Harriet scott biography
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Harriet Robinson Scott was an enslaved woman whose determination to free herself and her family made history. She and her husband, Dred Scott, spent years living in free territory in what is now Minnesota. In the s, the Scotts sued for their freedom in Missouri. Their case made its way to the Supreme Court. In , the Court ruled against the family. Dred Scott v. Sandford hastened the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War. Historians regard it as one of the worst and most consequential Court rulings in U.S. history.
Slavery at Fort Snelling
Harriet Robinson was born enslaved in Virginia around In the early s her enslaver, Lawrence Taliaferro, brought her to Fort Snelling in what was then the Northwest Territory.[1] Slavery was illegal there. But it was common for military officers to break the law bygd bringing enslaved people with them when they were reassigned to different postings.
In , the man who would become Robinson’s husband arrived: Dred Scott. Scott and Robinson met and married inom
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Harriet Robinson Scott
Born: ?
Died: June 17, (age 61?)
Missouri Hometown: St. Louis
Region of Missouri: St. Louis
Categories: African Americans, Leaders and Activists, Women
Introduction
Harriet Robinson Scott was an enslaved woman who tried for more than a decade to gain her freedom through the court system. In separate cases that were later combined, Harriet Scott and her husband, Dred, sued for their freedom before several courts in Missouri. Their case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC. It is one of the most important cases ever tried in the United States.
Harriet Robinson was born into slavery in Virginia around She was enslaved by Major Lawrence Taliaferro (pronounced &#;Tolliver&#;) who served as a federal Indian agent. Major Taliaferro, a Virginian, was assigned to Fort Snelling around and served there for almost twenty years. Fort Snelling was a military fort and fur-trading outpost on the upper Mississip
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The story of Dred Scott is a study in "the power of one," and the yearning of the human spirit to be free. Dred Scott was born into slavery in , in the state of Virginia, to his owners, the slave-holding Peter Blow family. His early life coincided with the period of the Louisiana Purchase from France, the ensuing battles for and against expanding slavery into the territory, the admission of Missouri as a slave state, and the anti-slavery provision of the Missouri Compromise.
In , Congress admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state, opening it to a large migration of white people and their slaves westward from the southern slave states, expanding and widening the slave trade as they went. Joining the migration, the Blow family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, taking Dred Scott with them. There, they sold him to Dr. John Emerson, a military surgeon, who was stationed at Jefferson Barracks. Dred Scott served Dr. Emerson for the next twelve years, traveling w