A nine-foot monument was erected in Calvary Cemetery to honor Dred Scott, who was buried there. Scott challenged slavery in court and, in so doing, helped spark the Civil War.

The monument was dedicated on September 30th in North St. Louis.

Dred Scott had a “familiar name but an unfamiliar story,” said Lynne Jackson, founder and president of the foundation and great-great-granddaughter of Dred and Harriet Scott. “This monument has the real estate to tell people who he is and why he is important. We hope people walk away with a greater understanding and appreciation of his impact.”

The foundation, which works to educate the public about the significance of the Dred Scott decision and the struggle for the freedom of Dred and Harriet Scott through commemoration, education, and reconciliation, held a GoFundMe campaign to fund the memorial. 

The monument also was made possible through a contribution from the Mellon Foundation.

The Scotts claimed they should be granted their freedom because Dred lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years, where slavery was illegal, and laws in those jurisdictions said that slaveholders gave up their rights to slaves if they stayed in these areas for extended periods.

In a landmark case, the United States Supreme Court decided 7–2 against Scott, finding that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States, and therefore, Scott could not bring suit in federal court under diversity of citizenship rules.

Moreover, Scott’s temporary residence in a free territory outside Missouri did not bring about his emancipation because the Missouri Compromise, which made that territory free by prohibiting slavery north of the 36°30′ 

parallel was unconstitutional because it “deprived citizens of their [slave] property without due process of law.”

Although Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had hoped to settle issues related to slavery and congressional authority by this decision, it aroused public outrage, deepened sectional tensions between the northern and southern states, and hastened the eventual explosion of their differences into the Civil War.

President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and FifteenthAmendments—nullified the decision.

The Scotts were manumitted by a private arrangement in May 1857. 

Dred Scott died of tuberculosis a year later.