ept and detained him in
prison there without any reasonable or probable cause whatsoever,
for a long time, to wit for the space of one year, then next
following, contrary to law and against the will of the said
plaintiff; and the said plaintiff avers that before and at the time
of the committing of the grievances aforesaid, he the said plaintiff
was then and there and still is a free person, and that the said
defendants held and still hold him in slavery, and other wrongs to
the said plaintiff then and there did against the peace of the State
of Missouri to the damage of the said plaintiff in the sum of ($300)
Three Hundred Dollars, and therefore he sues.

FIELD & HALL, _Attys. for Plff._

With this brief and bald complaint for trespass to the person and false
imprisonment was begun a long and stubbornly fought litigation,
extending over ten years, and which was destined to end in Chief
Justice Taney declaring:

They [negroes] had for more than a century before [the Declaration
of Independence] been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and
altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social
or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights
which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might
justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was
bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise
and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it.

From the beginning of his connection with this case Roswell Field
contended for the broad principle enunciated by Lord Mansfield that
"Slavery is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but
positive law." He consented to a discontinuance of the original action
because of the variance of the complaint from the subsequently
discovered facts. In the second suit Dred Scott and his family were
declared free by the local court, but the judgment was reversed on
appeal to the Supreme Court of the state. Judge Gamble, in dissenting
from the opinion of the majority of the Court, held that "In Missouri
it has been recognized from the beginning of the Government as a
correct position in law that a master who takes his slave to reside in
a state or territory where slavery is prohibited thereby emancipates
his slave."

The subsequent sale of Dred Scott to a citizen of New York named
Sandford afforded Roswell Field the opportunity to renew the fight for
Scott