Notice the Old Courthouse, completed in 1862, site of legal proceedings that helped ignite the Civil War. In 1847, an enslaved man named Dred Scott and his wife Harriet filed suit for their freedom right here in this building. Scott's argument was compelling: he had lived for years with his enslaver in free territories, including Illinois and what is now Minnesota.
Under a legal principle called 'once free, always free,' he believed he had earned his liberty. The Missouri courts initially agreed. But in 1857, after years of appeals that reached the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roger Taney issued one of the most consequential — and infamous — rulings in American history.
Scott was not a citizen, Taney declared. No Black person, enslaved or free, could be a citizen. Congress had no power to ban slavery in the territories.
The decision electrified the nation, infuriated abolitionists, and accelerated the collision course toward war. Walk inside. The rotunda is magnificent.
The frescoes depict scenes of westward expansion — a triumphalist narrative told from one perspective. History is always more complicated than the pictures on the walls.