Dred Scott was a slave, taken by his master, Dr. Emerson, from the State of Missouri to the free State of Illinois, then to Fort Snelling, near the present site of St. Paul, Minnesota. He married with his master's consent and was taken back to Missouri in 1838, where he was sold to John P.A. Sanford with his wife and children. Dred Scott sued for the liberty of himself and his family, alleging that his residence in a free State and in a Territory from which the Missouri Compromise excluded slavery established his freedom.

Both the Circuit and the Supreme Court of the United States decided against the freedom of Scott, a decision that would united the people of the North in a more determined opposition to the extension of slavery.

From Century Magazine, 1887