July 16, 2018 • 30 mins
Dred Scott v. Sandford is one of the most notorious Supreme Court cases of all time. It wasn’t just about Dred Scott. It was also about his wife Harriet and their daughters Eliza and Lizzy. This episode covers Dred and Harriet, how they met, and what their lives were like before petitioning for their freedom in 1846.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to STUFH you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We've had
kind of a running theme of landmark Supreme Court decisions
on the show. Yeah, they come up from time to time. Yeah,
(00:24):
we have not gotten to possibly the most notorious one
in all of United States history, which is Dread Scott
versus Sandford that was decided in eighteen fifty seven. So
I had already put this episode on the schedule to
record today when by coincidence, it suddenly became very timely
because I en the U. S. Supreme Court issued its
(00:46):
decision in Trump versus Hawaii, which upheld Proclamation Number that's
the revised travel band that restricts entry into the United
States from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and
yeah in and in response to that decision, Representative Keith
Ellison of Minnesota compared the decision in Trump versus Hawaii
(01:06):
to Dread Scott, and then so did David D. Cole
of the a c l U, who wrote an editorial
that was published in the Washington Post that brought up
both dread Scott and Karamatsu versus United States, and we
talked about that one in our episode on Executive Order
ninety six. So suddenly searching dread Scott on Google was
bringing up thousands of news headlines instead of history sites
(01:28):
and archives of Supreme Court decisions. But the facts of
this case itself are unchanged, you be, in spite of
all that news coverage. So rather than shelving the topic
for later as for some reason too much of a
hot button, we're going to stick to my original plan.
Talk about the court decision that ruled the enslaved Africans
and their descendants weren't and could never be citizens of
(01:50):
the United States, whether they were free or not. And
we're also going to talk about the people who were
seeking their freedom in this case, because it wasn't just
about dread Scott. A lot of times summed up as
like dread Scott was enslaved and he was suing for
his freedom. It was also about his wife, Harriet and
their daughters, Eliza and Lizzie. And this is an accidentally
a two parter, so we're going to talk about it
(02:11):
for two episodes. Accidental two parter Uh. To get back
to the more serious matter of the story, we know
very little about dread Scott's background. He was born sometime
around eighteen hundred in Virginia, probably in Southampton County, and
his earliest owners that we know about were Peter Blow
and Elizabeth Taylor Blow, who were planters, but it is
(02:33):
not clear whether he was enslaved to them from birth
or whether they purchased him sometime later. By eighteen eighteen, though,
dread Scott was definitely part of the blows enslaved workforce,
and eighteen eighteen that's when the Blows moved to Alabama,
where they continued to work in agriculture. They moved with
their six children and with several enslaved people, including dread Scott.
(02:55):
While living in Alabama, the Blows also had two more children.
Then in eighteen thirty, the Blows decided to give up farming.
They moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where they opened a
boarding house known as the Jefferson Hotel, and they took
some of their enslaved labor force with them, once again,
including dread Scott. Elizabeth Blow died in eighteen thirty one
(03:16):
and Peter Blow died the next year and around the
time of Peter Blow's death, dread Scott was sold to
doctor John Emerson. There's no surviving documentation of this sale,
and we don't really know whether Peter Blow handled it
himself before he died or whether his heirs handled it
as part of his estate after his death. One of
(03:36):
the Blow sons, Henry Taylor Blow, testified in court that
his father had sold dread Scott, but there's not a
paper trail to back it up, and the timeline actually
suggests that the transaction might have taken place later, after
Peter Blow had died. Dr Emerson was a surgeon. In
his background is also a little bit unclear. He got
his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in eighteen
(03:58):
twenty four, and it seems as though he was either
born in Pennsylvania or that he immigrated there from Ireland, regardless,
though as far as we know, he lived and worked
in Pennsylvania for most of his life before entering the u. S.
Army is a surgeon. In eighteen thirty three, he was
deployed to Fort Armstrong, Illinois, which is referred to as
Rock Island in court documents. Emerson probably purchased dread Scott
(04:23):
in St. Louis on the way to Illinois to act
as his personal servant and to provide manual labor on
a land claim that Emerson staked out for a cabin.
It was extremely common for army officers to take slaves
with them to the forts and outposts where they were stationed.
Often these were in very remote locations without any sort
of white community or settlement, to provide a civilian labor
(04:46):
force to handle things like cooking and laundry and manual labor.
This practice included taking enslaved people into places where slavery
was outlawed under state law or under the terms of
the Northwest Ordinance or the Missouri Compromise eies so as
a quick refresher, The Northwest Ordinance was passed in seventy seven.
It established a government for the territory northwest of the
(05:09):
Ohio River, along with a process for how parts of
that territory could be admitted to the Union as states.
And the Northwest Ordinance was clear on the subject of slavery. Quote,
there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the
said territory otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof
(05:29):
the party shall have been duly convicted. The Northwest Ordinance
did allow for fugitive slaves to be returned to their owners,
though the Missouri Compromise was past in eighteen twenty, and
we have talked a lot about it on the show,
particularly in our episode about the Honey War. The Missouri
Compromise allowed Missouri to be admitted into the Union as
(05:49):
a slave state, while Maine was also admitted as a
free state. To preserve the balance between the slave and
the free states, the Missouri Compromise declared that slavery and
involuntary servitude other than in punishment for a crime, would
not be permitted in territory that was north of thirty
six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude. So Emerson was
(06:11):
being sent to Fort Armstrong, Illinois, where slavery had previously
been outlawed under the Northwest Ordinance and was also mostly
outlawed in the state constitution when Illinois joined the Union
in eighteen eighteen. Although there were a number of exceptions,
Illinois didn't fully outlost slavery except in the punishment for
a crime, until eighteen forty eight, after many of the
(06:33):
events in these episodes that were doing had already happened,
but in spite of that prohibition. Dr Emerson was taking
an enslaved person with him, as were other people that
were stationed there. Emerson probably stopped in St. Louis specifically
to buy a slave, or made it a point to
do it while he was already in St. Louis for
(06:54):
other reasons. Since it sits along the Mississippi River, St.
Louis was one of the easiest cities to reach from
a lot of the nation's more remote territory. It was
a frequent stopping point on the way to the frontier,
so the city had a really thriving slave trade, selling
enslaved Africans to members of the military as they either
passed through or came back to Missouri for that purpose.
