Freedom's Price

by Michaela MacColl

  And wandering is my middle name.

  As long as I live, my strength I will give

  To the river that’s never the same.

  Epilogue

  JANUARY 1850

  SEVEN MONTHS LATER

  “Today is the day?” Lizzie asked.

  “Today is the day,” Eliza promised.

  The Scotts’ court date had finally arrived. Their lawyer had promised that the papers were ready, the witnesses were prepared, and, most importantly of all, the judge and jury were there to hear the case.

  Much had changed in St. Louis in the past seven months. By November the cholera had left as quickly as it had arrived. The disease had claimed over four thousand lives in the city, but thankfully none of Eliza’s loved ones.

  “I’m cold,” Lizzie complained.

  Eliza pulled off her new coat and draped it around her sister’s shoulders. “Now hush, Lizzie. As soon as Mr. Hall arrives, we’ll go into the courtroom. It’s warmer there.”

  Ma and Pa were sitting on a bench on the plaza, holding hands. Eliza thought they looked like the courting couple they must have been once. Ma’s face was worried, as usual, but Pa seemed confident.

  “Eliza, your friends are here,” Pa said, tilting his chin toward the far side of the courthouse plaza.

  Eliza hurried to meet Wilson and Celia. “You didn’t have to come!” She greeted them with wide-open arms.

  “We wouldn’t miss this,” Wilson assured her. There had been plenty of construction work for Wilson to do after the fire, and he had grown at least two inches in the past half year. His shoulders were bulky with new muscles. At Reverend Meachum’s invitation, he was living on the Freedom School with a dozen other people displaced by the fire. He teased Eliza that now he’d read even more books than she. He’d just found a job with a new steamboat that would be making the journey between St. Louis and Hannibal weekly. Every Sunday he came to church with the Scotts and had dinner with them in their small house not far from the river. Mr. Hall had finally convinced the court to let the Scotts leave the prison.

  Celia grinned. “I wanted to come too,” she said. “Although I’m not exactly sure what’s happening.”

  “I’ll explain,” Eliza promised.

  The three friends sat on the low wall at the edge of the plaza. The winter sun was dazzlingly bright. They could easily see all of downtown St. Louis, the river, and beyond. “You can even see the Freedom School from here,” Eliza said. Celia had joined their classes and was becoming a fair student.

  “The levee is as full of boats as it ever was,” Wilson said. “It’s hard to believe that the fire destroyed it all.”

  The fire had destroyed fifteen of the city’s blocks, including Eliza’s favorite music store. But the jail had been spared as well as Reverend Meachum’s church. The warehouses and other downtown buildings were being rebuilt with brick or other materials that could withstand a fire.

  “Not everything’s being rebuilt,” Celia said a bit sourly. Her eyes were resting on the area where the shantytown had been. Even though Celia and her ma lived in a proper house now, she was still bitter that the fire brigades hadn’t tried to save the shantytown.

  Mr. Hall, wearing a sharp brown suit, approached, taking the steps two at a time. “Dred!” he called out. “It’s time.”

  “That’s our lawyer, Mr. Hall,” Eliza explained. They filed in behind Mr. Hall and Eliza’s parents. Lizzie was perched on Pa’s hip. A few other people trailed in too. They weren’t connected with the Scotts, but they were here to watch the proceedings. Eliza had heard that for murder trials the courtroom was filled with spectators. But the Scotts’ little case, no matter how important it was to them, didn’t attract much of an audience.

  Eliza had been only nine the last time she’d been in the courthouse, but she’d never forgotten the courtroom. There was a raised bench where the judge’s chair was. White columns lined the room underneath an arched ceiling with a skylight. “That’s where the jury sits,” she said to Celia, pointing to the raised box along the right side of the courtroom. “And the judge will be there. Ma and Pa will sit with Mr. Hall. We’ll sit behind them.”

  The bailiff brought in the jury, twelve white men who took their seats with a serious air. Some of them stared at Eliza’s family. She stared back. Maybe if they understood that a real family was at stake, they would do the right thing.

  “Why would twelve white men ever give you your freedom?” Celia asked suspiciously. “What’s in it for them?”

