History of slavery in Minnesota

Slavery has been forbidden in the state of Minnesota since that state's admission to the Union in 1858. The second section of the first Article of the state's constitution, drafted in 1857, provides that:

There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the State otherwise there is the punishment of crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.[1]

Dred Scott

Dred Scott and his wife Harriet Scott were purchased as slaves in Missouri by an army officer who took them with him to Fort Snelling in Minnesota in the 1830s. In 1857, the year before Minnesota became a state, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Scott v. Sanford that the Scotts' residence in Minnesota did not make them free, and they still had the status of slaves after they returned to Missouri.

Notes and references

  1. ↑ http://www.mnhs.org/library/constitution/pdf/republicanversion.pdf
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