What Was Dred Scott Thesis

Jack Breheny
February 14, 2014
Research Paper
Dred Scott was one of many famous African Americans who, along with others, helped abolish slavery in the United States of America. He did this questioning by how he could be kept as a slave and treated like a slave when he lived in slave free territory. Just his little bit of questioning added up to the big amount of things that helped to abolish slavery.
Dred Scott was born into slavery sometime in 1803 in South Hampton County,
Virginia, but his hometown was St. Louis, Missouri. His birth name was Sam Scott, but he adopted his older brother’s name, Dred, when he died at a very young age. Dred’s parents were slaves. He and his family belonged to Peter Blow and his family. Dred started his first job, to take care of the Blow children who weren’t much younger than him, when he was four.
In addition to Dred being a slave, he was employed as a farmhand, stevedore, craftsman, and general handyman. Dred moved around a lot from Alabama, Illinois, and eventually relocated to St. Louis, Missouri. When Dred was 15 in 1818, his family moved to Alabama with the Blows. His owner, Peter Blow, had six children so Dred’s job was to keep track of the children. Dred never learned to read or write so if there were any type of signs on the way to Alabama or anywhere they most likely made no sense to him at all.
Sometime in 1820, Dred’s future wife, Harriett Robinson, was born into slavery. Ten years later, in around 1830, Dred moved with the Blows to St. Louis, Missouri and worked at the Jefferson hotel. His owner, Peter Blow, had no luck finding any riches or success in farming so he decided to use what money he had left to buy the Jefferson Hotel, in St. Louis, which was the slave ...

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...to transfer ownership of the Scotts to Taylor Blow, Peter Blow’s son and childhood friend of Dred. On May 26, 1857 Dred and Harriet were given their freedom by Taylor Blow. After Dred and his family were freed, they were interviewed and pictures of them were published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on June 27, 1840. As a free family Dred Scott worked at Barnum’s Hotel in St. Louis as a porter. Dred also delivered laundry that Harriet took in working as a free laundress for the people that they lived around.
On September 17, 1858 Dred Scott died of tuberculosis. He only lived as a free man for one and a half years. He is buried in St. Louis in the Blow family plot in Calvary Cemetery. Harriet lived on and is believed to have died in 1870. Dred Scott like many other African Americans helped abolish slavery forever in the United States of America.