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Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that held the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and thus they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens. The Supreme Court's decision has been widely denounced, both for its overt racism and for its crucial role in the start of the American Civil War four years later. Legal scholar Bernard Schwartz said that it "stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions". Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes called it the Court's "greatest self-inflicted wound".
Dred Scott was an enslaved African American man who, along with his wife, Harriet, unsuccessfully sued for freedom for themselves and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott decision". The case centered on Dred and Harriet Scott and their children, Eliza and Lizzie. The Scotts claimed that they should be granted their freedom because Dred had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years, where slavery was illegal, and laws in those jurisdictions said that slaveholders gave up their rights to slaves if they stayed for an extended period.
North Carolina v. Mann, 13 N.C. 263, is a decision in which the Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled that slave owners had absolute authority over their slaves and could not be found guilty of committing violence against them.
"Children of the plantation" is a euphemism used that refers to ancestry tracing back to the time of slavery in the United States in which the offspring was born to black African female slaves in the context of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and European men, usually the slave's owner, one of the owner's relatives, or the plantation overseer. These children were often considered to be the property of the slave owner and were often subjected to the same treatment as other slaves on the plantation. Many of these children were born into slavery and had no legal rights, as they were not recognized as the legitimate children of their fathers. This practice was a form of sexual abuse and exploitation, as the European men who fathered these children often used their power and authority to dominantly force themselves upon the black women who were under their control. The trauma and suffering that these children and their mothers experienced as a result of this practice continue to have a lasting impact on the African American community.
Rachel v. Walker (1834) was a "freedom suit" filed in the St. Louis Circuit Court by an African-American woman named Rachel who had been enslaved. She petitioned for her freedom and that of her son James (John) Henry from William Walker, based on having been held illegally as a slave in the free territory of Michigan by a previous master, an Army officer. Her case was appealed to the Supreme Court of Missouri, where she won in 1836. The court ruled that an Army officer forfeited his slave if he took the person to territory where slavery is prohibited. This ruling was cited as precedent in 1856 in the famous Dred Scott v. Sandford case before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 precluded a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited blacks from being taken out of the free state of Pennsylvania into slavery. The Court overturned the conviction of slavecatcher Edward Prigg as a result.
Polly Berry was an African American woman notable for winning two freedom suits in St. Louis, one for herself, which she won in 1843, and one for her daughter Lucy, which she won in 1844. Having acquired the surnames of her slaveholders, she was also known as Polly Crockett and Polly Wash, the latter of which was the name used in her freedom suit.
Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Bet, Mum Bett, or MumBet, was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, in Freeman's favor, found slavery to be inconsistent with the 1780 Massachusetts State Constitution. Her suit, Brom and Bett v. Ashley (1781), was cited in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court appellate review of Quock Walker's freedom suit. When the court upheld Walker's freedom under the state's constitution, the ruling was considered to have implicitly ended slavery in Massachusetts.
Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God's airth [sic] a free woman— I would.
Partus sequitur ventrem was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born there; the doctrine mandated that all children would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery. The legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem was derived from Roman civil law, specifically the portions concerning slavery and personal property (chattels).
Slavery at common law in the British Empire developed slowly over centuries, and was characterised by inconsistent decisions and varying rationales for the treatment of slavery, the slave trade, and the rights of slaves and slave owners. Unlike in its colonies, within the home islands of Britain, until 1807, except for statutes facilitating and taxing the international slave trade, there was virtually no legislative intervention in relation to slaves as property, and accordingly the common law had something of a "free hand" to develop, untrammeled by the "paralysing hand of the Parliamentary draftsmen". Two attempts to pass a slave code via parliament itself both failed, one in the 1660s and the other in 1674.
Quock Walker, also known as Kwaku or Quork Walker, was an American slave who sued for and won his freedom suit case in June 1781. The court cited language in the new Massachusetts Constitution (1780) that declared all men to be born free and equal. The case is credited with helping abolish slavery in Massachusetts, although the 1780 constitution was never amended to explicitly prohibit the practice. Massachusetts was the first state of the union to effectively and fully abolish slavery. By the 1790 federal census, no slaves were recorded in the state.
