Shining City Audio, a John Meacham and C-13 original studio.

March 6, 1857, the Dred Scott decision is announced.

I'm John Meacham, and this is Reflections of History.

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It was Friday, March 6, 1857, only two days after the inauguration of James Buchanan.

The man who had administered the oath to the new president, Roger Brooke Tawny, the chief

justice of the United States, now sat in the Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol basement

to announce the opinion of the court in the case of Dred Scott.

For a decade from 1833 to 1843, Scott and enslaved man had been taken from Missouri to military

posts in Illinois and in the Wisconsin territory, both of which were above the line established

by the Missouri Compromise, before being brought back south of the line.

Scott had married and had two children while on free land.

In his forcible return to a slave state, Scott sued for his and his family's freedom

in the St. Louis Circuit Court.

Under a legal principle established in Missouri, known as Once Free, Always Free, a lower court

agreed with Scott.

In a major victory for the pro-slavery cause, however, the State Supreme Court ruled against

him in a decision issued on March 22, 1852.

In the state court's majority opinion, Missouri Justice William Scott acknowledged the decision

...