Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes called it the Court's "greatest self-inflicted wound". [8] The decision involved the case of Dred Scott, an enslaved black man whose owners had taken him from Missouri, …

Apr 21, 2025 · In 1846, an enslaved Black man named Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, sued for their freedom in St. Louis Circuit Court. They claimed that they were free due to their residence in a free …

Jan 2, 2026 · The Dred Scott decision was the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on March 6, 1857, that having lived in a free state and territory did not entitle an enslaved person, Dred Scott, to his freedom.

Jun 11, 2025 · After the Dred Scott Decision ruled that he was still enslaved, after 11 years of litigation, Dred Scott was freed by the widow of his former master and lived over a year as a free man before …

Oct 27, 2009 · Historian Matthew Pinsker presents a quick rundown of the story of Dred Scott, a slave who sued for his freedom, leading to one of the Supreme Court's most infamous decisions.

When his enslaver died, Scott sued the widow to whom he was left, claiming he was no longer an enslaved person because he had become free after living in a free state.

Dred Scott, an enslaved man who was taken by his enslaver into a free state and also to free federal territory, sued for freedom for himself and his family based on his stay in free territory. The Court …

A case in which the Court decided that slaves who were descendants of American slaves were not citizens of the United States under Article III of the Constitution. The Court also used the decision to …

Dred Scott was an African American man who was born a slave in the late 1700s. In 1832, Scott’s owner, Emerson, took him into the Wisconsin territory, which outlawed slavery, to do various tasks.

One of the most important cases ever tried in the United States was heard in St. Louis' Old Courthouse. Dred Scott v. Sandford was a landmark decision that drove major change to the entire country's history.