of the worst in the Court’s history. Instead of settling the national conflict over slavery, it inflamed it, and it was ultimately erased by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments after the Civil War.
Who Dred Scott Was
Dred Scott was an enslaved man owned by Dr. John Emerson, a U.S. Army surgeon. Beginning in 1834, Emerson took Scott from Missouri, a slave state, to Rock Island in the free state of Illinois, and later to Fort Snelling in the upper Louisiana Territory, where slavery was banned under the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Scott lived on free soil for years and married Harriet Robinson at Fort Snelling.1Legal Information Institute. Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error, v. John F. A. Sandford
Emerson died in 1843. When his widow, Irene Emerson, refused to let Scott purchase his freedom, he and Harriet filed separate freedom suits in the St. Louis Circuit Court on April 6, 1846, arguing that their long residence in free jurisdictions had made them free.2National Archives. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) After winning at trial and then losing on appeal in Missouri’s state courts, Scott’s lawyers took the case into federal court using diversity jurisdiction, naming Irene Emerson’s brother John Sanford, a New York resident, as the defendant.3Oyez. Dred Scott v. Sandford
What the Supreme Court Held
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s majority opinion did two enormous things.
Black Americans Were Not Citizens
The first question was whether Scott could even be in federal court. Diversity jurisdiction under Article III requires citizens of different states. Taney answered by ruling that no person of African descent, free or enslaved, qualified as a “citizen” under the Constitution. He argued that at the founding, Black Americans were “regarded as beings of an inferior order” and were never meant to share in the rights the document created.4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)
The Court also held that even if a state chose to recognize a Black person as a state citizen, that recognition carried no weight under the federal Constitution.5Library of Congress. Dred Scott v. Sandford That closed the federal courthouse doors to every Black person in the country, not just to Scott.
Congress Could Not Ban Slavery in the Territories
Having found no jurisdiction, Taney could have stopped. He didn’t. The majority went on to strike down the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the federal law that had barred slavery from the northern portions of the Louisiana Purchase. Taney read the Territory Clause of Article IV narrowly, arguing it applied only to lands the United States held when the Constitution was ratified, not to territories acquired later.4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)
He also invoked the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Enslaved people, in Taney’s framing, were property, and a federal law that stripped slaveholders of that property whenever they crossed into a particular territory violated the Constitution.3Oyez. Dred Scott v. Sandford This was only the second time the Supreme Court had struck down a major act of Congress, after Marbury v. Madison in 1803.6Justia. Acts of Congress Held Unconstitutional in Whole or in Part by the Supreme Court of the United States The practical effect was that Congress could no longer contain slavery’s spread by legislation, and territorial governments couldn’t exclude it either.
The Dissents
Justices Benjamin R. Curtis and John McLean wrote sharp dissents. Curtis produced a fact that gutted Taney’s history: when the Constitution was ratified, free Black men could vote in at least five of the original thirteen states. If they helped ratify the Constitution, they were plainly among the citizens it protected. Curtis also noted that during the drafting of the Articles of Confederation, a proposal to restrict citizenship to white persons had been voted down eight states to two.3Oyez. Dred Scott v. Sandford
Both dissenters also attacked the majority for reaching the Missouri Compromise question at all. If the Court lacked jurisdiction, then everything Taney said about congressional power over slavery in the territories was unnecessary. McLean argued that a free person born and domiciled in a state under the Constitution was a citizen of that state, regardless of race.3Oyez. Dred Scott v. Sandford
What Happened to Dred Scott
Because Scott was ruled not a citizen, the federal case was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The Supreme Court never decided whether his years on free soil had made him free. Under Missouri law he remained enslaved.4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)
Less than three months later, on May 26, 1857, Taylor Blow, a member of the family that had originally owned Scott, purchased Dred and Harriet and freed them. Scott worked as a hotel porter in St. Louis and died of tuberculosis in September 1858, having lived as a free man for about sixteen months.
The Political Fallout
Taney meant the decision to end the national fight over slavery. It did the opposite. The ruling invalidated the founding platform of the Republican Party, which existed specifically to stop slavery’s expansion into the territories. Instead of destroying the party, the decision grew it. Northern moderates who had been on the sidelines now saw the Court as an instrument of what Abraham Lincoln called “slave power.”
Lincoln’s opposition to Dred Scott became central to his political identity, and it helped carry him to the Republican nomination in 1860. When he won the presidency, southern states read the result as proof that the political system would no longer protect their interests, and secession followed within months.2National Archives. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
How the Constitution Overturned the Decision
The Civil War produced the amendments that directly repudiated Dred Scott. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States. That destroyed the property-rights framework Taney had used to protect slaveholders under the Fifth Amendment. If no person could be held as property, the reasoning that struck down the Missouri Compromise collapsed with it.
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, was aimed even more directly at Taney’s holding on citizenship. 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.”7Constitution Annotated, Congress.gov. Fourteenth Amendment Citizenship was no longer left to judicial guesswork about the framers’ intent. If you were born here, you were a citizen.
The Fourteenth Amendment also added its own Due Process Clause and an Equal Protection Clause guaranteeing that no state could deny any person the equal protection of the laws. The Supreme Court has never formally overruled Dred Scott in a later case. It didn’t need to. The Constitution itself was rewritten to make the decision’s holdings impossible.