There have been several cases in the history of the
             Supreme Court that have had a powerful impact on both the highest
             court of the land and the history of the United States. The Dred
             Scott decision can definitely be included in this category of
             monumental cases that changed the course of American history.
             Until this decision the Supreme Court had a flawless reputation.
             Its prestige and credibility were beyond reproach. This high
             regard for the Supreme Court made people on both sides of the
             slavery issue turn to it in the hope that what could not be
             resolved in the political world could be solved in the legal
             world by the highest court of the land. But this was really
             expecting too much of judicial power. The major error associated
             with this case was the misguided belief that a flaming political
             problem, slavery, could become manageable by calling it a legal
             problem and handing it over to the courts to resolve.
             In the Dred Scott case the decision was based on
             "expediency not principle." The big problem was trying to use
             judicial power to settle a major political problem. Although the
             Dred Scott decision may have been the result of a trial , in
             reality it was a case of the court battling with the complex
             issue of slavery, especially in the territories, in the mid
             In order to tell the story of a slave you have to tell the
             story of his master. The slave does not have an identity or
             history of his own. In Virginia, Peter Blow and his family had
             many slaves. Among these slaves was a young man named Sam, or as
             we know him today, Dred Scott. Peter Blow decided to move his
             estate to Alabama and then to the thriving port city of St.
             Louis. During these years, Dred married and had a child. After
             the death of the Blows, Dred was sold to Dr. Emerson, an army
             surgeon. He and Scott traveled through Illinois and Minnesota.
             When Dr. Emerson died , Dred Scott was sent back to St. Lo...