(07:15):
Emerson was not from a slave state. Pennsylvania had passed
a gradual emancipation law in March of seventeen eighteen, and
by the time Emerson finished medical school there were fewer
than two hundred people still enslaved in the state. It
doesn't seem as though he was from a slave owning family,
and as far as we know, dread Scott is the
(07:36):
only person he ever enslaved. There are questions about whether
he later enslaved Scott's wife and children, and we're going
to get to those in just a bit. So this
is not at all to be extremely clear to suggest that, oh,
he only enslaved one person, so it wasn't that bad.
It's more that slave states had a whole system of
social order that revolved around slavery, and it dictated how
(07:58):
white people enslave. He was behaved around each other. But
Emerson had grown up in Pennsylvania, where slavery was not
nearly as much of a visible daily presence as it
was in the Slave States, and this almost certainly affected
how he treated dread Scott in some ways. The amount
of autonomy and respect that Emerson granted to Scott was
(08:20):
more in line with what would be extended to a freeman,
but legally, Scott was still definitely Emerson's property. Emerson remained
at Fort Armstrong until it was abandoned on May fourth,
eighteen thirty six. At that point, he was transferred to
Fort Snelling in Wisconsin Territory in what's now Minnesota, which
was at the time free territory. We'll get to that
(08:41):
part after a sponsor break Today, Fort Snelling, Minnesota is
practically next door to Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport, but
in eighteen thirty six it was pretty much in the
middle of nowhere. As we said before the break, there
were no white settlements anywhere nearby. Most of the indigenous
(09:05):
peoples in the area were also nomadic, and they didn't
have permanent settlements or seasonal camps near the fort either. Also,
the United States being at war with a lot of
the indigenous population during this time would have made that
an unlikely workforce if such a community had existed. That's
really an understatement, and it's also a whole other topic
outside the scope of these episodes. Virtually everyone in Fort
(09:28):
Snelling was a soldier and officer, an officer's wife, or
an enslaved African, and nearly all of the officers enslaved
at least one person. Most of the enslaved Africans had
been brought along with officers from their previous postings enslave
states and territories, or they had been purchased in St. Louis.
It was at Fort Snelling that dread Scott met Harriet Robinson,
(09:51):
who was also from Virginia. She was enslaved to Major
Lawrence Tolliver. Tolliver was the Indian Agent for the Upper
Mississippi Valley region. The Indian Agent was a government official
who acted as a liaison between the United States government
and the indigenous population. Tolliver was also the Justice of
the Peace, and the title Major was really honorific. He
(10:12):
had served in the military, but he resigned when he
was appointed Indian Agents. Everybody still called him major, but
he was not an actual major anymore. In eighteen thirty
six or eighteen thirty seven, when Harriet was about seventeen
and Dread was about forty, they got married. They had
an actual civil ceremony officiated by Major Tolliver. It was
(10:34):
not common at all for enslaved people to have a
formal and legally recognized marriage, nor was it common at
all for a Justice of the Peace to officiate a
marriage between enslaved people. This was so unusual that a
number of historians have argued that by performing this civil marriage,
Tolliver was recognizing Harriet and possibly also Dread as free. Yeah,
(10:59):
the Justice of the Peace just just did not perform
marriages of enslaved people. Like enslave people weren't regarded as
having any kind of right to marriage, and marriages between
enslaved people were not legally sanctioned in any way, so
this was highly unusual. Yeah. When we've talked about enslaved
people getting married on the podcast before, it is usually
a quiet, private affair. It certainly does not usually involve
(11:22):
their owners in any way, let alone inefficient. Yeah, and
even if their owners are involved in some way, it's
not usually something that affords any kind of legal status
or protection in anyway. So this was like, this was
not what normally happened at all. After their wedding, Harriet
and dread Scott lived together as a married couple, with
(11:42):
both of them working for Dr Emerson. But it's really
not clear whether Emerson considered Harriet to be his property.
Like we said, it's not clear whether Tolliver was essentially
freeing her with this whole marriage that he officiated. But
Emerson did not stay in Fort Snelling for very long
after that. He been asking for a transfer to St.
Louis for quite some time, and that transfer was finally granted.
(12:05):
He left on October thirty seven. In warm weather, people
typically traveled between St. Louis and Fort Snelling by steamboat,
but by October of eighteen thirty seven. The Upper Mississippi
River was already frozen over in a lot of places,
so to get to his much requested new assignment, Emerson
had to travel by sled and canoe. It was not
(12:28):
feasible for him to take the Scots with him, so
he left them behind. Although he seems to have left
them essentially unsupervised, they almost certainly continued to work for
other officers at the fort during this time. This is
one of several places in the Scots Lives that people
ask why they didn't take this opportunity to escape. After all,
(12:48):
Dr Emerson was gone, and they had also been given
some degree of autonomy. They both had the freedom to
come and go from the fort as long as they
got all of their work done. In this case, the
answer is really simple. This was a remote part of
Wisconsin territory in late October. If they had left, they
would have had nowhere to go. Getting to the nearest
permanent settlement would have required days of hard travel through
(13:11):
frigid weather with really little to survive off of on
the way. It also wasn't likely that they would have
been able to find refuge with the area's indigenous peoples
who were facing rampant hunger and poverty. At about this
same time, an enslaved woman named Rachel, who had been
at Fort Snelling, successfully sued for her freedom in St. Louis.
(13:32):
The Scots, especially Harriet, probably heard about this, but it
would be almost ten years before they filed a similar
suit themselves. Soon after arriving in St. Louis, dr Emerson
was transferred to Louisiana. There he met and married Eliza
Irene Sandford, who was known as Irene, and in thirty
eight he sent for the Scots to join him and
(13:54):
his new wife in Louisiana. Once the Mississippi River had thawed,
the Scots traveled by steamboat to Louisiana, going from free
to slave territory, and by this point Harriet was pregnant.
But almost immediately after the Scots arrived in Louisiana territory,
Emerson turned them all around and went back to St.
