The Case Scott v. Sanford (The Dred Scott Decision)
1104418
Vienna, in July 2014
Course: PS Kultur und Kommunikation Englisch
Teacher: Dr. Gretchen Simms
Structure:
Introduction
Historical Background
Phillis Wheatley
Her Life
Her Poetry
Conclusion
The Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott’s Life
Procedural History
Conclusion
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
This term paper is about Phillis Wheatley, and Dred Scott. They were African-American slaves, but their lives had significant cultural and historical impact, which can hardly be overestimated.
Phillis Wheatley was the first black poet to publish a book in U.S. This caused a sensation (mainly in Europe), but there were also many critics about it, and many white colonists in U.S. did not believe that a black person could write a poetry. She had to defend her authorship in a court, and she had to fight all her life with racism. I think the fact that she achieved to publish a book in 18th century in U.S. is really something outstanding.
Dred Scott and his case had even bigger impact in history than Phillis Wheatley. The Dred Scott Decision was a decision by Supreme Court that all blacks – slaves as well as free- were not and could never become citizens of United States. The Court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. It has been said that the case caused the Civil War.
This work is structured into three parts. First I will talk about the historical background (how did the slavery begin). I will mention The Triangular Trade. Afterwards I come to the first topic: Phillis Wheatley. I will describe her life, and the style of her poems. The third part is about The Dred Scott Decision. Again I will talk about Dred Scott life, and I will also cover the procedural history of his case.
Historical Background
In the 15th century began so called Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It began because the expanding European empires in the New World lacked one major resource –a work force. In most cases the indigenous people had proved to be unreliable (most of them were dying from diseases brought over from Europe), and Europeans were unsuited to the climate and suffered under tropical diseases.
Africans, on the other hand, were excellent workers: they often had experience of agriculture and keeping cattle, they were used to tropical climate, resistant to tropical diseases, and they could be “worked very hard” on plantations or mines.
In the 18th century, perhaps 6 million Africans were taken to the Americas as slaves, at least a third of them in British ships. For the British traders it was a three-legged journey, called the Triangular Trade.
The Triangular Trade (named for the rough shape it makes on a map) was lucrative for merchants in all three stages. The first stage involved taking trade goods, such as cloth, guns, tobacco, and metal goods, from Europe to Africa. These goods were exchanged for African slaves. The second stage (the middle passage) involved shipping the slaves to the Americas. The third, and final, stage involved the return to Europe with the produce from the slave-labor plantations: cotton, sugar, tobacco, molasses and rum.
With the Triangular Trade began the slavery in Americas. Phillis Wheatley was brought to America around 1760. Dred Scott was born already in America. He was born to a slave, who was brought to America from Africa.
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley was an Afro-American woman and slave and the first black poet in America to publish a book.
Her Life
Phillis was born around 1753-1754 in Africa, probably in Senegal. At the age of seven she was kidnapped and brought to the British-ruled Boston on the ship called ‘The Phillis’ (she was named after this ship). It was a shipment of “refugee” slaves, who because of the age or physical frailty were unsuited for the rigorous labor in the West Indian and Southern colonies, the first ports call after the Atlantic crossing.
The captain of the slave ship believed that Wheatley was terminally ill and he wanted to gain at least a small profit before she died. A prominent commercionalist John Wheatley purchased her as a servant for his wife Susanna. As a custom of the time she was given the Wheatley’s surname.
After the purchase, Wheatley’s described the girl as slender and evidently suffering from a change of climate, nearly naked, with no other covering than a quantity of dirty carpet about her. 1
But Wheatley was very intelligent and this fact was hard to miss. After discovering the girl’s precociousness, the Wheatley family, including Susanna, John, their kids Mary and Nathaniel, did not entirely excuse her from domestic duties, but they taught her to read and write and supported her much, as she became a part of the family. They taught her English and Christianity.
They were impressed by her quick learning, so they also taught her some Latin, ancient history, mythology and classical literature. Soon she was immersed in the Bible, British literature (particularly John Milton and Alexander Pope), and the Greek and Latin classics of Vergil, Ovid, Terence, and Homer. It was an unprecedented education for an enslaved person and for a female of any race.
Strongly influenced by her studies she began to write poetry. At the age of 12 she wrote her first poem. It was a tale of two men nearly drowned at the sea, and of their steady faith in God. This poem was published in Newport Mercury in 1767. She published more and more poems each year. Many white colonists found it difficult to believe that an African slave was writing excellent poetry, and she had to defend the authorship of her poetry in court.
