MONTGOMERY, Ralph

MONTGOMERY, Ralph. (Unknown-Unknown). Slave. In failing to consider the case of Ralph, the United States Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision inflamed those in resistance to slavery in the United States. Ralph, a slave for a Mr. Montgomery in Missouri, took his owner's last name as his own, a common practice in pre-CIVIL WAR America. Ralph's owner had given his slave a unique opportunity by granting him five years outside of Missouri if he wished to raise $550 to buy his freedom. Ralph, hearing of the fortunes to be made in the LEAD mines of Dubuque, moved north.

The kidnapping of Ralph by two white men intent on returning him to his owner in Missouri led, in July 1839, to the first case heard before the new territorial Supreme Court. David Rorer, Ralph's attorney, argued that by living in Iowa when the area was made a territory by Congress established Ralph as a free man. Rorer also used an English case in which it was ruled that a slave having lived in a free country could not be taken to another land that would again lead him into slavery. According to his attorney, the only obligation Ralph owed was to raise the $550 for his former owner in Missouri.

Attorneys for the Missouri man argued that Ralph had not lived up to his part of the arrangement made with their client and therefore he should be returned to Missouri under conditions of the Fugitive Slave Law.

The court ruled that by allowing Ralph to come into a free land, the Missouri owner had granted his slave freedom. Ralph was declared free. The ruling in the Ralph Case stands in stark comparison to the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott, a slave taken into free lands by his owner. Scott was declared to be a slave by the court that ruled that he, being a black, had no right to sue in United States courts. Historians can only guess what decision the court might have reached if the Ralph Case had been better known, and what influence this might have had on events leading up to the Civil War.