Louis and from there back to Fort Snelling again. Harriet
(14:17):
Scott gave birth to a daughter, Eliza, aboard the steamboat
on the way there, north of the dividing line between
slave and free territory that was set down in the
Missouri Compromise. As a side note, we don't know who,
if anyone, Eliza Scott was named for. A lot of
people assume it was for Dr. Emerson's new wife, but
the Scots knew a lot of Elizabeth's, including another enslaved
(14:41):
woman at Fort Snelling. It could have been in some
way for all of those Elizabeth could have been for
none of the Elizabeth. They might have just liked nicknames
for Elizabeth. Yeah. Uh, that's one of those things where
I always feel like it's a decision that you can't
ever really know, because you can't unrevel a person's thought
(15:02):
process back to where it begins. So it's hard to
just define and say, oh, it was named well, maybe well,
and the the assumption that they named their baby after
their owner's new wife is kind of gross, Like it
if that's documented somewhere, that's fine, But the fact that
so many people just assume, oh, they must have named
(15:22):
the baby for their owner's new wife, Like that's kind
of a gross assumption to make, even without all of
the layers of grossness of slavery involved. Just assuming people's
intentions and naming their children is weird to me. So
then to add on to it, all of that gross layering.
I'm like, what, why why you got to do that? Um?
(15:42):
The next winter, Dr Emerson arranged for the Scots to
have their own quarters at Fort Snelling, including their own stove.
It was once again not common at all for enslaved
people to have their own quarters, and stoves were in
very short supply. They were so scarce that when Emerson
asked for one for the Scots, the quartermaster refused, and
(16:03):
in the ensuing argument, the quartermaster punched Emerson in the face.
Emerson left and then came back and threatened the quartermaster
with his pistols. This ultimately led to Emerson being arrested,
but he did get that stove for the Scots. This
is another thing people point to that suggests that at
Fort Snelling, Emerson and others may have considered the Scots
(16:25):
to be free. Getting into a fist fight about a
stove for your enslave workforce was also not what would
be expected of a white person. So on May nine,
eighteen forty, Dr. Emerson was transferred to Florida because the
ongoing Seminole Wars, along with nearly all the other military
personnel at Fort Snelling in the four years since the
(16:47):
Scots had first arrived in Wisconsin Territory, the fort had
become a little less remote. A collection of squatter cabins
had been built up around it. But at the same
time that the government cleared out the fort for the
Seminar Wars, it also decided to evict all the squatters
and burned out all the cabins. The burning of the
cabins meant that the Scots would have nowhere to stay
(17:08):
if they'd tried to stay behind, they also would have
had no way to support themselves there, so once again
they had little choice but to travel south into slave
territory with the Emerson's. They got to St. Louis, where
they stayed with Mrs Emerson and We're also hired out
to work for other people. In St. Louis. The Scots
had another daughter, Lizzie. They had also had two sons
(17:30):
who did not survive infancy. For the next few years,
the Scott family were all together in St. Louis. They
made friends, including reconnecting with some of the Blow family,
and that was the people that had owned Dread Scott
from the time he was young, possibly from his birth.
By this point, the Blow family was kind of full
of contradictions. Several of them had made connections among St.
(17:53):
Louis's abolitionist community, but some of them also continued to
own slaves themselves. Some of the those daughters had also
married into prominent, affluent families. All these connections, though in
spite of all their contradictions, would eventually help the Scott's
sue for their freedom, and the Blow family would help
finance their court cases. Harriet also joined the Second African
(18:16):
Baptist Church of St. Louis. It isn't clear if Dread
was a member, but their church family was a source
of support for their eventual legal fight as well. In
eighty three, Dr Emerson died of tuberculosis. He had known
that he was dying, and he had written out a will.
This will made no mention of Dread or Harriet Scott,
(18:38):
or their daughters, Eliza and Lizzie, and at first Emerson's
widow seems to have not freed them, but just sort
of left them on their own. That was more like
she neglected them than that she let them go. But
at some point Irene Emerson seems to have decided that
the Scots belonged to her, even though they were not
(19:01):
mentioned in her husband's will. She started hiring out their
labor to other people around St. Louis, and hiring out
was a common way for slave owners to make money.
They would essentially rent out their enslaved workers and then
keep any money that they earned for themselves. It was
while working as hired labor that the Scots petitioned for
(19:21):
their own freedom, which we will talk about after a
sponsor break. In early nineteenth century Missouri, enslaved people were property,
but they were also, in a very limited sense, persons
with rights. There were laws on the books that, at
(19:42):
least then theory, protected enslaved people from cruelty or murder,
and an enslaved person who was accused of a felony
was entitled to a jury trial. Obviously, whether these laws
were enforced totally a different subject, and whether that trial
would have been fair definitely in question, but those laws
that exist, and a person who was wrongfully enslaved also
(20:04):
had the right to sue for freedom and court thanks
to a law that had been passed in eighteen twenty four.
Between eighteen twenty four and about eighteen forty, these sorts
of lawsuits became fairly common, and it was also fairly
common for them to be successful. Missouri law incorporated the
idea of once free, always free. If an enslaved person
(20:25):
went or was taken to free territory or otherwise became free,
they stayed free. They did not become enslaved again if
they traveled into a slave state. This precedent was what
had allowed the woman named Rebecca, who had been enslaved
at Fort Snailing, to sue for her freedom, and Dread Scott,
along with his family, had lived in free territory. He
(20:47):
had been there for twelve years. This seemed like an
open and shut case, but by the early eighteen forties
the subject of slavery had become far more contentious nationwide.
Missouri had become a lot more hostile to black people
in general, and more fearful of the impact that a
free black population might have on a slave society. In
(21:10):
eighteen forty, Missouri passed a law banning free black people
from entering the state, and all black people already in
the state had to get a license to be there.
So by the time Dread and Harriet Scott each filed
a petition in the Circuit corner of St. Louis to
try to gain their freedom from Irene Emerson. The tide
had really turned against them in a lot of ways.
(21:33):
Successful suits for freedom were not nearly as common, and
more and more laws were putting black residents, both free
and enslaved, at a disadvantage. They filed their petitions on
April six, eighty six, and by that point the Scott's
position was no longer tenable. Dread Scott was fifty, which
was considered elderly for an enslaved person. The average life
(21:55):
expectancy for enslaved men was not even thirty five. He
also had tuberculosis, and he really couldn't work any longer.
His age and his health made him a liability, especially
since Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie were considered to be very
valuable enslaved property. Also, when Dr Emerson had been alive,
(22:17):
he seems to have treated both Dread and Harriet with
some degree of autonomy and respect. But his widow had
been born in Virginia. She had been raised in the South.
