The facts in the two cases were, however, the same. One Dr. Emerson, the owner of Dred Scott, had taken Dred, as his slave, into Illinois, a Commonwealth in which slavery was forbidden, and then into the Louisiana territory above the latitude thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, where slavery was prohibited by the Congressional Act of 1820; had allowed Dred to marry in the free territory; had purchased the woman he married from an army officer at a post within the same; and had taken Dred back to Missouri, with his wife and a child born to them on free territory, and held them as slaves in Missouri. Dr. Emerson's return to Missouri was in 1838. In 1844 the Doctor died, leaving Dred and his wife and child to Mrs. Emerson. According to the statement of facts recited by the Chief Justice of the United States, Dr. Emerson sold Dred and his family to a Mr. Sandford, a citizen of New York, the defendant in the case before the Supreme Court, but Mr. Crane says that Dr. Emerson's will, in the Probate Office at St. Louis, shows that Dred and his family belonged to the Doctor at the time of the latter's death, and that Dred told him that such was the case. Mr. Crane also says that Dred told him that, after the Doctor's death, Mrs. Emerson hired him out to different persons, and that he became dissatisfied with this treatment, and resolved to sue for his freedom.
| The case in the Missouri courts. |
This first suit was brought in one of the inferior courts of Missouri, and was decided in Dred's favor. Mrs. Emerson appealed the case to the supreme court of Missouri, and two of the three judges upon that bench held that the condition of slavery reattached to the negro upon his being brought back into Missouri, and reversed the decision of the lower court.
While the case in the Missouri courts was in progress Mrs. Emerson made over the control of the Scotts to a relative of hers, a Mr. Sandford, then a citizen of New York, who hired them out to residents of Missouri. It was then, and for this reason, that Dred appealed to Roswell M. Field for his powerful aid in bringing suit against Sandford in the Courts of the United States.
| The case in the United States courts. |
The case in the Circuit Court of the United States was begun before the case in the Missouri court was concluded. The defendant in the Circuit Court of the United States first pleaded that Dred was not a citizen of Missouri, and could not be, since he was a negro and descended from slaves held in the United States, but the court overruled the plea, that is, decided that Dred Scott could be party in a suit in the courts of the United States.
The evidence in the case consisted simply of a statement of facts agreed upon by the two parties. The pleas then put forward by the defendant in bar of the action were argued, on the basis of this statement, and the court ordered the jury to find for the defendant. Judgment was rendered in his favor in the month of April, 1854.
Mr. Field then carried the case to the Supreme Court of the United States, upon a writ of error, and secured the services of his friend, the Hon. Montgomery Blair, for the negro. Mr. Blair undertook the management of the case at Washington, and, like Mr. Field, gave his time and labor without pecuniary reward. The court costs incurred by Dred in both cases were paid by Taylor Blow, son of the man who sold Dred to Doctor Emerson.