The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution grants United States citizenship and also citizenship of the state where an individual is born to those born within the boundaries of this country. This amendment was adopted in 1868, as a means of securing the rights enacted in the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, following the end of the civil war. Both the Civil Rights Bill and the fourteenth amendment were a result of a Supreme Court decision reached in 1857, known as Dred Scott vs. Sandford, and had to do with the issue of citizenship for freed slaves.
Scott was a slave, born a few years before 1800, and owned by Peter Blow. He was taken by his owner, to Missouri, in 1820. Peter Blow died, and Scott was purchased by Dr. John Emerson, a United States army surgeon, and taken to Fort Armstrong, Illinois. Illinois was brought into the United States, in 1819, under the provision that slavery was forbidden in that state. Dr. Emerson was then moved to Fort Snelling in the Wisconsin territory, where slavery was "forever prohibited". During his stay in Fort Snelling, he married Harriet Robinson. Marriage was seen as a contract, and a slave could not enter into a contract, nor marriage. The entering of the marriage contract in a free territory was one of the main underpinnings of his claim of freedom.
Dr. Emerson was assigned to Louisiana, and en route, a baby, Eliza, was born on a boat on the Mississippi River, within the Iowa territory, which also prohibited slavery. Dr. Emerson later died in 1843, and for three years, he continued to work for his widow. When he attempted to purchase his freedom from his owner, she refused, and he began seeking legal recourse for obtaining his freedom.
The first case was heard in a court in the Missouri territory, which had been favorable toward slaves, and this was believed to be an easy case to win. However, on a technically of not providing a witness that he belonged to the widow Emerson, he lost his case. Higher courts refused to overturn the decision, and the case eventually reached the Supreme Court of the United States.
The questions that the Supreme Court sought to answer in three points. The first was whether or not Dred Scott had the ability to be heard in federal court, because he had not yet been proven to be a citizen in any state. The second was whether the United States could grant citizenship to a person not having first been granted state citizenship. The final question was whether or not living in a free territory was basis for claiming free status.
On the last point, the decision was that his return to the Missouri territory overrode the time he spent in free territories, and therefore, he was not a free man. The decision led to the eventual passage of the fourteenth amendment, which in part, overturned the ruling. The question remains today over who becomes a citizen under the fourteenth amendment.
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