Her family was generally very pro slavery, so Irene had
grown up in that entrenched social system that we mentioned earlier,
which had strict rules about how white people interacted with slaves.
(22:39):
She clearly did not have the same approach to the
Scots that her late husband had. Between eighteen forty three
and eighteen forty six, Irene Emerson hired the Scots labor
out to a variety of other people in and around St. Louis,
and it was clear that her income was a lot
more important than their treatment. There's another factor that probably
encouraged the Scots to petition for freedom. Eliza Scott was
(23:02):
about eight, an age at which it was typical for
enslaved girls to be sold away from their families. Her
parents were probably motivated by the fear that if they
did not sue for their freedom now, they could be
permanently separated from her simultaneously. Petitioning for freedom was a
huge risk, even though at least before eighteen forty a
(23:23):
lot of the suits had been successful. That was a
long and difficult process, and there was no guarantee that
it would go their way. Enslaved people were also rarely
released on their own recognizance. During these trials. They typically
wound up either imprisoned during the proceedings or sent back
to the owners that they were trying to secure their
freedom from. Even though the law theoretically protected people from
(23:45):
retaliation when they filed suit. Retaliation was still really common,
so first Dread Scott offered to purchase himself and his family.
Irene Emerson refused. Harriet and Dread turned to the Blow
family and to their church congregation for help. Neither of
them could read or write, so this help involved everything
(24:06):
from finding legal representation to documenting their case to paying
for all of it. John M. Crumb of the St.
Louis Circuit Court granted the Scott's petition to try to
seek their freedom. The Scott's daughters weren't included in the petition,
since if their mother was free, then they also were free.
Under the terms of that eighty four law quote, the
(24:29):
declaration shall be in the common form of a declaration
for false imprisonment, and shall contain an avernment that the
plaintiff before and at the end time of committing of
the grievances was and still is a free person, and
that the defendant held and still holds him in slavery.
In other words, the petitioner had to prove they were free,
(24:50):
but that someone was imprisoning them falsely, and to that end,
Irene Emerson was indicted on charges of assault and battery
and unlawful imprisonment. She entered a not guilty plea. Because
of a series of fires and epidemics that Scott's actual
trial didn't take place for more than a year. At
the trial, the Scott's attorney F. B. Murdoch called witnesses
(25:13):
to establish that the Scots had lived for years in
Free Territory and that now in Missouri, Irene Emerson was
enslaving them and hiring out their labor. A man named
Samuel Russell testified that he had hired Dread Scott's labor
from Emerson, but during cross examination, Russell testified that he
had not personally made those arrangements. His wife had done
(25:36):
it and he wasn't actually there to witness it when
she did. His testimony that he had hired the Scots
labor from Emerson was dismissed as hearsay. This was a
total shock to everyone, including the Scott's attorney. Russell's testimony
under cross examination did not match up at all with
what he'd said in an earlier deposition and what they
(25:58):
thought he would say on the stand. The jury issued
its verdict on June eighteen, forty seven. Quote the said
defendant is not guilty in manner and form as the
plaintiff Hath in his declaration complained against her. In other words,
Irene Emerson was not enslaving the Scots, and this was
really something of a technicality. If Emerson wasn't enslaving the Scots,
(26:20):
then they had no cause to petition for their freedom.
The Scots got a new attorney, Samuel M. Bay. On
July seven, they filed a deposition that outlined all the
discrepancies in the earlier case. He submitted new testimony that
proved that Emerson was enslaving the Scots, and he requested
(26:41):
a new trial. That request for a new trial was
granted by a judge named Alexander Hamilton's. When Irene Emerson
tried to appeal Hamilton's decision to the Missouri Supreme Court,
she was denied. A whole second suit against Emerson was
also drawn up during this time period, but it was
dropped because it contained the same charges as the case
that was being set up for a new trial. At
(27:03):
this point, Irene Emerson took the step of having the
Scott family put in the sheriff's custody. The Scott family
remained in the custody of the St. Louis County Sheriff
from March seventeenth, eighteen forty eight, until March eighteenth, eighteen
fifty seven. That is nine years. This didn't mean they
were imprisoned, though, it meant that the sheriff was the
(27:25):
one hiring them out and collecting their pay. The Scott's
case was retried on January twelve, eighteen fifty in the St.
Louis Circuit Court. This time the verdict was that Dread
and Harriet Scott were free, and since Harriet was free,
their daughters were as well. Scott had, by the jury's ruling,
been free since eighteen thirty three, when Dr Emerson first
(27:47):
took him to the Free State of Illinois. This could
have been the end of it. There would have been
no Dread Scott versus Sanford, and since the Supreme Court's
decision in Dread Scott versus Sanford pushed of United States
much closer to the Civil War. That could have radically
altered the course of American history. But that wasn't the
(28:08):
end of it. We're going to talk about what happened
next in our next episode of the podcast. Do you
have a little bit of listener mail to tie us
over before them I do. This is from Melixa. I
really hope I am pronouncing that right. Alexa Rights. I
have been listening to your podcast for the last three
or four years. I teach history and I use your
program in some of my classes. I am Puerto Rican
(28:29):
currently living in New York and listening to your podcast
brought all kinds of memories of my childhood. My ninety
three year old grandma grew up in Lari's porto Ico,
not far from Utuado. Her family grew coffee and actually
probably migrated from Spain because of the coffee bonanza in
the second half of the nineteenth century. This was, of
course before so for them it was devastating. Their father
(28:52):
used to tell her that San Syriaco was so bad
that it even uprooted the sweet potatoes. Of course, I
think this is an exaggeration passed on decades after the fact.
I guess it illustrates how bad it was for them.
San Felipe was bad, but not as bad as San Syriaco,
while Santa Clara, according to her father, was a breeze.
Thanks for doing amazing research. Thanks for your great job.
