Dred Scott v. Sandford

60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857)

Mr. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the opinion of the court.

[Dred Scott, once a slave but now claiming to be a citizen of the state of Missouri, sued John Sanford,* a citizen of New York, to obtain his freedom. Scott based federal jurisdiction on diversity of citizenship between the parties, raising the question in the court's mind whether Scott was in fact a citizen of Missouri. In 1834, Scott's former owner had taken him from Missouri, a slave state, to Illinois, a free state, where they lived for two years before moving to Minnesota, then part of the Louisiana Territory, before returning to Missouri in 1838. Scott was then sold to Sanford. Slavery was illegal in Illinois under state law and in Minnesota under the federal statute called the Missouri Compromise, Act of March 6, 1820, 3 Stat. 545. Sanford argued that Scott was not a citizen of Missouri and hence could not bring a lawsuit in federal court based on diversity of citizenship. Scott claimed to be both a Missouri citizen and a free man, based on his having obtained freedom by domicile for a long period in a state and a territory that did not recognize the status of slavery for its domiciliaries. Sanford claimed that neither Illinois nor the Missouri Compromise could constitutionally act to deprive him of his property interest in Scott when they returned to a state that recognized property interests in slaves.]

I

. . . The plaintiff in error, who was also the plaintiff in the court below, was, with his wife and children, held as slaves by the defendant, in the State of Missouri; and he brought this action in the Circuit Court of the United States for that district, to assert the title of himself and his family to freedom. . . .

[The first question concerned whether the court had jurisdiction to hear the case. Such jurisdiction existed in federal court over suits between ``Citizens of different States,'' U.S. Const. art III, §2, cl. 1. Plaintiff Dred Scott claimed that he was a citizen of Missouri and defendant Sanford a citizen of New York. The issue that had to be decided was whether the plaintiff was a ``citizen'' as defined in the Constitution.]

The question simply is 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, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution. 1327

It will be observed, that the plea applies to that class of persons only whose ancestors were negroes of the African race, and imported into this country, and sold and held as slaves. The only matter in issue . . . is, whether the descendants of such slaves, when they shall be emancipated, or who are born of parents who had become free before their birth, are citizens of a State, in the sense in which the word citizen is used in the Constitution of the United States. . . .

The words ``people of the United States'' and ``citizens'' are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the ``sovereign people,'' and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ``citizens'' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them. . . .

[W]e must not confound the rights of citizenship which a State may confer within its own limits, and the rights of citizenship as a member of the Union. . . . [P]revious to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, every State had the undoubted right to confer on whomsoever it pleased the character of citizen, and to endow him with all its rights. But this character of course was confined to the boundaries of the State, and gave him no rights or privileges in other States beyond those secured to him by the laws of nations and the comity of States. . . .

It is very clear, therefore, that no State can, by any act or law of its own, passed since the adoption of the Constitution, introduce a new member into the political community created by the Constitution of the United States. It cannot make him a member of this community by making him a member of its own. And for the same reason it cannot introduce any person, or description of persons, who were not intended to be embraced in this new political family, which the Constitution brought into existence, but were intended to be excluded from it. 1328

The question then arises, whether the provisions of the Constitution, in relation to the personal rights and privileges to which the citizen of a State should be entitled, embraced the negro African race, at that time in this country, or who might afterwards be imported, who had then or should afterwards be made free in any State; and to put it in the power of a single State to make him a citizen of the United States, and endue him with the full rights of citizenship in every other State without their consent? Does the Constitution of the United States act upon him whenever he shall be made free under the laws of a State, and raised there to the rank of a citizen, and immediately clothe him with all the privileges of a citizen in every other State, and in its own courts?

The court thinks the affirmative of these propositions cannot be maintained. . . .

In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument. . . .

[African Americans] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion. . . .

The language of the Declaration of Independence . . . would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration; for if the language, as understood in that day, would embrace them, the conduct of the distinguished men who framed the Declaration of Independence would have been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted; and instead of the sympathy of mankind, to which they so confidently appealed, they would have deserved and received universal rebuke and reprobation.

Yet the men who framed this declaration were great men - high in literary acquirements - high in their sense of honor, and incapable of asserting principles inconsistent with those on which they were acting. They perfectly understood the meaning of the language they used, and how it would be understood by others; and they knew that it would not in any part of the civilized world be supposed to embrace the negro race, which, by common consent, had been excluded from civilized Governments and the family of nations, and doomed to slavery. They spoke and acted according to the then established doctrines and principles, and in the ordinary language of the day, and no one misunderstood them. The unhappy black race were separated from the white by indelible marks, and laws long before established, and were never thought of or spoken of except as property, and when the claims of the owner or the profit of the trader were supposed to need protection. 1329

This state of public opinion had undergone no change when the Constitution was adopted. . . .

[T]here are two clauses in the Constitution which point directly and specifically to the negro race as a separate class of persons, and show clearly that they were not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government then formed.