In 1771 she was struggling from a chronic asthma. Wheatley’s doctor suggested that a sea voyage might improve her delicate health situation. She accompanied Nathaniel to London, who was travelling on business. Susanna also believed that Wheatley would have better chances publishing her poetry there. And it was true. In London she was well received by several dignitaries: abolitionist’s patron the Earl of Dartmouth, poet and activist Baron George Lyttleton, Sir Brook Watson, philanthropist John Thorton, and Benjamin Franklin.2 Wheatley wrote to a friend of the “unexpected and unmerited civility and complaisance with which I was treated by all”.3
They had to return unexpectedly to America whey they received letter that Mrs. Wheatley was seriously ill. While recrossing the Atlantic to reach Mrs. Wheatley, the first edition of her collections of poems called “Poem on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” was published in London in 1773. Sources disagree on whether she was freed before, during or just after this trip, or whether she was freed later.
Poems on Various Subjects is a landmark achievement in American history. In publishing it, Wheatley became the first African-American and first U.S. slave to publish a book of poems, as well as the third American woman to do so.4
After her return to Boston, her life changed significantly. She was devastated by the deaths of several Wheatley family members, including Susanna (died in 1774) and John (died in 1778). This caused that she was left to support herself as a seamstress and poet. The American Revolution intervened in her career, and the effect was not completely positive. The people of Boston – and of America and England – bought books on other topics rather than the volume of Phillis Wheatley poems.
She wrote another volume of poetry, but she was unable to publish it, due to her financial circumstances, the loss of patrons after her emancipation, and the competition from the Revolutionary war. However, some of her poems that were to be published in that volume were later published in pamphlets and newspapers.
In 1778 she married a free Afro-American man John Peters. Some of her closest friends were strongly against this marriage, although she knew him for five years. He was a free man and kept a grocery store, exchanged trade as a baker and a barber, and applied for a liquor license for a bar. Unfortunately it was a time of the Revolutionary war, and the conditions for a black man as a trader were not good, because his business was simply not salable.
He was unprepared to compete with whites in a stringent job market. To avoid fighting during the Revolutionary war, they moved temporarily from Boston to Wilmington, Massachusetts, shortly after their marriage. They struggled with constant poverty, trying to support their family.They had three children together, all of them died in infancy. In 1784 John Peters was imprisoned for a debt, leaving an impoverished Wheatley with a sickly infant son.
The racism and sexism that marked the era had forced her into a kind of domestic labor that she had not been forced to do while her freedom was held by her masters. She died on December 5, 1784, at age 31. Her infant son died three and a half hours after her death.
Critics have differed on the contribution of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry to America’s literary. Most critics agree that the fact that a slave could write and publish poetry at that time and place is itself noteworthy in history. But there have been some critics through decades which have also been split on the quality and importance of her poems. 6
Wheatley believed that the power of poetry is immeasurable.7 She used three primary elements: Christianity, classicism, and hierophantic solar worship.8
The hierophantic solar worship is what she brought with her from Africa; the worship of sun gods is expressed as part of her African culture. As her parents were sun worshipers, it may be why she used so many different words for the sun. For instance, she uses Aurora eight times, "Apollo seven, Phoebus twelve, and Sol twice."9
She speaks to the white establishment, not to fellow slaves, nor, really, for them. Historians have commented on her reluctance to write about slavery. Perhaps it was because she had conflicting feelings about the institution. About some poems, critics have said that she praises slavery because it brought her to Christianity. But, in some other poems, she wrote that slavery was a cruel fate.10
The rhyme scheme is ababcc.11
With the publications of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, she became the most famous African on the face of the earth.13
She was honored by many of America's founding fathers, including George Washington, who told her that the style and manner of her poetry exhibit a striking proof of her great poetical Talents.14
She is also honored as the first African American woman to publish a book and the first to make a living from her writing.
Poems by Phillis Wheatley:
"An Address to the Atheist" and "An Address to the Deist," 1767
"To the King's Most Excellent Majesty," 1768
"On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield" 1770
"Atheism," July 1769
"An Elegiac Poem On the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned Mr. George Whitefield," 1771
"A Poem of the Death of Charles Eliot .," 1 September 1772
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773; reprinted 1802) – a book
"An Elegy, To Miss Mary Moorhead, On the Death of her Father, The Rev. Mr. John Moorhead," 1773
"On Imagination," 1773
"To His Excellency General Washington," 1775
The Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott v. Sanford was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that African-Americans, whether slave or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court. This is unquestionably the most controversial decision in Supreme Court history. Most controversial decisions have their supporters and opponents.
They are controversial- and remain controversial- because people disagree over their meaning, validity or legitimacy. This is not the case with Dred Scott. Today is virtually impossible to find anyone who supports the decision or the outcome of the case.15
Dred Scott’s Life
Dred Scott was a name of an African-American, who was born as a slave in Virginia in 1799. There are not many documents about his early years. In 1820 his owner Peter Blow took him to St. Louis, Missouri, where he was purchased by U.S. army surgeon Dr. John Emerson in 1833. Emerson took Scott to Fort Armstrong, which was located in Illinois, a free state, had been free as a territory under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and had prohibited slavery in its constitution in 1819 when it was admitted as a state.