(29:13):
Thank you for sending this email. Uh, the sweet potato
crop might actually have been destroyed. Um, maybe not necessarily uprooted,
but with all of the flooding and landslides that went
on during Hurricane San Syriaco, it would have been very
easy for maybe not the entire sweet potato crop to
be destroyed, but like big parts of it. So that
(29:34):
might not be an exaggeration at all. So thank you
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(29:55):
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(30:21):
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Welcome to STUFH you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We've had
kind of a running theme of landmark Supreme Court decisions
on the show. Yeah, they come up from time to time. Yeah,
(00:24):
we have not gotten to possibly the most notorious one
in all of United States history, which is Dread Scott
versus Sandford that was decided in eighteen fifty seven. So
I had already put this episode on the schedule to
record today when by coincidence, it suddenly became very timely
because I en the U. S. Supreme Court issued its
(00:46):
decision in Trump versus Hawaii, which upheld Proclamation Number that's
the revised travel band that restricts entry into the United
States from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and
yeah in and in response to that decision, Representative Keith
Ellison of Minnesota compared the decision in Trump versus Hawaii
(01:06):
to Dread Scott, and then so did David D. Cole
of the a c l U, who wrote an editorial
that was published in the Washington Post that brought up
both dread Scott and Karamatsu versus United States, and we
talked about that one in our episode on Executive Order
ninety six. So suddenly searching dread Scott on Google was
bringing up thousands of news headlines instead of history sites
(01:28):
and archives of Supreme Court decisions. But the facts of
this case itself are unchanged, you be, in spite of
all that news coverage. So rather than shelving the topic
for later as for some reason too much of a
hot button, we're going to stick to my original plan.
Talk about the court decision that ruled the enslaved Africans
and their descendants weren't and could never be citizens of
(01:50):
the United States, whether they were free or not. And
we're also going to talk about the people who were
seeking their freedom in this case, because it wasn't just
about dread Scott. A lot of times summed up as
like dread Scott was enslaved and he was suing for
his freedom. It was also about his wife, Harriet and
their daughters, Eliza and Lizzie. And this is an accidentally
a two parter, so we're going to talk about it
(02:11):
for two episodes. Accidental two parter Uh. To get back
to the more serious matter of the story, we know
very little about dread Scott's background. He was born sometime
around eighteen hundred in Virginia, probably in Southampton County, and
his earliest owners that we know about were Peter Blow
and Elizabeth Taylor Blow, who were planters, but it is
(02:33):
not clear whether he was enslaved to them from birth
or whether they purchased him sometime later. By eighteen eighteen, though,
dread Scott was definitely part of the blows enslaved workforce,
and eighteen eighteen that's when the Blows moved to Alabama,
where they continued to work in agriculture. They moved with
their six children and with several enslaved people, including dread Scott.
(02:55):
While living in Alabama, the Blows also had two more children.
Then in eighteen thirty, the Blows decided to give up farming.
They moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where they opened a
boarding house known as the Jefferson Hotel, and they took
some of their enslaved labor force with them, once again,
including dread Scott. Elizabeth Blow died in eighteen thirty one
(03:16):
and Peter Blow died the next year and around the
time of Peter Blow's death, dread Scott was sold to
doctor John Emerson. There's no surviving documentation of this sale,
and we don't really know whether Peter Blow handled it
himself before he died or whether his heirs handled it
as part of his estate after his death. One of
(03:36):
the Blow sons, Henry Taylor Blow, testified in court that
his father had sold dread Scott, but there's not a
paper trail to back it up, and the timeline actually
suggests that the transaction might have taken place later, after
Peter Blow had died. Dr Emerson was a surgeon. In
his background is also a little bit unclear. He got
his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in eighteen
(03:58):
twenty four, and it seems as though he was either
born in Pennsylvania or that he immigrated there from Ireland, regardless,
though as far as we know, he lived and worked
in Pennsylvania for most of his life before entering the u. S.
Army is a surgeon. In eighteen thirty three, he was
deployed to Fort Armstrong, Illinois, which is referred to as
Rock Island in court documents. Emerson probably purchased dread Scott
(04:23):
in St. Louis on the way to Illinois to act
as his personal servant and to provide manual labor on
a land claim that Emerson staked out for a cabin.
It was extremely common for army officers to take slaves
with them to the forts and outposts where they were stationed.
Often these were in very remote locations without any sort
of white community or settlement, to provide a civilian labor
(04:46):
force to handle things like cooking and laundry and manual labor.
This practice included taking enslaved people into places where slavery
was outlawed under state law or under the terms of
the Northwest Ordinance or the Missouri Compromise eies so as
a quick refresher, The Northwest Ordinance was passed in seventy seven.
It established a government for the territory northwest of the
(05:09):
Ohio River, along with a process for how parts of
that territory could be admitted to the Union as states.
And the Northwest Ordinance was clear on the subject of slavery. Quote,
there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the
said territory otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof
(05:29):
the party shall have been duly convicted. The Northwest Ordinance
did allow for fugitive slaves to be returned to their owners,
though the Missouri Compromise was past in eighteen twenty, and
we have talked a lot about it on the show,
particularly in our episode about the Honey War. The Missouri
Compromise allowed Missouri to be admitted into the Union as
(05:49):
a slave state, while Maine was also admitted as a
free state. To preserve the balance between the slave and
the free states, the Missouri Compromise declared that slavery and
involuntary servitude other than in punishment for a crime, would
not be permitted in territory that was north of thirty
six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude. So Emerson was
(06:11):
being sent to Fort Armstrong, Illinois, where slavery had previously
been outlawed under the Northwest Ordinance and was also mostly
outlawed in the state constitution when Illinois joined the Union
in eighteen eighteen. Although there were a number of exceptions,
Illinois didn't fully outlost slavery except in the punishment for
a crime, until eighteen forty eight, after many of the
(06:33):
events in these episodes that were doing had already happened,
but in spite of that prohibition. Dr Emerson was taking
an enslaved person with him, as were other people that
were stationed there. Emerson probably stopped in St. Louis specifically
to buy a slave, or made it a point to
do it while he was already in St. Louis for
(06:54):
other reasons. Since it sits along the Mississippi River, St.
Louis was one of the easiest cities to reach from
a lot of the nation's more remote territory. It was
a frequent stopping point on the way to the frontier,
so the city had a really thriving slave trade, selling
enslaved Africans to members of the military as they either
passed through or came back to Missouri for that purpose.
(07:15):
Emerson was not from a slave state. Pennsylvania had passed
a gradual emancipation law in March of seventeen eighteen, and
by the time Emerson finished medical school there were fewer
than two hundred people still enslaved in the state. It
doesn't seem as though he was from a slave owning family,
and as far as we know, dread Scott is the
(07:36):
only person he ever enslaved. There are questions about whether
he later enslaved Scott's wife and children, and we're going
to get to those in just a bit. So this
is not at all to be extremely clear to suggest that, oh,
he only enslaved one person, so it wasn't that bad.
