Dred Scott v. Sandford

In 1857, the Supreme Court decided the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Dred Scott, born in slavery in Virginia in 1795, had been one of the thousands forced to relocate as a result of the massive internal slave trade.

Scott and his wife were moved to Missouri by his owner John Emerson, where slavery had been adopted as part of the Missouri Compromise. But in 1820, John Emerson left Scott with his brother John Sandford, who took Scott to Illinois and then to the Wisconsin territory. Critically, both of those regions were part of the Northwest Territory, where the 1787 Northwest Ordinance had outlawed slavery. When Scott returned to Missouri, he sued in the state courts for his freedom. He claimed that his residence in a free territory made him a free man. His case made it all the way to the Supreme Court.

In 1857, the Supreme Court—led by Chief Justice Roger Taney, a former slaveholder—handed down its decision. On the question of whether Scott was free, the Supreme Court decided that he was not free, he remained enslaved. 

The court then went beyond the specific issue of Scott’s freedom to make a sweeping and momentous judgment about the status of Black people, both free and enslaved, arguing that Black people could never be citizens of the United States. Further, the court ruled that Congress had no authority to stop or limit the spread of slavery into American territories. This proslavery ruling explicitly made the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and essentially implied that slavery could exist in all northern states. THIS IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE BY THE SUPREME COURT.