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160 Years After Dred Scott, an Apology
By Whitney Davidson
A recent poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena University revealed a simple yet shocking conclusion: a sizable majority of Americans — 64% — believe that the country’s political divisions are too profound to overcome. The results of this poll, conducted in the wake of media personality Charlie Kirk’s assassination, demonstrate that Americans’ faith in their system of government has declined significantly over the past five years. Even in the midst of the Covid pandemic, 51% of Americans expressed confidence in the ability of their political system to address the nation’s problems. Today, only 33% of Americans believe that their political differences can be transcended.
This is not the first time the United States has been devastated by political polarization and deeply entrenched dysfunction. The years leading up to the Civil War were defined by a poisonous atmosphere of mutual antipathy and egregious acts of politically motivated violence.
But Americans have also demonstrated that it is possible to reconcile and heal divisions. One such example comes to us by way of the descendants of two people who exemplified the divide over slavery: Dred Scott, an enslaved man, and Roger Taney, the Supreme Court justice who ruled against granting Scott his freedom. In the modern era, these descendants have made a deliberate choice to confront their painful past, covering a history of resentment and injury with grace and mutual understanding.
In 1846, Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, sued for their freedom in a St. Louis circuit court. The man who claimed to own them had brought them along on his travels to the free territory of Wisconsin and the free state of Illinois before returning with them to Missouri, where enslavement was legal. At the time, a Missouri statute held that any person could sue for freedom if they could prove that they had been wrongly held in slavery. Scott argued that when he stepped foot in free territory, the chains of slavery were broken and he became a free man.
It took 11 years for Scott’s case to reach the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Roger Taney issued a blistering 7–2 opinion against Scott, finding that he had no standing to sue in federal court because, as a person of African descent, no matter his legal status, he was not an American citizen. Taney wrote that Black people “had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Taney further concluded that enslaved people were property, and that because the Fifth Amendment prevented the federal government from depriving people of their property without due process of law, slaveowners could not be restricted from bringing their human chattel anywhere in the United States. Taney’s words have echoed through history as a reminder of the many ways Black Americans were dehumanized under the law.
Though Dred Scott did not win his case, he did eventually win his freedom. The son of a former master, sympathetic to his cause, purchased Dred and Harriet Scott’s freedom, and they both walked out of a St. Louis courthouse on May 26, 1857, as free people. Unfortunately, Scott died of tuberculosis only nine months later. Harriet died in 1876, after witnessing the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments, which abolished slavery and granted citizenship rights to Black Americans, repudiating Taney’s ruling.
Lynne Jackson, the great-great-granddaughter of Dred Scott, didn’t learn much about her famous ancestor when she was young. “As someone who grew up knowing that they were a descendant of Dred Scott as children, we did not really understand the depth and the ramifications of the case,” she said. So she set out to change that.
The inspiration to unpack her family’s history — and her ancestor’s pivotal role in it — came to her in 1995, when she thought she heard God tell her to study Dred Scott. Her father later encouraged her, saying, “Lynne, you are the only one who can do this.” Jackson consulted a genealogist to learn more about the lives of Scotts and eventually wrote a book about the couple: Dred & Harriet Scott: Their Family Story.
In 2008, she founded the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation in St. Louis. Its purpose, according to the organization, was to “support the acknowledgment of the 150th Anniversary of the Dred Scott decision… [and to] be a vehicle for expanding the learning opportunities for individuals to be more educated about this case, its impact on slavery and the history of our nation.” To do this, the foundation planned a series of educational events, documentaries, and other media tools to coincide with the anniversary. It also raised funds to replace Dred Scott’s grave marker with a nine-foot-tall granite monument telling his story, and to provide a grave marker for Harriet Scott (who is buried in a separate cemetery).
“Dred and Harriet Scott’s story is critical, and it’s national, but everybody’s story is important,” Jackson said. “So I really like to inspire people to... go find [their] own [stories], because people are finding amazing things.”
Meanwhile, Taney’s descendants were thinking about their family story. Grappling with the harmful legacy of their ancestor’s words, they wondered whether to offer an apology to the Scotts.