It's more that slave states had a whole system of
social order that revolved around slavery, and it dictated how
(07:58):
white people enslave. He was behaved around each other. But
Emerson had grown up in Pennsylvania, where slavery was not
nearly as much of a visible daily presence as it
was in the Slave States, and this almost certainly affected
how he treated dread Scott in some ways. The amount
of autonomy and respect that Emerson granted to Scott was
(08:20):
more in line with what would be extended to a freeman,
but legally, Scott was still definitely Emerson's property. Emerson remained
at Fort Armstrong until it was abandoned on May fourth,
eighteen thirty six. At that point, he was transferred to
Fort Snelling in Wisconsin Territory in what's now Minnesota, which
was at the time free territory. We'll get to that
(08:41):
part after a sponsor break Today, Fort Snelling, Minnesota is
practically next door to Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport, but
in eighteen thirty six it was pretty much in the
middle of nowhere. As we said before the break, there
were no white settlements anywhere nearby. Most of the indigenous
(09:05):
peoples in the area were also nomadic, and they didn't
have permanent settlements or seasonal camps near the fort either. Also,
the United States being at war with a lot of
the indigenous population during this time would have made that
an unlikely workforce if such a community had existed. That's
really an understatement, and it's also a whole other topic
outside the scope of these episodes. Virtually everyone in Fort
(09:28):
Snelling was a soldier and officer, an officer's wife, or
an enslaved African, and nearly all of the officers enslaved
at least one person. Most of the enslaved Africans had
been brought along with officers from their previous postings enslave
states and territories, or they had been purchased in St. Louis.
It was at Fort Snelling that dread Scott met Harriet Robinson,
(09:51):
who was also from Virginia. She was enslaved to Major
Lawrence Tolliver. Tolliver was the Indian Agent for the Upper
Mississippi Valley region. The Indian Agent was a government official
who acted as a liaison between the United States government
and the indigenous population. Tolliver was also the Justice of
the Peace, and the title Major was really honorific. He
(10:12):
had served in the military, but he resigned when he
was appointed Indian Agents. Everybody still called him major, but
he was not an actual major anymore. In eighteen thirty
six or eighteen thirty seven, when Harriet was about seventeen
and Dread was about forty, they got married. They had
an actual civil ceremony officiated by Major Tolliver. It was
(10:34):
not common at all for enslaved people to have a
formal and legally recognized marriage, nor was it common at
all for a Justice of the Peace to officiate a
marriage between enslaved people. This was so unusual that a
number of historians have argued that by performing this civil marriage,
Tolliver was recognizing Harriet and possibly also Dread as free. Yeah,
(10:59):
the Justice of the Peace just just did not perform
marriages of enslaved people. Like enslave people weren't regarded as
having any kind of right to marriage, and marriages between
enslaved people were not legally sanctioned in any way, so
this was highly unusual. Yeah. When we've talked about enslaved
people getting married on the podcast before, it is usually
a quiet, private affair. It certainly does not usually involve
(11:22):
their owners in any way, let alone inefficient. Yeah, and
even if their owners are involved in some way, it's
not usually something that affords any kind of legal status
or protection in anyway. So this was like, this was
not what normally happened at all. After their wedding, Harriet
and dread Scott lived together as a married couple, with
(11:42):
both of them working for Dr Emerson. But it's really
not clear whether Emerson considered Harriet to be his property.
Like we said, it's not clear whether Tolliver was essentially
freeing her with this whole marriage that he officiated. But
Emerson did not stay in Fort Snelling for very long
after that. He been asking for a transfer to St.
Louis for quite some time, and that transfer was finally granted.
(12:05):
He left on October thirty seven. In warm weather, people
typically traveled between St. Louis and Fort Snelling by steamboat,
but by October of eighteen thirty seven. The Upper Mississippi
River was already frozen over in a lot of places,
so to get to his much requested new assignment, Emerson
had to travel by sled and canoe. It was not
(12:28):
feasible for him to take the Scots with him, so
he left them behind. Although he seems to have left
them essentially unsupervised, they almost certainly continued to work for
other officers at the fort during this time. This is
one of several places in the Scots Lives that people
ask why they didn't take this opportunity to escape. After all,
(12:48):
Dr Emerson was gone, and they had also been given
some degree of autonomy. They both had the freedom to
come and go from the fort as long as they
got all of their work done. In this case, the
answer is really simple. This was a remote part of
Wisconsin territory in late October. If they had left, they
would have had nowhere to go. Getting to the nearest
permanent settlement would have required days of hard travel through
(13:11):
frigid weather with really little to survive off of on
the way. It also wasn't likely that they would have
been able to find refuge with the area's indigenous peoples
who were facing rampant hunger and poverty. At about this
same time, an enslaved woman named Rachel, who had been
at Fort Snelling, successfully sued for her freedom in St. Louis.
(13:32):
The Scots, especially Harriet, probably heard about this, but it
would be almost ten years before they filed a similar
suit themselves. Soon after arriving in St. Louis, dr Emerson
was transferred to Louisiana. There he met and married Eliza
Irene Sandford, who was known as Irene, and in thirty
eight he sent for the Scots to join him and
(13:54):
his new wife in Louisiana. Once the Mississippi River had thawed,
the Scots traveled by steamboat to Louisiana, going from free
to slave territory, and by this point Harriet was pregnant.
But almost immediately after the Scots arrived in Louisiana territory,
Emerson turned them all around and went back to St.
Louis and from there back to Fort Snelling again. Harriet
(14:17):
Scott gave birth to a daughter, Eliza, aboard the steamboat
on the way there, north of the dividing line between
slave and free territory that was set down in the
Missouri Compromise. As a side note, we don't know who,
if anyone, Eliza Scott was named for. A lot of
people assume it was for Dr. Emerson's new wife, but
the Scots knew a lot of Elizabeth's, including another enslaved
(14:41):
woman at Fort Snelling. It could have been in some
way for all of those Elizabeth could have been for
none of the Elizabeth. They might have just liked nicknames
for Elizabeth. Yeah. Uh, that's one of those things where
I always feel like it's a decision that you can't
ever really know, because you can't unrevel a person's thought
(15:02):
process back to where it begins. So it's hard to
just define and say, oh, it was named well, maybe well,
and the the assumption that they named their baby after
their owner's new wife is kind of gross, Like it
if that's documented somewhere, that's fine, But the fact that
so many people just assume, oh, they must have named
(15:22):
the baby for their owner's new wife, Like that's kind
of a gross assumption to make, even without all of
the layers of grossness of slavery involved. Just assuming people's
intentions and naming their children is weird to me. So
then to add on to it, all of that gross layering.