Following the Black Hawk’s War in 1836, the Army evacuated Fort Armstrong, and Dr. Emerson moved with Scott to Fort Snelling, which was located in the Wisconsin territory. Slavery in the Wisconsin Territory was prohibited by the United States Congress under the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise “forever prohibited” slavery in this region.17 Scott stayed in Fort Snelling until April 1836. In these years he met and married Harriet Robinson, a teen-aged slave owned by Major Lawrence Taliaferro.
Unusual for slave weddings was the fact that an actual civil ceremony took place. Taliaferro was a justice of the peace, and in that capacity he performed a formal wedding ceremony for his slave and her new husband. After the marriage, Taliaferro gave Harriet Scott to Emerson, who continued to treat the couple as his slaves. The facts that the Scotts were living in a free jurisdiction and were married in a civil ceremony with the knowledge and consent of their owners, could have been used as proof that they were in fact free.
In 1840, Emerson had to move to Florida to serve in the Seminole War. On his way there he left Scotts in St. Louis, where they were hired out to various people. Emerson died
suddenly in 1843. His widow, Irene, inherited his estate, including Scotts. For the next three years Irene leased out the Scotts as hired slaves, with the rent going to her.
In 1846, Dred tried to purchase freedom for himself and his family, but Eliza Irene Emerson refused, prompting Scott to resort to legal course.
Procedural History
After failing to purchase the freedom of his family and himself, and with the help of abolitionist legal advisers, Scott sued Emerson for his freedom in a Missouri court in 1846. He received financial assistance for his case from the son of his previous owner, Peter Blow. Scott’s lawyers assumed his case was an easy one to win. The arguments were based on precedents such as Somersett v. Stewart, Winny v. Whitesides, when the Missouri Supreme Court in 1824 freed a slave who had been taken to Illinois.
In June 1847, Scott’s suit was dismissed on a technicality- he was suing Irene Emerson for his freedom, but he failed to provide a witness to testify that he was in fact a slave belonging to her.
At the end of 1847, the judge granted Scott a new trial. Due to a major fire, a cholera epidemic, and two other continuances, the new trial did not begin until January 1850. Scott found a witness who testified that Emerson was his owner. The jury sided with Scott and his family. A jure of twelve white men in Missouri concluded that Scott’s residence in a free state and a free territory made him free.20
Irene Emerson was unwilling to accept reluctance of four slaves, and she appealed to the Supreme Court of Missouri, although by that point she had moved to Massachusetts and transferred the ownership of Scotts to her brother, John F. A. Sanford.
In 1852, in Scott v. Emerson, the Missouri Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s decision, effectively overturning 28 years of Missouri state precedent, and declared that Scott was still a slave.
Times are not now as they were when the former decision on this subject were made. Since then not only individuals but States have been possessed with a dark and fell spirit in relation to slavery, whose gratification is sought in the pursuit of measures, whose inevitable consequence must be the overthrow and destruction of our government. Under such circumstances it does not behoove the State of Missouri to show the least countenance to any measure which might gratify the spirit.
She is willing to assume her full responsibility for the existence of slavery within her limits, nor does she seek to sare or divide it with others.21
In 1853, Scott again sued his current owner, John Sanford, but now in federal court.
This was an idea by his fourth lawyer Roswell Field. The ground for taking this case to federal court was that the federal courts could hear the case under diversity jurisdiction provided in Article III, Section 2 of the U. S. Constitution.
In May 1854 the case went to trial where Judge Robert William Wells directed the jury to rely on Missouri law to settle the question of Scott’s freedom. Since the Missouri Supreme Court had held that Scott remained a slave, the jury found in favor of Sanford. Scott then appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court.
The appeal was very expensive, and Scott’s main financial patrons Blows could not afford to finance it. Moreover, Scott’s lawyer Rosewell Field, was not able to finance or even argue this case at Supreme Court. However, Montgomery Blair, a Washington lawyer well connected to Missouri politics, agreed to take the case for free. Sanford’s lawyer was Reverdy Johnson, a Maryland politician.
He was one of the most distinguished constitutional lawyers in the nation as well as a close friend of Chief Justice Taney.22
The case went to the Supreme Court in February 1856. It lasted four days, and it focused on whether blacks could be citizens of the United States, the power of the Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories, and the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise.
After the Supreme Court had heard arguments in the case, it postponed the decision, due to the presidential campaign, which was just at the top. Historians discovered that the President-elect James Buchanan wrote to his friend, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Carton, asking whether the case would be decided by the U.S. Supreme
DE
![Phillis Wheatley: The Case Scott v. Sanford (The Dred Scott Decision)
: Columbia [MO]: University of Missouri Press](https://static.hausarbeiten.club/y05Javiu90006321844344-phillis-wheatley-the-case-scott-v-sanford-.webp)