ABSTRACT
In 1824, in Winny v. Whitesides, the Missouri Supreme Court had declared that an enslaved person who had been taken to the free territory of Illinois had become a free person. Over the next dozen years, there were other such cases, and in every one the Missouri courts ruled that a slave working or living in a free jurisdiction for a reasonable period of time became free. Slavery had been part and parcel of American history since the first boatload of African prisoners had been sold in Virginia in 1619. For the next two decades the Missouri Compromise governed the politics of slavery. States came into the Union in pairs, one free and the other slave, thus preserving the balance in the Senate. The Missouri Compromise had never been constitutional, and Dred Scott's sojourn in free territory did not affect his status as a slave.