I'm like, what, why why you got to do that? Um?
(15:42):
The next winter, Dr Emerson arranged for the Scots to
have their own quarters at Fort Snelling, including their own stove.
It was once again not common at all for enslaved
people to have their own quarters, and stoves were in
very short supply. They were so scarce that when Emerson
asked for one for the Scots, the quartermaster refused, and
(16:03):
in the ensuing argument, the quartermaster punched Emerson in the face.
Emerson left and then came back and threatened the quartermaster
with his pistols. This ultimately led to Emerson being arrested,
but he did get that stove for the Scots. This
is another thing people point to that suggests that at
Fort Snelling, Emerson and others may have considered the Scots
(16:25):
to be free. Getting into a fist fight about a
stove for your enslave workforce was also not what would
be expected of a white person. So on May nine,
eighteen forty, Dr. Emerson was transferred to Florida because the
ongoing Seminole Wars, along with nearly all the other military
personnel at Fort Snelling in the four years since the
(16:47):
Scots had first arrived in Wisconsin Territory, the fort had
become a little less remote. A collection of squatter cabins
had been built up around it. But at the same
time that the government cleared out the fort for the
Seminar Wars, it also decided to evict all the squatters
and burned out all the cabins. The burning of the
cabins meant that the Scots would have nowhere to stay
(17:08):
if they'd tried to stay behind, they also would have
had no way to support themselves there, so once again
they had little choice but to travel south into slave
territory with the Emerson's. They got to St. Louis, where
they stayed with Mrs Emerson and We're also hired out
to work for other people. In St. Louis. The Scots
had another daughter, Lizzie. They had also had two sons
(17:30):
who did not survive infancy. For the next few years,
the Scott family were all together in St. Louis. They
made friends, including reconnecting with some of the Blow family,
and that was the people that had owned Dread Scott
from the time he was young, possibly from his birth.
By this point, the Blow family was kind of full
of contradictions. Several of them had made connections among St.
(17:53):
Louis's abolitionist community, but some of them also continued to
own slaves themselves. Some of the those daughters had also
married into prominent, affluent families. All these connections, though in
spite of all their contradictions, would eventually help the Scott's
sue for their freedom, and the Blow family would help
finance their court cases. Harriet also joined the Second African
(18:16):
Baptist Church of St. Louis. It isn't clear if Dread
was a member, but their church family was a source
of support for their eventual legal fight as well. In
eighty three, Dr Emerson died of tuberculosis. He had known
that he was dying, and he had written out a will.
This will made no mention of Dread or Harriet Scott,
(18:38):
or their daughters, Eliza and Lizzie, and at first Emerson's
widow seems to have not freed them, but just sort
of left them on their own. That was more like
she neglected them than that she let them go. But
at some point Irene Emerson seems to have decided that
the Scots belonged to her, even though they were not
(19:01):
mentioned in her husband's will. She started hiring out their
labor to other people around St. Louis, and hiring out
was a common way for slave owners to make money.
They would essentially rent out their enslaved workers and then
keep any money that they earned for themselves. It was
while working as hired labor that the Scots petitioned for
(19:21):
their own freedom, which we will talk about after a
sponsor break. In early nineteenth century Missouri, enslaved people were property,
but they were also, in a very limited sense, persons
with rights. There were laws on the books that, at
(19:42):
least then theory, protected enslaved people from cruelty or murder,
and an enslaved person who was accused of a felony
was entitled to a jury trial. Obviously, whether these laws
were enforced totally a different subject, and whether that trial
would have been fair definitely in question, but those laws
that exist, and a person who was wrongfully enslaved also
(20:04):
had the right to sue for freedom and court thanks
to a law that had been passed in eighteen twenty four.
Between eighteen twenty four and about eighteen forty, these sorts
of lawsuits became fairly common, and it was also fairly
common for them to be successful. Missouri law incorporated the
idea of once free, always free. If an enslaved person
(20:25):
went or was taken to free territory or otherwise became free,
they stayed free. They did not become enslaved again if
they traveled into a slave state. This precedent was what
had allowed the woman named Rebecca, who had been enslaved
at Fort Snailing, to sue for her freedom, and Dread Scott,
along with his family, had lived in free territory. He
(20:47):
had been there for twelve years. This seemed like an
open and shut case, but by the early eighteen forties
the subject of slavery had become far more contentious nationwide.
Missouri had become a lot more hostile to black people
in general, and more fearful of the impact that a
free black population might have on a slave society. In
(21:10):
eighteen forty, Missouri passed a law banning free black people
from entering the state, and all black people already in
the state had to get a license to be there.
So by the time Dread and Harriet Scott each filed
a petition in the Circuit corner of St. Louis to
try to gain their freedom from Irene Emerson. The tide
had really turned against them in a lot of ways.
(21:33):
Successful suits for freedom were not nearly as common, and
more and more laws were putting black residents, both free
and enslaved, at a disadvantage. They filed their petitions on
April six, eighty six, and by that point the Scott's
position was no longer tenable. Dread Scott was fifty, which
was considered elderly for an enslaved person. The average life
(21:55):
expectancy for enslaved men was not even thirty five. He
also had tuberculosis, and he really couldn't work any longer.
His age and his health made him a liability, especially
since Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie were considered to be very
valuable enslaved property. Also, when Dr Emerson had been alive,
(22:17):
he seems to have treated both Dread and Harriet with
some degree of autonomy and respect. But his widow had
been born in Virginia. She had been raised in the South.
Her family was generally very pro slavery, so Irene had
grown up in that entrenched social system that we mentioned earlier,
which had strict rules about how white people interacted with slaves.
