| Dred Scott was the slave of John Emerson, a United States Army surgeon who, in 1834, took him from Missouri to live in Illinois and then Wisconsin Territory, both of which forbade slavery. Three years after Emerson’s death in 1843, Scott sued the surgeon’s widow for his freedom, arguing that his residence in a free state and a free territory made him free. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided in 1857 that the government could not make citizens either free or slaves, and that no black could claim U.S. citizenship. |
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