Dred Scott Vs Sandford Essay

From the beginning of time, there were laws oppressing black people. In Seventeenth Century Virginia, a law was enacted which stated that in cases where a child has one parent that is free and another that is a slave, the status of the child is determined by the mother’s status. This allowed the sexual exploitation of slave women by their owners, since their children would have no legal claim of their fathers and that their fathers could still own them as property (Foner 13). This showed how slave women were sexually taken advantage of and how their children still couldn’t become free no matter who their father was. This law protected white men and allowed them to take advantage of their female slaves with no repercussions. There was a situation

Sandford was another famous example of how the quest for freedom was further limited for blacks, and how their freedom was restricted instead of expanded. Dred Scott was a slave that was bought by an Army doctor and was living in a free state for years. The law at the time stated that if a slave lived in a territory not part of the United States for a certain period of time, they would be granted freedom. Scott then returned back to the slave state of Missouri and argued that he was to be granted his freedom. He won his case in the local court, but the case went to the Supreme Court where a supreme court judge denied his freedom. Further, the judge revoked the law stating that frontier and other free territories would no longer be free and that black people would no longer have the right to appear in court. The judge also made it a law in the Dred Scott decision that, “no black person could be a citizen of the United States”. (Foner, p. 57). The outcome of the supreme court case of Dred Scott v. Sandford showed how completely the justice system failed and hindered the rights of African Americans. This controversial case was an obvious example of how freedom didn’t change for African Americans. The laws not only show how freedom didn’t change but also depicted African Americans as objects and not