Human Not Property.

The Dred Scott Case
People & Events
Dred Scott's fight for freedom
1846 - 1857
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2932.html

I found this piece of writing on PBS Online
This relates to topics in class because we have been studying slavery as well as some things about the Supreme Court Cases.

Dred Scott was a black man yearning for his freedom, after being a slave all his life. First Scott offered his owner $300 for his freedom which was refused. After that he took it to the courts. He sued for his freedom in 1847, that was his first trial and he lost on a technicality because he could not prove that him and his wife were owned by the widow Mrs. Emerson. A year later he went to court again and the St.Louis circuit court ruled that Scott and his family were free. Two years later the Missouri Supreme court reversed the decision of the lower court forcing them to be enslaved again. They went through many trials and they were denied of their freedom. In 1856 Scott went to the supreme court which had many biases about slavery because most of them were hired by presidents who were for slavery and they owned slaves themselves.

In 1857 the decision of the court was read which stated the following, "-- a staunch supporter of slavery -- wrote the "majority opinion" for the court. It stated that because Scott was black, he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue." Which is like basically saying that because they were black they are not considered human more like property and therefore they are not citizens and they cannot sue. A precedent that they used was that because Scott was black he was not citizen and he could not sue. The causes of this decision would have to be the following:
The southern slave owners took it well.
The decision made many northerners very angry they were "outraged" as said in the text.
Something else that was cause by this decision would have to be , that it greatly influenced the nomination of Abraham Lincoln in the Republican Party and then later into the elections.

This subject connect to modern America because there is no slavery now but certain races are still seen as lower than the white race. There is still a lot of racism and discrimination, in some countries more than others. There are groups who still want what we had back then, they feel that some races are abominations, an that they are lower. I don't think that is a good thing because we all live in this country as free men, the way it should have been since the beginning. Somethings that I ask myself would be, Why were black people not seen as humans like everyone else? Why was there slavery in the first place if we are all equal? Those are just some things that I think about. We are all created equal, we all are human and we all have the same rights.