Dred and Harriet Scott: A Family's Struggle for Freedom

By Gwenyth Swain

The landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford, in which the slave Dred Scott was denied freedom for himself and his family, raised the ire of abolitionists and set the scene for the impending conflict between the northern and southern states. While most people have heard of the Dred Scott Decision, few know anything about the case's namesake. In this meticulously researched and carefully crafted biography of Dred Scott, his wife, Harriet, and their daughters, Eliza and Lizzie, award-winning children's book author Gwenyth Swain brings to life a family's struggle to become free.

Beginning with Dred's childhood on a Virginia plantation and later travel with his masters to Alabama, Missouri, Illinois, and the territory that would become Minnesota, this "family biography" vividly depicts slave life in the early and mid-nineteenth century. At Fort Snelling, near St. Paul, Dred met and married Harriet, and together they traveled with their master to Florida and then Missouri, finally settling in St. Louis, where the Scotts were hired out for wages. There they began marshalling evidence to be used in their freedom suit, first submitted in 1846. Their case moved through local and state courts, finally reaching the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857. But the Court's decision did not grant them the freedom they craved. Instead, it brought northern and southern states one step closer to the Civil War.

How did one family's dream of freedom become a cause of the Civil War? And how did that family finally leave behind the bonds of slavery? In Dred and Harriet Scott: A Family's Struggle for Freedom, Swain looks at the Dred Scott Decision in a new and remarkably personal way. By following the story of the Scotts and their children, Swain crafts a unique biography of the people behind the famous court case. In the process, she makes the family's journey through the court system and the ultimate decision of the Supreme Court understandable for readers of all ages. She also explores the power of family ties and the challenges Dred and Harriet faced as they sought to see their children live free.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
• Release date: Jan 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9780873517324

Gwenyth Swain

Gwenyth Swain is the author of more than two dozen books for young readers. A two-time winner of a Minnesota Book Award for children's nonfiction, she loves history and historical fiction. Ms. Swain runs the middle school and high school libraries at Twin Cities Academy in St. Paul. Formerly, she was a costumed history player at historic Fort Snelling, a soda jerk, and a bookstore clerk.

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A Family’s Struggle for Freedom

Gwenyth Swain

Borealis Books is an imprint of the Minnesota Historical Society Press.

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© 2004 by Gwenyth Swain. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

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Acknowledgments

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE: Dred and the Blow Boys

CHAPTER TWO: Big Changes

CHAPTER THREE: Meeting Harriet

MAP: Dred and Harriet Scott’s Travels

CHAPTER FOUR: Young and Likely

CHAPTER FIVE: Freedom Lost and Found and Lost Again

CHAPTER SIX: The Dred Scott Decision

CHAPTER SEVEN: Free at Last

Glossary

Chronology

Notes

Bibliography

Picture Credits

The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of many individuals and organizations to this book.

For their helpful comments on the manuscript in progress and for generous sharing of expertise, I thank the following individuals: Daniel S. Dupre; Walter Ehrlich; Mary Jane McDaniel; Marcia Marshall; Bob Moore, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial; Thomas Shaw, Historic Fort Snelling; and Shannon M. Pennefeather.

For research assistance, I acknowledge the following people and places: Karen Blackwell; Alice Scott Burris; Thomas Carney, Old Huntsville Magazine; Wayne Cosby, Southampton, Virginia, Circuit Court; Thomas Dewey, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial; Sherry Falter; Noel Holobeck, St. Louis Public Library; Thomas Kenny; Office of the Judge of Probate, Huntsville, Alabama; Ranee Pruitt, Huntsville—Madison County Public Library Archives; the reference staffs of the Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin state historical societies; Darrell A. Russel; and Joyce Williams and Minneola Dixon, Oakwood College Archives.

For their support of this project from its inception, particular thanks go to the staff of Borealis Books and to Debbie Miller.

And many thanks to my sister Christanne Traxler and to my very patient husband, Vince Dolan.

Children are precious. Every parent knows that. Yet slaves in America were never really free to hold onto their children. They couldn’t keep their babies close to them. Slave babies belonged not to their parents, but to Master.

When a slave mother went to work in the fields at harvest-time, when all hands were needed, she laid her baby down under a tree or under a bush alongside the field. She hoped the shade held until noontime. That’s when she would be allowed to hold and feed and comfort her baby again.

When a slave father drove his master’s carriage into town, he worried about the young child he left behind at the master’s big house. He hoped the child wouldn’t get into trouble. Elderly slaves often looked after the youngest slave children, but boys and girls as young as four or five were put to work. They ran errands, took water to other slaves working in the fields, or helped look after younger children.

It’s likely that Dred Scott’s first job was looking after a baby. A white baby, the son of his master. Fan the flies away from him. Keep him from crying. Watch for when he wets his diaper. All these things a slave boy of four or five could do.

Years later Dred asked for help from them boys he was raised with, the Blow boys, sons of his master, Peter Blow. He asked them to help him fight for his freedom—and for the freedom of his wife, Harriet, and their children, Eliza and Lizzie.

That fight has a name: the Dred Scott Decision. The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., made the decision about Dred’s freedom in 1857. The verdict divided this country. Many think it helped to bring about a bloody, bloody war between the southern and the northern states.

Historians say the Court’s decision was all about states’ rights, citizenship rights, and a host of other big and important ideas. But to Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott, it was simple. It was about children. It was about how precious their daughters were to them. It was about a dream Dred and Harriet had.

They dreamed that their children—the daughters of slaves—would live free.

Dred and the Blow Boys

Blows had been important, wealthy planters in Virginia since the 1600s. Southampton County had been their home since long before the Revolutionary War. And the Olde Place had been a Blow family plantation for years before Dred Scott came to live there sometime in the early 1800s.

Dred may first have been a slave in Mary Scott’s family. Mary was a white Virginia woman who married one of the Blows—Richard—in 1774. Life in Virginia in those days was hard, even for wealthy whites. The land around the Olde Place was swampy, and lots of people became sick and died. Mary was dead by 1781. Just about the only thing she left behind was a son, Peter Blow. Maybe somebody in Mary’s family gave that boy Peter some slaves and one of those slaves had a baby named Dred. The first anyone heard of a slave named Dred Scott, he belonged to Peter Blow.

Dred was a fairly common name among Virginia slave boys. Scott was the last name of many whites in the area—and of some free blacks. But Dred Scott didn’t go by two names then. No slave did. Slave owners didn’t want slaves thinking they were like free blacks. So Dred was just plain Dred, or Boy, depending on the mood of his master.

Dred’s master, Peter, was one of the least important and least wealthy of the Blows of Southampton County. But that didn’t mean he was unimportant or poor. He owned 860 acres along the Gum Branch of the Nottoway River. His land wasn’t too far downstream from Tower Hill. That