The Supreme Court’s WORST Ever Case: Dred Scott v Sandford

American History Hit

History Hit

America, History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A Supreme Court decision that sent shockwaves across America. Dred Scott v Sandford, 1857. Who was the Chief Justice responsible for the decision? On what grounds did he rule that Dred Scott, and by extension all African Americans, was not a citizen of the US? Don is joined by renowned historian Kate Masur, author of "Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement".

Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Producer is Freddy Chick.

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0:00.0	Not too long ago, I spent a few days in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, the Twin Cities.
0:07.0	And on my way to the airport, headed home, I visited historic Fort Snelling.
0:12.0	Over the centuries, much history has unfolded at Snelling, and its expansive story is well told at the fort.
0:19.0	But I was particularly interested in one room there, which
0:22.1	that day I had not expected to see. It was the room where, for something like four years,
0:28.5	1836 to 1840, a husband and wife lived with their first child, a man and woman whose names
0:35.3	are now legendary in American history.
0:38.6	This was the living quarters of Dredd and Harriet Scott.
0:42.7	Dred Scott, the Dred Scott case, Supreme Court decision of 1857, that Dredd Scott.
0:50.5	And here he was, or at least his memory, made manifest by four walls, the simplest of furnishings, and a fireplace, a living quarters in a military fort where a young family made its home, and it became the unlikliest starting point of a legal case that, by its conclusion, would shake the nation to its core.
1:26.3	Hello and welcome back to American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman here every Monday and Thursday with new episodes. Thanks for joining us. The institution of American slavery is studied historically from many angles, economics, politics, morality. But no matter the reason, we all too often lose sight of the fact that those enslaved
1:44.6	were human individuals. Think for a moment, and you might come up with a short list of famous names,
1:50.2	Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth. But that's usually because they escaped slavery.
1:56.0	And even if you came up with a list of a thousand, it's all a drop in the bucket.
2:00.2	388,000 Africans are estimated to arrive on North American shores during the centuries of the
2:06.3	Middle Passage. By the time of the Civil War, that number had grown exponentially to 3.5
2:11.9	million, 40% of the total population of the American South.
2:16.6	But there is another very famous name remembered for a uniquely specific legal reason.
2:21.3	His landed in the title of a case that came before the United States Supreme Court in 1857,
2:26.3	listing this individual as plaintiff.
2:29.3	His name, Dred Scott.
2:31.3	And his case and the notorious decision rendered by the highest court in the land
	...

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