Dred Scott Decision Research Paper

Decent Essays
The Dred Scott Decision

In 1846, after about 46 years of being a slave, I awoke feeling confident and brave.Today I would do something I been thinking about doing this forever.Today I went to the Missouri State Court and I asked the court to be free,claiming that I have lived in a free state and territory.But, the court claimed I was still a slave.I was so blue I felt like it was the end of my life. Then in my next trial I was declared free and I was so pleased I felt like I could jump up and touch the clouds. After the trial,my owner's widow,Eliza Emerson was so mad she decided to appeal the decision and the court and I was a slave again! I was so confused it’s equal to being able to eat that cookie then your mother says I can’t eat

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Dred Scott Decisions

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Congress and the Senate were the source behind all of the political decisions which lead to the civil war, These and many other political decisions were the reason that the North and the South could no longer stand each other and ended up going to war against each other. The Dred Scott Decision, talked about in source 10, was one major decision that the two sides were conflicted on. Slave Dred Scott sued for his freedom after having spent years living in a free state, and the final decision was that he was not allowed to sue for his freedom because he was a piece of property and not considered a person. The South happily agreed to this, but the North didn’t since they believe that slavery is wrong and that they shouldn’t deny Scott his…

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    James Armistead Biography

    • 1235 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Revolutionary era took place from 1763-1789. There were many significant African Americans during this time period. James Armistead was a slave of William Armistead in New Kent County, Virginia, volunteered to spy for the Continental army commander General Lafayette. James soon became a servant to British general Lord Cornwallis, who asked him to spy on the Americans. As a double agent, James gave unimportant information to Cornwallis, while keeping Lafayette informed about British troop strength and positions.…

    • 1235 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Maria W. Stewart, an African American educator and writer, lectures on the side effect of servitude on slaves. She states that slavery is a matter that she will die for. Even if slaves are no longer whipped they cannot progress their status socially. The irony of the American dream of freedom excludes all African Americans that are slaves. Maria Stewart backs up her argument on the emotional effect on slaves by using, similes, motifs, and irony.…

    • 776 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Professor Scully History 125-002 Jasjeet S. Waraich 10-23-17 How Abina’s Action was Shaped by the Historical Context The story of “ Abina and the Important Men” takes place in 1876. The Gold Coast has been under the English rules since 1874. During the 19th century, numerous changes, big and small, began to occur in the British ruled colonies in Africa. After many years of slave trade, fueled by the European thirst to grow, the British “officially banned the slave trade [in Africa] in 1807, and later criminalized slavery in 1874”…

    • 895 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sandford. Lincoln tried to force Douglas to choose between his principle of popular sovereignty proposed in his Kansas-Nebraska Act which created the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska and endowed the citizens the legislative power to decide, through popular sovereignty, whether or not they would allow slavery, and the decision reached by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. The case surrounded an enslaved African American man that was suing for his freedom after being held captive within the boundaries of two free states. The issues before the court had been whether or not entering “free” territory made a slave free and whether this freedom granted blacks the ability to sue in federal court. The justices ruled that under the language of the constitution did not apply to blacks because within the context of when the constitution was written, slaves were seen solely as property and had no rights.…

    • 1170 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis of a slave narrative Slavery was an unfortunate and devastating mark on American history. We talk about it and learn about it in classes but it is rare that we read about honest firsthand accounts from actual slaves. The account in question comes from the viewpoint of Tempie Herndon Durham which was saved through the passage of time by the federal writers project which can be found online via the library of congresses online affiliate. This story holds influence not only socially and politically but gives us information on the history and culture of a group of people who had been tried to be silenced which makes its interest fall under the umbrella of everyone in the united states for influencing this country and how…

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dred Scott was an African American man in the United States that sued for the freedom of himself, the freedom of his wife, and the freedom of his kids in the Dred Scott vs. Stanford case. Dred Scott believed that he and his wife should have been granted the privilege of becoming United States of America citizens because he and his wife had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years. The U.S. Supreme Court voted against Dred Scott 7-2. With the disagreement of the Supreme Court, the Dred Scott Decision was brought up. The Dred Scott Decision was a decision in which free or slaved African-Americans were not allowed to be American citizens and the federal government had power to regulate slavery.…