  “They aren’t giving us anything. They’ll follow the law. It’s the law that sets us free,” Eliza explained. She crossed her fingers and sent up a little prayer. “Once I have my freedom papers, men like Bartlett can’t take me again.”

  Eliza still got the shivers when she thought about Bartlett. Mr. Hall had sent the sheriff after Bartlett for kidnapping, but the slave catcher had left town. He was still hunting slaves, but at least he was doing it somewhere else. Eliza took comfort knowing she’d never see him again.

  The courtroom doors opened and Miss Charlotte came in. Miss Charlotte had been appalled when she heard what her son had done to Eliza. But Mark and Frank had left for California before anyone could punish them for kidnapping. Eliza had heard that they hadn’t found any gold, and their appeals for more money met deaf ears at home.

  Miss Charlotte walked up to Pa and shook his hand. “Dred, I wish you good luck.”

  “Thank you, Miss Charlotte,” he said. “We appreciate all your help.”

  Miss Charlotte nodded and had turned to leave when she glimpsed Eliza. She beckoned and Eliza came to her.

  “How are you, Eliza?” Miss Charlotte asked.

  “Very well, thank you,” Eliza answered.

  “Aunt Sofia wanted to be here today, but her rheumatism is acting up,” Miss Charlotte told her. “She hounded me until I promised to come and support you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Eliza said politely. “I’ll be back tomorrow.” Ma wouldn’t let Eliza live at the Charlesses’ house, but she had agreed to let Eliza keep caring for Miss Sofia. Now that Mark was gone, working there was much better. Eliza was quite happy seeing her family at night but being apart from them by day.

  The bailiff entered the courtroom and bellowed, “All rise. The St. Louis Circuit Court is now in session, the Honorable Alexander Hamilton presiding.” Everyone stood. Eliza watched the jury intently. Her fate was in their hands, and she didn’t even know their names.

  Despite the importance of the day, the proceedings were quite dull. Celia soon fell asleep as the morning dragged on with conversation between the lawyers, the judge, and the witnesses who had known Dr. Emerson when Dred Scott was his slave.

  Finally, the judge said it was time for the jury to make a decision. The twelve men filed out of the courtroom.

  The Scotts went outside and ate the lunch they had brought. It was cold but the sun was shining. Conversations started and then sputtered away. Each one of them knew that their futures were being decided at that very moment. Eliza’s stomach felt tight from too much hoping and worrying. Even the cake Wilson had brought tasted like ash.

  Mr. Hall came to find them. “They have a verdict.”

  When the jury filed into the courtroom, they did not look at the Scotts. Eliza wanted to ask Pa if that meant anything, but one glance at him and she held her tongue. Pa was standing tall, his back straight and his head held high. Ma’s hand clutched his. Lizzie hid her face in Eliza’s skirt.

  Wilson whispered in Eliza’s ear, “You’re going to win.”

  Eliza stared straight ahead, wishing harder than she’d ever wished before. She felt her heart racing as though even her blood were impatient too.

  “Jury,” asked the judge, “do you have a verdict?”

  The man in the front of the jury box stood. “We do, Your Honor.”

  “Please hand your determination to the bailiff.”

  The bailiff took a folded paper to the judge. He read it and asked th
e jury, “Do you all agree?” The twelve men nodded.

  Eliza couldn’t sit still; her foot tapped uncontrollably. She closed her eyes and hummed silently until the judge read aloud from the paper in his hand. Eliza couldn’t take in the meaning of the words. But it was clear they’d won from the way Mr. Hall slapped Pa on the back. Ma smiled broadly, tears running down her cheeks.

  “We won?” Eliza asked.

  “You’re free,” Wilson said. He picked up Eliza and twirled her around in a circle.

  “We won!” Eliza cried, brushing tears off her cheeks.

  “Congratulations!” Celia burst out.

  Eliza sank down in her seat. “Free!”

  Mr. Hall walked over to the bailiff. He came back with the piece of paper the judge had read. “Here’s your verdict,” he said. “Would you like me to read it to you?”