(22:39):
She clearly did not have the same approach to the
Scots that her late husband had. Between eighteen forty three
and eighteen forty six, Irene Emerson hired the Scots labor
out to a variety of other people in and around St. Louis,
and it was clear that her income was a lot
more important than their treatment. There's another factor that probably
encouraged the Scots to petition for freedom. Eliza Scott was
(23:02):
about eight, an age at which it was typical for
enslaved girls to be sold away from their families. Her
parents were probably motivated by the fear that if they
did not sue for their freedom now, they could be
permanently separated from her simultaneously. Petitioning for freedom was a
huge risk, even though at least before eighteen forty a
(23:23):
lot of the suits had been successful. That was a
long and difficult process, and there was no guarantee that
it would go their way. Enslaved people were also rarely
released on their own recognizance. During these trials. They typically
wound up either imprisoned during the proceedings or sent back
to the owners that they were trying to secure their
freedom from. Even though the law theoretically protected people from
(23:45):
retaliation when they filed suit. Retaliation was still really common,
so first Dread Scott offered to purchase himself and his family.
Irene Emerson refused. Harriet and Dread turned to the Blow
family and to their church congregation for help. Neither of
them could read or write, so this help involved everything
(24:06):
from finding legal representation to documenting their case to paying
for all of it. John M. Crumb of the St.
Louis Circuit Court granted the Scott's petition to try to
seek their freedom. The Scott's daughters weren't included in the petition,
since if their mother was free, then they also were free.
Under the terms of that eighty four law quote, the
(24:29):
declaration shall be in the common form of a declaration
for false imprisonment, and shall contain an avernment that the
plaintiff before and at the end time of committing of
the grievances was and still is a free person, and
that the defendant held and still holds him in slavery.
In other words, the petitioner had to prove they were free,
(24:50):
but that someone was imprisoning them falsely, and to that end,
Irene Emerson was indicted on charges of assault and battery
and unlawful imprisonment. She entered a not guilty plea. Because
of a series of fires and epidemics that Scott's actual
trial didn't take place for more than a year. At
the trial, the Scott's attorney F. B. Murdoch called witnesses
(25:13):
to establish that the Scots had lived for years in
Free Territory and that now in Missouri, Irene Emerson was
enslaving them and hiring out their labor. A man named
Samuel Russell testified that he had hired Dread Scott's labor
from Emerson, but during cross examination, Russell testified that he
had not personally made those arrangements. His wife had done
(25:36):
it and he wasn't actually there to witness it when
she did. His testimony that he had hired the Scots
labor from Emerson was dismissed as hearsay. This was a
total shock to everyone, including the Scott's attorney. Russell's testimony
under cross examination did not match up at all with
what he'd said in an earlier deposition and what they
(25:58):
thought he would say on the stand. The jury issued
its verdict on June eighteen, forty seven. Quote the said
defendant is not guilty in manner and form as the
plaintiff Hath in his declaration complained against her. In other words,
Irene Emerson was not enslaving the Scots, and this was
really something of a technicality. If Emerson wasn't enslaving the Scots,
(26:20):
then they had no cause to petition for their freedom.
The Scots got a new attorney, Samuel M. Bay. On
July seven, they filed a deposition that outlined all the
discrepancies in the earlier case. He submitted new testimony that
proved that Emerson was enslaving the Scots, and he requested
(26:41):
a new trial. That request for a new trial was
granted by a judge named Alexander Hamilton's. When Irene Emerson
tried to appeal Hamilton's decision to the Missouri Supreme Court,
she was denied. A whole second suit against Emerson was
also drawn up during this time period, but it was
dropped because it contained the same charges as the case
that was being set up for a new trial. At
(27:03):
this point, Irene Emerson took the step of having the
Scott family put in the sheriff's custody. The Scott family
remained in the custody of the St. Louis County Sheriff
from March seventeenth, eighteen forty eight, until March eighteenth, eighteen
fifty seven. That is nine years. This didn't mean they
were imprisoned, though, it meant that the sheriff was the
(27:25):
one hiring them out and collecting their pay. The Scott's
case was retried on January twelve, eighteen fifty in the St.
Louis Circuit Court. This time the verdict was that Dread
and Harriet Scott were free, and since Harriet was free,
their daughters were as well. Scott had, by the jury's ruling,
been free since eighteen thirty three, when Dr Emerson first
(27:47):
took him to the Free State of Illinois. This could
have been the end of it. There would have been
no Dread Scott versus Sanford, and since the Supreme Court's
decision in Dread Scott versus Sanford pushed of United States
much closer to the Civil War. That could have radically
altered the course of American history. But that wasn't the
(28:08):
end of it. We're going to talk about what happened
next in our next episode of the podcast. Do you
have a little bit of listener mail to tie us
over before them I do. This is from Melixa. I
really hope I am pronouncing that right. Alexa Rights. I
have been listening to your podcast for the last three
or four years. I teach history and I use your
program in some of my classes. I am Puerto Rican
(28:29):
currently living in New York and listening to your podcast
brought all kinds of memories of my childhood. My ninety
three year old grandma grew up in Lari's porto Ico,
not far from Utuado. Her family grew coffee and actually
probably migrated from Spain because of the coffee bonanza in
the second half of the nineteenth century. This was, of
course before so for them it was devastating. Their father
(28:52):
used to tell her that San Syriaco was so bad
that it even uprooted the sweet potatoes. Of course, I
think this is an exaggeration passed on decades after the fact.
I guess it illustrates how bad it was for them.
San Felipe was bad, but not as bad as San Syriaco,
while Santa Clara, according to her father, was a breeze.
Thanks for doing amazing research. Thanks for your great job.
(29:13):
Thank you for sending this email. Uh, the sweet potato
crop might actually have been destroyed. Um, maybe not necessarily uprooted,
but with all of the flooding and landslides that went
on during Hurricane San Syriaco, it would have been very
easy for maybe not the entire sweet potato crop to
be destroyed, but like big parts of it. So that
(29:34):
might not be an exaggeration at all. So thank you
for sending us this note. If you would like to
write to us about this or any other podcast or
history podcasts at how stuffworks dot com and they were
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You can come to our website which is missed in
History dot com and you can find show notes of
(29:55):
all the episodes Holly and I have worked on together.
The show notes were This podcast will include links to
hundreds of pages of court testimony. I guess really court
opinions not so much as testimony. You can also find
us an archive of every episode we have ever done,
and you can subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts,
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(30:21):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
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Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!