Dred Scott Portrait
Painted by Louis Schultze, commissioned by a "group of Negro citizens" and presented to the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, in 1882.

About the Dred Scott Case

In 1846, Dred Scott and his wife Harriet filed suit for their freedom in the St. Louis Circuit Court. This suit began an eleven-year legal fight that ended in the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a landmark decision declaring that Scott remain a slave. This decision contributed to rising tensions between the free and slave states just before the American Civil War.

The records displayed in this exhibit document the Scotts' early struggle to gain their freedom through litigation and are the only extant records of this significant case as it was heard in the St. Louis Circuit Court.

The original Dred Scott case file is located in the Office of the St. Louis Circuit Clerk.

The Revised Dred Scott Case Collection is now available. The revised collection contains the original and newly discovered records in a full-text, searchable collection including TEI encoded XML transcripts and images.