One of these clauses reserves to each of the thirteen States the right to import slaves until the year 1808, if it thinks proper. And the importation which it thus sanctions was unquestionably of persons of the race of which we are speaking, as the traffic in slaves in the United States had always been confined to them. And by the other provision the States pledge themselves to each other to maintain the right of property of the master, by delivering up to him any slave who may have escaped from his service, and be found within their respective territories. By the first above-mentioned clause, therefore, the right to purchase and hold this property is directly sanctioned and authorized for twenty years by the people who framed the Constitution. And by the second, they pledge themselves to maintain and uphold the right of the master in the manner specified, as long as the Government they then formed should endure. And these two provisions show, conclusively, that neither the description of persons therein referred to, nor their descendants, were embraced in any of the other provisions of the Constitution; for certainly these two clauses were not intended to confer on them or their posterity the blessings of liberty, or any of the personal rights so carefully provided for the citizen. . . .

And upon a full and careful consideration of the subject, the court is of opinion, that, upon the facts stated in the plea in abatement, Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States, and not entitled to sue in its courts. . . .

II

The act of Congress, upon which the plaintiff relies, declares that slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, shall be forever pro hibited in all that part of the territory ceded by France, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, and not included within the limits of Missouri. And the difficulty which meets us at the threshold of this part of the inquiry is, whether Congress was authorized to pass this law under any of the powers granted to it by the Constitution; for if the authority is not given by that instrument, it is the duty of this court to declare it void and inoperative, and incapable of conferring freedom upon any one who is held as a slave under the laws of any one of the States. . .1330

[The] power of Congress over the person or property of a citizen can never be a mere discretionary power under our Constitution and form of Government. The powers of the Government and the rights and privileges of the citizen are regulated and plainly defined by the Constitution itself. . . .

[An] act of Congress which deprives a citizen of the United States of his liberty or property, merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular Territory of the United States, and who had committed no offence against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law. . . .

[The] right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. The right to traffic in it, like an ordinary article of merchandise and property, was guarantied to the citizens of the United States, in every State that might desire it, for twenty years. And the Government in express terms is pledged to protect it in all future time, if the slave escapes from his owner. This is done in plain words - too plain to be misunderstood. And no word can be found in the Constitution which gives Congress a greater power over slave property, or which entitles property of that kind to less protection than property of any other description. The only power conferred is the power coupled with the duty of guarding and protecting the owner in his rights.

Upon these considerations, it is the opinion of the court that the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the line therein mentioned, is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void; and that neither Dred Scott himself, nor any of his family, were made free by being carried into this territory; even if they had been carried there by the owner, with the intention of becoming a permanent resident.

[The Court then answered Scott's contention that his sojourn in Illinois and Minnesota had rendered him free by holding that his status was to be determined by Missouri law, his current domicile, and that under Missouri law, he remained a slave.]

1331
 

Surrogacy, Slavery, and the Ownership of Life
Anita L. Allen

13 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 139, 142-144 (1990)
In the early 1800s, a happy little girl by the name of Polly Crocket was living in Illinois. One dismal autumn night, Polly was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Missouri. Her first owner was a poor farmer; the second, a wealthy gentleman named Taylor Berry whose wife trained Polly as a seamstress. Polly grew up and was permitted to marry another of Berry's slaves. Polly managed to have two children, Lucy and Nancy, before her husband was sold to a distant owner ``way down South.''

The years passed. With deaths and marriages, the ownership of Polly and her daughter was passed in and out of the Berry family. Encouraged by Polly, daughter Nancy escaped to freedom in Canada. Desperate to join her, Polly attempted to escape and made it all the way to Chicago. Because the Fugitive Slave Laws were in effect, however, ``negro-catchers'' were permitted to arrest her and return her to her owner in Missouri.

Upon return to Missouri, Polly took the bold step of finding a good lawyer. She successfully sued for her freedom on the theory that she was not a slave, but legally a free woman who had been wrongfully sold into slavery.

Now a free woman and anxious to have her family together again, Polly decided to buy her daughter Lucy out of slavery. But Lucy was not for sale. Lucy was ``legitimately'' owned by a Mr. Mitchell, who wanted to keep Lucy to please his wife. Polly filed a lawsuit against Mr. Mitchell on September 8, 1842, for the possession of her daughter, Lucy. During the seventeen-month pendency of her mother's civil suit, poor Lucy was locked away in jail.

Polly's suit finally ended in victory, and she was awarded possession of Lucy. On the final day of the trial, Polly's lawyer, the slave-holding jurist Edward Bates, summed up his case to the jury:

Gentleman of the jury, I am a slave-holder myself, but thanks to Almighty God I am above the base principle of holding anybody a slave that has a right to her freedom as this girl has been proven to have; she was free before she was born; her mother was free but kidnapped in her youth, and sacrificed to the greed of negro-traders, and no free woman can give birth to a slave child, as it is in direct violation of the laws of God and man.

This poignant story vividly illustrates the sense in which the legal concept of ownership completely lacks inherent moral content. It can work like a two-edged sword. Polly legally owned herself, yet she lived most of her life as a slave. Once she proved in court that the master who possessed her did not lawfully own her, she gained standing to sue for the recovery of her own daughter, Lucy. But Lucy was also the precious putative property of another owner, who had acquired her through a ``legitimate'' commercial transaction and was not willing to sell her to Polly. Extant property law favored Mr. Mitchell; it certainly could not compel him to sell. Thus, Polly resorted to slave law to prove unlawful possession. By proving that she was not in fact a slave at the time of her daughter's birth, Polly was able to persuade the court that she was the rightful owner of her daughter. In the end, mother and daughter owned themselves. But the institution of slavery remained intact, and Mr. Mitchell was out the price of a housemaid. 1333