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Among the most infamous U.S. Supreme Court decisions is Dred Scott v. Sandford. Despite the cases signal importance as a turning point in Americas history, the lives of the slave litigants have receded to the margins of the record, as conventional accounts have focused on the cases judges and lawyers. In telling the life of Harriet, Dreds wife and co-litigant in the case, this book provides a compensatory history to the generations of work that missed key sources only recently brought to light. Moreover, it gives insight into the reasons and ways that slaves used the courts to establish their freedom. A remarkable piece of historical detective work, Mrs. Dred Scott chronicles Harriets life from her adolescence on the 1830s Minnesota-Wisconsin frontier, to slavery-era St.