Kate Taney Billingsley — daughter of Charles Taney IV, the great-great-grand-nephew of the Supreme Court justice — recalls how her father had instilled in her a sense of pride in her famous ancestor’s accomplishments as the second-longest-serving justice, mixed with shame over his role in the Dred Scott decision.
Struggling with this ambiguity inspired her in 2016 to write A Man of His Time, a one-act play that imagines a meeting between two fictional descendants of Scott and Taney in a New Jersey diner on the 159th anniversary of the ruling. As the play opens, Jim Taney struggles to find the words to apologize to Walter Scott. “We know he was a man of his time,” Taney says to Scott. “I want you to know, there’s a deep shame on our name.”
But the apology does not go as Jim Taney expects. Walter Scott confronts Taney about the sincerity of his commitment to making things right: “It’s what you do with it now — that’s the work.” The play ends with the two characters concerned that Americans are unlikely to take the steps necessary to heal their deep racial divide.
In real life, Billingsley was convinced that an apology to Scott’s descendants was a necessary first step. So she reached out to Jackson — the first time that descendants of Scott and Taney had ever established contact — and the two families met at the premiere of A Man of His Time, gathering onstage after the show for a conversation about their shared legacy and the possibility of reconciliation.
The following year, on March 6, 2017, the 160th anniversary of the Scott verdict, the descendants of Taney and Scott convened in front of a statue of Taney at the Maryland statehouse in Annapolis to make amends. (Taney was from Maryland.)
Charles Taney IV apologized to Jackson and all Black Americans injured by the ruling: “Today, for all the Taneys,” he said, “we offer our apology to the Scott family and all African-Americans for the injury caused by Roger Brooke Taney and this decision.” Taney explained the motivation for the apology. “You can’t hide from the words that Taney wrote,” he said. “You can’t run, you can’t hide, you can’t look away. You have to face them.”
Jackson accepted Taney’s apology on behalf of her family and “all African-Americans who have the love of God in their heart so that healing can begin.” The two embraced, and Jackson praised the Taneys.
“They are so sincerely willing to be out here,” Jackson said. “And I just commend them for that because a lot of people would just say, ‘I don’t think I want to go out there and do that,’ especially in the climate that we’re in. But that’s exactly why we need to be out here. If the Taneys and the Scotts can be reconciled, why can’t anybody else?”
Though many civil rights advocates had called for the removal of statues honoring Taney, the descendants of the two families argued that a statue of Dred Scott should instead be constructed next to Taney’s in Annapolis. In a joint statement, they wrote, “The Scotts and the Taneys believe that Americans should learn from their history, not bury their history.”
Taney’s statue at the statehouse was eventually taken down, and a complementary statue of Scott never materialized there (though many have gone up elsewhere). But the descendants of Taney and Scott have continued to meet in an annual reconciliation forum. “It takes both sides to come together,” Jackson has said. When they do, old animosities can be overcome. Dred Scott and Roger Taney are “really supposed to hate each other,” according to Jackson. “But it’s not about hatred; it’s about understanding, and then relationship-building and trust.”
The Dred Scott Foundation’s motto is “Let the healing begin” — a sentiment Abraham Lincoln echoed in his first inaugural address when he urged Americans to let the better angels of their nature confront the pain of both the past and present. “We are not enemies,” he said. “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection.”
Whitney Davidson is a teacher, writer, and history enthusiast.
I think it’s also interesting to remember the son of the previous owner who freed him. His name was Taylor Blow. The Blow family owned the Scott’s in Florence, al. Taylor grew up with Dred. When they moved to Missouri they had financial problems and had to sell Dred Scott to a surgeon in St. Louis. Taylor grew up to become a congressman. He not only purchased Dred Scott’s freedom but also paid his legal fees for his legal cases.
“If the Taneys and the Scotts can be reconciled, why can’t anybody else?”
Because the Taneys knew right from wrong, and were willing to right their wrongs.
For the sake of our country and world, I hope the Taneys are the majority. We have not yet seen that.