THE DRED SCOTT CASE
[The Origin of the Dred Scott Case]—[Two Dred Scott Cases]—[The Facts of the Cases]—[The Case in the Missouri Courts]—[The Case in the United States Courts]—[The Case a Genuine Proceeding]—[The Decision by the Supreme Court of the United States]—[The Dissenting Opinion of Mr. Justice Curtis]—[Criticism of the Court's Opinion]—[The Obiter Dictum]—[The Chief Justice and the President]—[Justice Curtis' Dissent Continued]—[The Printing and Distribution of the Decision and the Dissenting Opinion]—[The Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty in the Territories Overthrown by the Opinion of the Court.]
| The origin of the Dred Scott case. |
The time has come when the correct story of the Dred Scott case may be told, and should be told. The author of this volume has been so fortunate as to obtain from A. C. Crane, Esq., of St. Louis, an account of the early history of the case, which is entirely original and authentic. Mr. Crane was, at the time that the case was brought in the Circuit Court of the United States, a clerk in the law office of the great lawyer who espoused Dred Scott's case, and who freely gave his legal services to the work of securing the negro's freedom, Roswell M. Field. Mr. Field was a native of Vermont, and a strong anti-slavery man. He was utterly incapable of any collusion with slaveholders for the getting up of a case, through which the Supreme Court of the United States might be brought to support the cause of slavery in the Territories, the purpose charged by many of the anti-slavery men of the North for which this case was created. Mr. Crane most emphatically declares that Mr. Field was influenced to undertake the case only by humanitarian motives of the highest order.
| Two Dred Scott cases. |
There were, indeed, two Dred Scott cases, one in the courts of Missouri, and one in the United States courts, but they had no connection with each other. The case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States originated in the Circuit Court of the United States, and did not come up on a writ of error from the Missouri court.
| The facts of the cases. |