Dred Scott Decision Timeline

In 1846, Scott attempted to purchase his and his family's freedom, but Irene Emerson refused, prompting him to resort to legal recourse. He filed suit in St. Louis County Circuit Court on April 6, 1846, at a time when dozens of freedom suits had been won in Missouri by former slaves.

Irene Emerson's case finally went to trial for the first time on June 30, 1847, in the St. Louis Circuit Court.

Judge Hamilton finally issued the order for a new trial on December 2, 1847, after the jury's verdict was set aside due to procedural issues.

On March 17, 1848, Judge Hamilton issued the order to the St. Louis sheriff. Scott would remain in the sheriff's custody or hired out by him until March 18, 1857.

The Missouri Supreme Court agreed unanimously with the position that the case should be retried and dismissed Emerson's appeal on June 30, 1848.

The Great St. Louis Fire of 1849, a cholera epidemic, and two continuances delayed the retrial in the St. Louis Circuit Court until January 12, 1850.

In 1849 or 1850, Irene Emerson left St. Louis and moved to Massachusetts, where she married Calvin C. Chaffee, an antislavery congressman.

Image source: Calvin C. Chaffee

At the retrial, the jury directed by Judge Wells relied on Missouri law and found against Scott, ruling that he and his family remained slaves.

On February 13, 1850, Emerson's defense filed a bill of exceptions, which was certified by Judge Hamilton, setting into motion another appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court.

After the court convened on October 25, 1850, proslavery justices William Barclay Napton and James Harvey Birch persuaded John Ferguson Ryland to join them in a unanimous decision that Dred Scott remained a slave under Missouri law.

Image source: Supreme Court of Missouri

Attorney David Hall had prepared the brief for Dred Scott but died in March 1851. Field continued alone as counsel for Dred Scott and resubmitted the same briefs from 1850 for both sides.

In August 1851, both Napton and Birch lost their seats in the Missouri Supreme Court following the state's first supreme court election, with only Ryland remaining as an incumbent.

On November 29, 1851, the case was taken under consideration by the Missouri Supreme Court on written briefs alone, and a decision was reached.

On March 22, 1852, Judge William Scott announced the decision of the Missouri Supreme Court that Dred Scott remained a slave, rejecting the 'once free, always free' doctrine and ordering the trial court's judgment reversed.

On March 23, 1852, the day after the Missouri Supreme Court decision was announced, Irene Emerson's lawyers filed an order in the St. Louis Circuit Court.

On June 29, 1852, Judge Hamilton overruled the order filed by Emerson's lawyers.

The east–west railroads became insolvent immediately after the decision, causing dangerous runs on several large banks — events known as the Panic of 1857. Unlike the panic of 1837, it almost exclusively impacted the North, attributed to its system of unit banking.

Image source: Panic of 1857

Taylor Blow, son of Scott's original owner Peter Blow, purchased the Scott family and filed the manumission papers with Judge Hamilton on May 26, 1857, granting them their freedom.

Dred Scott died of tuberculosis on November 7, 1858, just months after gaining his freedom, never seeing the reversal of the decision bearing his name.

Image source: Dred Scott

In 1859, while defending John Anthony Copeland and Shields Green from charges of treason following John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, attorney George Sennott cited the Dred Scott decision, arguing successfully that since they were not citizens according to the ruling, they could not commit treason.

Image source: John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry

During the 1860 United States elections, Republicans rejected the ruling as being corrupted by partisanship and non-binding because the court had no jurisdiction over the matter.

Image source: 1860 United States presidential election

The Territorial Slavery Act of 1862 formally repudiated the Dred Scott decision, prohibiting slavery in the territories.

In 1865, after the Union's victory in the Civil War, the Court's ruling in Dred Scott was superseded by passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery.

Image source: Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, conferring full citizenship and equal rights flowing from it, directly overturning the core holding of the Dred Scott decision.

Image source: Civil Rights Act of 1866

Harriet Scott, Dred Scott's wife who had also been part of the freedom suits, died on June 17, 1876.

Image source: Harriet Robinson Scott

In 1896, during the Jim Crow era, Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenting vote in Plessy v. Ferguson, which declared racial segregation constitutional and created the concept of 'separate but equal'.

Charles Evans Hughes, writing in 1927 on the Supreme Court's history, described Dred Scott as a 'self-inflicted wound' from which the court would not recover for many years.

Image source: Charles Evans Hughes

In 1977, the Scotts' great-grandson John A. Madison spoke publicly about the family's history and the enduring significance of the Dred Scott case.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), insofar as it upheld the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade (1973), Justice Antonin Scalia compared the rationale behind the decision to Dred Scott.

In 2000, Harriet and Dred Scott's petition papers in their freedom suit were displayed at the main branch of the St. Louis Public Library.

In 2006, a historic plaque was erected at the Old Courthouse in St. Louis to honor the active roles of both Dred and Harriet Scott in their freedom suit and the case's significance in U.S. history.

Image source: Old Courthouse (St. Louis)

In 2012, a monument depicting Dred and Harriet Scott was erected at the Old Courthouse's east entrance facing the St. Louis riverfront.

Critics of Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) compared it to Dred Scott as another example of trying to settle a contentious issue through a ruling that went beyond the scope of the Constitution.

Critics of Trump v. United States, the 2024 Supreme Court decision that conferred immunity from criminal prosecution on a president's official acts, called it 'The Dred Scott of Our Time.' Other writers made the same comparison.

Image source: Trump v. United States