previous part of this opinion, are
directly in point. In the last-mentioned case, Capron brought an
action against Van Noorden in a Circuit Court of the United States,
without showing, by the usual averments of citizenship, that the court
had jurisdiction. There was no plea in abatement put in, and the
parties went to trial upon the merits. The court gave judgment in
favor of the defendant with costs. The plaintiff thereupon brought his
writ of error, and this court reversed the judgment given in favor of
the defendant, and remanded the case with directions to dismiss it,
because it did not appear by the transcript that the Circuit Court had
jurisdiction.

The case before us still more strongly imposes upon this court the
duty of examining whether the court below has not committed an error,
in taking jurisdiction and giving a judgment for costs in favor of the
defendant; for in Capron _v._ Van Noorden the judgment was reversed,
because it did _not appear_ that the parties were citizens of
different States. They might or might not be. But in this case it
_does appear_ that the plaintiff was born a slave; and if the facts
upon which he relies have not made him free, then it appears
affirmatively on the record that he is not a citizen, and consequently
his suit against Sandford was not a suit between citizens of different
States, and the court had no authority to pass any judgment between
the parties. The suit ought, in this view of it, to have been
dismissed by the Circuit Court, and its judgment in favor of Sandford
is erroneous, and must be reversed.

It is true that the result either way, by dismissal or by a judgment
for the defendant, makes very little, if any, difference in a
pecuniary or personal point of view to either party. But the fact that
the result would be very nearly the same to the parties in either form
of judgment would not justify this court in sanctioning an error in
the judgment which is patent on the record, and which, if sanctioned,
might be drawn into precedent, and lead to serious mischief and
injustice in some future suit.

We proceed, therefore, to inquire whether the facts relied on by the
plaintiff entitled him to his freedom.

The case, as he himself states it, on the record brought here by his
writ of error, is this:

The plaintiff was a negro slave, belonging to Dr. Emerson, who was a
surgeon in the army of the United States. In the year 1834, he took
the plaintiff from the State of