Person · 1799–1858
Dred Scott
The enslaved man whose decade-long lawsuit for freedom produced the Supreme Court's most infamous decision (1857) — and helped push the nation toward civil war.
His case is the hinge of the [[slave-law]] thread.
Dred Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that his enslaver had taken him to live in free territory. After eleven years, the Supreme Court ruled in 1857 not only against Scott but that no person of African descent could be a U.S. citizen, and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories.
The decision outraged the North, energized the antislavery movement, and is widely seen as a catalyst of the Civil War. Scott and his family were soon freed by private sale; he died of tuberculosis the next year.