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The Right to Live Free
Resting in the crucible of the American social/political narrative is the Dred Scott decision of 1856. The decision compels thoughtful meditation upon how God ushers forth redemptive citizenship and the right to live free even if a judicial power rules against that freedom in a court of law.
The facts: Born in 1795, Dred Scott was the enslaved African-American owned by the Peter Blow family. In 1830 Blow sold Dred Scott to Dr. John Emerson, a military surgeon. “Emerson took the plaintiff [Scott] from the State of Missouri to the military post at Rock Island, in the State of Illinois, and held him there as a slave until the month of April or May, 1836” (Scott). Scott also traveled with Emerson to Wisconsin. Slavery had been banned by Congress in both places. During this time, Scott married Harriet, also a slave, and they had two daughters, Eliza and Lizzie. In 1842 Dr. Emerson returned to St. Louis, Missouri. Scott and his family also returned. In 1843 Dr. Emerson died. Scott attempted to buy his freedom from Emerson’s wife for $300.00. After refusing to permit Scott the right to purchase a freedom bequeathed to him by God (what irony), he sued Irene Emerson in the St. Louis Circuit court. The court did not rule in Scott’s favor during the first trial; however, the court ruled in his favor during the second trial, indicating that Scott had lived as a free citizen in the territories that banned slavery. Mrs. Emerson took the case to the Missouri Supreme Court; it ruled in her favor. Dred Scott was returned to slavery. Supported and financed by abolitionists, Dred Scott filed a suit in the United States Federal Court in St. Louis. Because Mrs. Irene Emerson’s brother, John Sanford, had become the executor of Emerson’s estate, he was named in the lawsuit. John Sanford was not a resident of St. Louis. Therefore, the case Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sanford, was sent to the United States Supreme Court.
The central question brought to the Supreme Court in 1856 concerning the Scott family’s inalienable right to live free in the United States of America was simply this: Can a Negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and, as such, become entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities guarantied by that instrument to the citizen? One such right is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in cases specified in the Constitution (Scott).
For five of the judges, the answer to this question was a problematic no. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote: “They [the enslaved Africans] . . . were not intended to be included under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights . . . which that instrument [citizen] provides for and secures to citizens of the United States” (Scott).
A problematic no. Essentially, the judgment opposed the citizenship right availed each human being by God. In fact, says Roger Wilkens, Taney’s ruling [against the Scotts] was a “complex strategy for removing Blacks from the rank of humans. If you extinguish Blacks’ voices, you eliminate their ability to validate the realities of their lives” (qtd. in Marable, p. 35). However, the redemptive mark staining the Supreme Court’s ruling against Dred, Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie Scott is that the outcome of this case signaled the beginning of the end of the institution of American slavery. Abraham Lincoln called the ruling “erroneous” (Lincoln, p. 1). “We know the Court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it to overrule this” (ibid).
The collective mind of the Supreme Court that ruled against the Scotts failed to recognize that the Scotts were members, human inhabitants, of America because, indeed, they were central to the political community and the political debate. If the Scotts had not challenged the issue of slavery, their question of freedom and citizenship would not have needed an answer.
Scott’s case is reflective of the recurring idea in the American historical consciousness that the African-American is America’s redemptive immigrant. Court cases like the Scotts have forced America to grapple with the immoral plague of inequality that mangles humans when they do not allow God to shape their social/political consciousness as it relates to the fact that God has given each human being a gift that cannot be legislated—freedom.
If man attempts to legislate that freedom, God will, because He gave “himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity” (Titus 2:14).
In 1857 Dred Scott was redeemed. Irene Emerson married a man who was not a proponent of the institution of slavery. She returned the Scotts to Peter Blow, who legally freed the Scott family. Dred Scott, an American hero, died in 1858 a free and redeemed man.
RAMONA L. HYMAN, PH.D., is the director of the humanities program at Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California.
REFERENCES
Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error, v. John F. A. Sandford. www.tourolaw.edu/patch/Scott.
Lincoln, Abraham. “The Dred Scott Decision and the Declaration of Independence.” http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/delivery?vid=6&hid=5&sid=d22e03ba-0ee9-4831-aa6d-c1c076690a44%0sessionmgr111.
Marable, Manning. The Great Wells of Democracy (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2002).
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