  Eliza started to speak, then stopped herself. Ma noticed and squeezed Eliza’s hand. “Maybe Eliza can read it to us?”

  Startled, Eliza met her ma’s gaze.

  “No one can stop you now,” Ma whispered to Eliza.

  “I’d like that,” Eliza said.

  Mr. Hall handed the paper to Eliza with a ceremony that felt right for the occasion. Eliza took it with trembling hands. The words in spiky handwriting represented her whole future. A future that she could choose for herself.

  She began to read aloud because she was free to do so.

  The Dred Scott family on the cover of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1857, the year they lost their Supreme Court case

  Authors’ Note

  THE DRED SCOTT DECISION

  At the end of Freedom’s Price, the Scott family finally won their freedom. Unfortunately, they did not keep it for long. Mrs. Emerson appealed the decision in less than a month. The Scotts’ legal battle continued for another eight years until they lost in the United States Supreme Court in 1857. Chief Justice Roger Taney, a Virginia slaveholder, declared their suit invalid because no person of African descent could ever be a U.S. citizen. The judge also declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 unconstitutional, which meant that the federal government could no longer prohibit slavery in the territories. The Dred Scott decision outraged abolitionists and is viewed as one of the reasons for the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861.

  While Mrs. Emerson ultimately won her case, her circumstances had changed over the eleven years it took for the case to be decided. She’d married Dr. Calvin C. Chaffee in 1850.

  Dr. Chaffee was a politician with abolitionist views and was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1855 to 1859. Once Mrs. Emerson married him, her property became his—so ironically, an abolitionist politician owned the most notorious slave family in the country. After the Supreme Court ruled against the Scotts, Dr. Chaffee immediately freed the Scotts on May 26, 1857.

  THE SCOTT FAMILY

  We do not know a great deal about the Scott family. Since Harriet and Dred couldn’t read or write, they left very few records behind. Dred and Harriet did meet in the Wisconsin Territory and were married there. In St. Louis, Dred worked in Mr. Hall’s office. Harriet was a laundress who would have washed her clothes along the banks of the Mississippi. Miss Charlotte’s family, the Charlesses, did own Dred at one time before selling him to Dr. Emerson. And they supported the Scotts’ lawsuit. The Scott family was forced to live in a jail while their case was being heard. In May 1849 the cholera epidemic caused their case to be postponed yet again. They survived the epidemic and the Great Fire of 1849. Eliza’s adventures are fictional, although the terrors she faced were very real threats to a black girl in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1849.

  The St. Louis levee in the mid- to late 1800s

  Dred was a small man and seems to have been charming and well liked. He died of tuberculosis in September 1858, less than two years after he formally gained his freedom. He was around fifty-nine years old. His wife, Harriet, was illiterate but was most likely the driving force behind Dred Scott’s lawsuit. She was a devoted churchwoman and known for her fine character. Around twenty years younger than her husband, she lived very quietly after his death, taking in laundry. In her old age, Harriet became a house servant, a less physically demanding job, until her death in June 1876 at the age of around sixty-one.

  Eliza married Wilson Madison sometime before 1863. Eliza was probably around twenty-four when she married (in Freedom’s Price, we made Eliza a little older than she was in real life in 1849). She worked as a laundress for her entire life. Wilson achieved his dream and became a pastry chef. They had six children, but only two sons survived, Harry and John. Wilson died in May 1881 at age forty-three, and Eliza died the next year. She was also forty-three.

  Lizzie Scott’s life was a bit of a mystery. She never married, and even though she lived in St. Louis, she seemed to have lost touch with her family. After Eliza’s death, her sons Harry and John (ages twelve and nine) were orphaned. According to family lore, the two boys sat on a curb holding their only possession—a charcoal drawing of Dred and Harriet. A woman they did not know passed them on the street, recognized the drawing, and took in the two boys. She raised them but never mentioned that she was, in fact, their aunt, Lizzie Scott. She lived until 1945, when she died of pneumonia at the age of ninety-nine. There are still Scott family descendants through Eliza and Wilson’s son John.

  MUSIC

  Eliza’s love of singing is an important part of Freedom’s Price. In the 1840s singing was one of the few forms of free entertainment available to African Americans. It was an important part of their culture, both at church and at home. Eliza’s ambition to be a songwriter would have been unusual but not impossible. “The Blue Juniata,” the song Eliza sings to Miss Sofia, was a popular song written by Marion Dix Sullivan. The song that Eliza composes throughout the story is fictional.

  THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC AND THE GREAT FIRE OF 1849

  The cholera epidemic in 1849 claimed more than 4,500 lives in St. Louis. Cholera is a bacterial abdominal infection caused by contaminated food and water. There was no known cure in the mid-1800s. Today we realize that cholera can be prevented with proper sanitation, but in the 1840s little was known about the disease. Dred Scott was ahead of his time when he advised his family to wash their hands and to only drink clean water.

  A print of the Great Fire at St. Louis, Thursday night, May 17, 1849

  The St. Louis Great Fire of May 17, 1849, started on a paddle-wheeled steamboat, the White Cloud. The flames jumped to its neighbor, the Edward Bates. The Edward Bates was cut free from the dock, but the wind and current pushed it back into the levee. Within thirty minutes, a total of twenty-three steamboats had caught fire.

  The fire lasted almost twelve hours, traveling slowly from the warehouse district along the levee through the downtown commercial district. Remarkably, there were only three recorded deaths, including Fire Captain Thomas Targee. To save the great St. Louis Cathedral, Captain Targee blew up several buildings to create a firebreak. One of these buildings was Eliza’s beloved music store. The firebreak was successful, but Targee died in his own explosion. Altogether 415 buildings were destroyed. The jail, the Charlesses’ house, and the Baptist Church were spared. The shantytown where Celia and her mother once lived was completely destroyed.

  OTHER PEOPLE IN FREEDOM’S PRICE

  Reuben Bartlett was one of the most notorious slave catchers of the time. While the Mameluke did travel between St. Louis and New Orleans, we don’t know if Bartlett used it. Eliza’s kidnapping was invented, but it was common practice for unscrupulous slave catchers to grab African Americans off the street and sell them into slavery.

  Reverend John Berry Meachum started life as a slave, then purchased freedom for himself, his family, and many others with money earned from his skilled woodworking. He was educated and formally trained as a minister. Meachum started a school for African Americans in the basement of the Baptist Church. When he encountered local opposition, he moved the school to a steamboat he had built and
anchored in federal waters on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. Missouri law didn’t apply in the middle of the river. Both that school and the steamboat were known as the Freedom School.

  Mrs. Charless did help the Scotts with their lawsuit. It was her brother, Taylor Blow, who helped Dr. Chaffee eventually free the family. The Scotts’ owner, Mrs. Emerson, was part of the prominent Sanford family. However, Mark Charless and his friend Frank Sanford are invented characters, as is Miss Sofia. After gold was discovered in California, it became popular for young men to seek their fortune in the gold fields. Most were not successful.

  A Note about Our Sources/Further Reading*

  THE SCOTT FAMILY

  There are many books written about the Dred Scott case. There are fewer books about the Scotts as a family. We relied on these:

  Hager, Ruth Ann (Abels). Dred & Harriet Scott: Their Family Story. St. Louis, MO: St. Louis County Library, 2010.

  Ms. Hager is a reference specialist in St. Louis County Library’s Special Collections Department, which focuses on family and local history. She is also a certified genealogist and lecturer on genealogy.

  Moses, Sheila. I, Dred Scott. New York: Simon and Schuster’s Children’s Books, 2005.

  A fictionalized slave narrative based on the life and legal precedent of Dred Scott. The book has a foreword by John A. Madison Jr., a great-grandson of Dred Scott.

  Swain, Gwenyth. Dred and Harriet Scott: A Family’s Struggle for Freedom. St. Paul, MN: Borealis Books, 2004.

  A carefully researched family biography that begins with Dred’s childhood on a Virginia plantation and continues with his later travels to Alabama, Missouri, Illinois, and the territory that would become Minnesota. The author explores the power of the Scott family ties and the severe challenges that Dred and Harriet faced as they fought for freedom for Eliza and Lizzie.

  VanderVelde, Lea. Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.