In the United States, for those who were enslaved, they were not considered citizens; they were simply property. When it comes to laws, the government, and the constitution it can all become very corrupt in little to no time. With that being said, still to this day the constitution can be warped and used in malicious ways so that if you’re not a citizen then you are not protected nor do you have any rights. Dred Scott was an african american slave who was moved to Missouri and then sold to John Emerson. According to the video by historian Matthew Pinsker in “Sound Smart: Dred Scott”, around this time is when he found his wife to be, Harriet Robinson, who was also a slave at the time. They proceeded to marry each other, and needless to say his wife then too became property of John Emerson. Later on, both Dred and his wife had two daughters which were born into slavery, which was a sad but extremely common truth. His family, being his wife and daughters, were all now the property of John Emerson. According to historian Matthew Pinsker, when Emerson took Dred’s family back to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1846, his wife and himself both filed for what is historians call and is known as freedom suits. In the video it states, “there was a doctrine in state courts called, ‘once free, always free’. If you were an enslaved person held in free territory, like the wisconsin territory, you should be freed even in a slave state like Missouri.” With that being said, Dred Scott and his wife should have won the case, but unfortunately that’s not how things panned out. In fact, eleven years later, the freedom suit had still not been resolved and was actually going up to the supreme court. This is when in 1857 the supreme court ruled against Dred Scott. According to Matthew Pinsker, the supreme court ruling had three arguments against Dred Scott and his wife. The first being that, “blacks did not have rights in federal courts as federal citizens,” the second being that, “slave states no longer had to honor the ‘once free, always free’ doctrine,” and the third being that, “congress never should have prohibited slavery in the Wisconsin territory in the first place or in any territory for that matter.” This reiterates what was stated in the beginning, which is that slaves were a mere property and had no rights. This then made is easier to rule against the Scott’s, and also made the law in itself very contraditionary.
This case become a very important part in history known as the Dred Scott Decision or The Dred Scott Case, which is when an African American slave by the name of Dred Scott and his wife were denied their freedom in what was a so called ‘free state’. When Dred Scott tried to sue for his freedom, he was quickly denied. Looking back at this case in history opens the eyes of many people being that it shows that slavery wasn’t only in the southern states, and that the law itself was always being twisted and turned into whatever it found favorable, in this case it being slavery. In addition to that, even though the case was lost, according to historian Matthew Pinsker in “Sound Smart: Dred Scott”, the Scott family was able to attain their freedom being that, “The children of the original owners had become anti-slavery, and had funded their legal case bought the family in 1857 and freed them.” Whilst Dred’s freedom was short lived being that he passed away one year later, his family was able to live their rest of their lives as ‘free people’.
At around the same time many abolitionist came about. According to Dictionary.com and abolitionist is “(especially prior to the Civil War) a person who advocated or supported the abolition of slavery in the U.S.”. In other terms, an abolitionist is someone who, at the time, believed of overthrowing slavery who may/may not use violence as a way to abolish slavery. One of these abolitionists was John Brown. John brown was an abolitionist who according to the article by History.com, John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, believed that the only way to overthrow slavery was through “bloodshed”. John Brown believed that the only way that slavery would become abolished was by literally fighting it. According to the article, John would travel with his five sons to fight against “pro-slavery forces”. In fact, on October 16 of 1859, according to the article, during the John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, “Brown and his band overran the arsenal. Some of his men rounded up a handful of hostages, including a few slaves. Word of the raid spread, and by morning Brown and his men were surrounded.” This raid took place near Harpers Ferry, hence the name of the raid, and his men were made up of other abolitionists and even men of color who had the same views as him. That same night John Brown was captured by Robert E. Lee and his troops, the U.S. Marines. According to the same article by History.com, John Brown was then tried and found guilty for “treason and murder” and was even sentenced to murder. Before his death, as mentioned in the article, John brown stated, “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” This just goes to reiterate how much Brown believed in what he was doing, and in the way he was going about it. He, as many others after him and this raid occurred, believed that the only way to abolish slavery was through violence. In a way, this raid later began to signify more to people being that just like the Dred Scott case it may have been unsuccessful to a certain degree, it influenced people to open their minds and essentially view things differently through the tensions that derived from it. These two events can be linked being that they both had seemingly successful endings, yet they caused tensions to arise which lead to the Civil war; they, the two events, were just fuel to the fire that was already burning.