In 1846, Dred Scott, a slave living in St. Louis, sued in a Missouri court for his and his family’s freedom. Eleven years later, the case reached the highest federal court in Dred Scott v. Sandford, where the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Scott’s claim to freedom by a vote of 7-2. While the verdict had a personal impact on Scott and his family, it also had legal, political, social, and economic ramifications that reverberated throughout the country in the years immediately preceding the Civil War.