Elizabeth Key Grinstead (Greenstead) was one of the first black people of the Thirteen Colonies to sue for freedom from slavery and win. Key won her freedom and that of her infant son John Grinstead on July 21, 1656, in the colony of Virginia. Key based her suit on the fact that her father was an Englishman who had acknowledged her and arranged her baptism as a Christian in the American branch of the Church of England. He was a wealthy planter who had tried to protect her by establishing a guardianship for her when she was young, before his death. Based on these factors, her attorney and common-law husband, William Grinstead, argued successfully that she should be freed. The lawsuit was one of the earliest "freedom suits" by an African-descended person in the English colonies.
Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by slaves against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free state or territory.
Somerset v Stewart (1772) 98 ER 499 is a judgment of the English Court of King's Bench in 1772, relating to the right of an enslaved person on English soil not to be forcibly removed from the country and sent to Jamaica for sale. Lord Mansfield decided that:
The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.
Marie Louise v. Marot 9 La. 473 (1836) was a freedom suit heard by the Louisiana state district court and appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court. It held that a slave who is taken to a territory that prohibits slavery cannot be again reduced to slavery on returning to a territory that allows slavery. The ruling was cited as precedent to the 1856 landmark Dred Scott v. Sandford case heard by the US Supreme Court. Supreme Court Justice John McLean cited the precedent in his dissent of the majority ruling. Seven of the nine justices did not abide by the precedent in what has been considered the worst decision ever made by the Supreme Court.
Rachel of Kittery, Maine was an African-American enslaved woman in the New England state of Maine, who was murdered by her enslaver, Nathaniel Keen, who was subsequently put on trial on for murder. The trial established court precedent in the New England colonies for how juries ruled on murder cases that involved the slave owner murdering an enslaved individual. The only documentation that she existed is several paragraphs in the Province and Court Records of Maine. She was called Rachel and lived in the town of Kittery in York County, Maine. Rachel was a slave, who was owned and beaten to death by Nathaniel Keen in late 1694 or early 1695.
Robert Wash served on the Supreme Court of Missouri from September 1825 to May 1837. During his term, the pro-slavery judge, who owned slaves himself, wrote the dissenting opinion on several important freedom suits, including Milly v. Smith, Julia v. McKinney and Marguerite v. Chouteau. However, he did join in the unanimous finding for the plaintiff in the landmark Rachel v. Walker case.
Winny v. Whitesides alias Prewitt was the first freedom suit heard by the Supreme Court of Missouri. The case established the state's judicial criteria for an enslaved person's right to freedom. The court determined that if a slave owner took a slave into free territory and established residence there, the slave would be free. The slave remained free even if returned to slave territory, engendering the phrase "once free, always free."
Diana Cephas was the plaintiff in a freedom suit filed in St. Louis, Missouri in 1840. She won her case after it went to trial in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County in 1843. Born into slavery in Maryland, she and her young son Josiah had been taken to the free state of Illinois in 1839, where she was hired out by her slaveholder over several months. She was then taken to Missouri, a slave state, but won her freedom with the help of freedom suit attorney Francis B. Murdoch, despite the efforts of lawyers Myron Leslie and Roswell M. Field to discredit her.
Polly Strong was an enslaved woman in the Northwest Territory, in present-day Indiana. She was born after the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery. Slavery was prohibited by the Constitution of Indiana in 1816. Two years later, Strong's mother Jenny and attorney Moses Tabbs asked for a writ of habeas corpus for Polly and her brother James in 1818. Judge Thomas H. Blake produced indentures, Polly for 12 more years and James for four more years of servitude. The case was dismissed in 1819.
References
- 1 2 The Journal of Negro history. Vol. 26. Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. 1941. p. 193.
- 1 2 3 4 Finkelman, Paul, ed. (2012). "Laws relating to slavery". Statutes on Slavery: The Pamphlet Literature. The Lawbook Exchange. p. 205. ISBN 9781584777410.
- ↑ "The Guardian of Sally, a negro vs. Beaty". Bay's Reports of Cases in the Superior Court of Law, of South Carolina. Vol. 1. pp. 260–263.
- 1 2 Shaw, Robert B. (1991). A legal history of slavery in the United States. Northern Press. p. 84. ISBN 9780788433931.