    • 1041 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Right Court but the Wrong Appeal Pay No Attention to the Men Behind the Curtain: The Supreme Court, Popular Culture, and the Countermajoritarian Problem is an article written by Adam Burton. His article depicts how the American people view the Supreme Court through pop culture, and how this relationship affects the public’s confidence in Judiciary Review. The article also demonstrates how the increased exposure of the Justices personal lives through highly televised confirmation hearings has not sparked the public’s interest into the inner workings of the court.…

    • 678 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    To My Dearest Nika-san, It’s March 27, 1965, and as I walk through the muddy fields of Hayneville, Alabama, I stop to look at the sky and wonder what we blacks have been through. The day before we left for the march with Dr. King (Martin Luther King Jr.), I have done a lot of preparations and packed a very small amount of items needed before I left for the march. (I have packed a blanket and purse filled with my special needs) Ma and Pa were worried about my health but I told I’d be just fine. As I walk more into the muddy fields, my legs get very heavy and tired making me want to stop and rest.…

    • 1023 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Maria W. Stewart's lecture in Boston in 1832, she conveys her position on the injustices of slavery and the cruelty that slaves experiences through the use of diction, figurative language, and her own personal experience. Altogether, these create a sense of injustice and desparity for the cause of the African Americans and their freedoms and aspirations to be something more than just servile labor. Diction is a major influence in this lecture. With a variety of words, such as "chains", "ragged", "drudgery and toil", "exhausted", "death", and "cruel", Stewart appeals to the feelings of people in an attempt to make them understand the hardships and extreme injustice that encompass the life of a slave. To continue, there is also another set…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Being A Slave

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages

    After reading and watching videos of topics about slavery, I sometimes ponder, what would it be like for me if I was in that period being a slave? Just thinking about it, is already giving me goose bumps. Let me ride my imaginary time machine and launch myself back to the year 1800s where I lived in a slavery system in colonial America that was already fully developed. My name is Jojo Deleon.…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dehumanization Of Slavery

    • 778 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In 1807, American congressmen ended the Atlantic slave trade, bringing America one step closer to abolishing slavery entirely. However, the Slave Trade Act of 1807 did little to slow slavery’s influence in America. The brand-new cotton gin revived the southern economy during the early 1800’s and intensified the flow of slavery into the west. As a result, slaves were regularly bought, sold, and transported throughout the Cotton Kingdom as desirable commodities, embodying and increasing the southerners’ wealth. Through the dehumanization of African-Americans, the monetary value assigned to slaves, and the mobility of the slave trade, it was evident that slavery was the business of trading people as commodities to further benefit the white…

    • 778 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The angles which attempted to justify slavery was based off of ignoring and the manipulation of facts or religious beliefs, which still did not fully make slavery ethically acceptable. Those who were slaves and witnessed or experienced the actuality of the situation were able to uphold the wrong that was conducted through slaveries existence, which ultimately aided their racial freedom. The enslavement of African Americans was looked upon through multiple angles and those who attempted to perceive it as a benefit found reasons to justify it, such as Richard Furman and George Fitzhugh. However, through their justification the masking of reality was unobjectionable, as the actuality of the slave situation was described through the harsh experiences…

    • 1067 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During this era, most whites owned slaves in fact on some plantations, slaves outnumbered the white owners. Before discussing the relationship between the American Revolution and black freedom, we must internalize the conditions slaves live in and why would slaves fight for freedom with possibly the ultimate sacrifice death. According to the authors of the Declaration of Independence, living under the British rule was like being a slave. However, these rights did not include enslaved Africans.…

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Decision making is is the process of making choices by setting goals, gathering information, and assessing alternative occupations (umassd.edu 2016). The three types of decision making are impulsive, rational, and dependent decisions. Everybody has and will encounter situations that will require them to make one of these types of decisions Rational decisions are a multi-step process for making choices between alternatives (boundless.com 2016). To make rational decisions, it requires for a person to think about the pros and cons of each alternative choice, before they make it.…

    • 1765 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays