The Old Courthouse and Dred Scott

Dred Scott is one of those names I hear and remembers vaguely from high school history but I can't conjur up any specific details. It came up again during the last presidential debates as some kind of inside code for the abortion issue. At any rate, the trial had its origins in the Old Courthouse in St. Louis.

From the PBS site: "Dred Scott first went to trial to sue for his freedom in 1847. Ten years later, after a decade of appeals and court reversals, his case was finally brought before the United States Supreme Court. In what is perhaps the most infamous case in its history, the court decided that all people of African ancestry -- slaves as well as those who were free -- could never become citizens of the United States and therefore could not sue in federal court. The court also ruled that the federal government did not have the power to prohibit slavery in its territories. Scott, needless to say, remained a slave."