Dred Scott was born a slave in Virginia around 1800 and died a free man in Missouri in 1858. Most contemporary accounts describe his life and habits as typical for someone of his place and time. Yet along the way, he gave his name to what has become the most infamous Supreme Court decision in American history.
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I do not...hesitate to avow before this House and the country, and in the presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the territories of California and New Mexico, purchased by the common blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery in this District, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon half the States of this Confederacy, I am for disunion.
Representative Robert Toombs of Georgia, 1849
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