Dred Scott

Born 1799 in VA

Died 1858

• African American slave who sued for his family’s freedom in 1857.

• The Supreme Court ruled against him, which angered many anti-slavery defenders and increased tensions between the North and South ahead of the Civil War.

• Ultimately freed by a sympathetic owner, he soon died but his wife lived to see the 13^th Amendment passed, which forever abolished slavery.

“The Supreme Court kept me from my freedom.”