The judicial system is the venue which offers legal recourse to correct wrongs, even to segments of society that, historically, were not recognized by the law as citizens. As early as 1807, under Missouri territorial statutes, persons held in wrongful servitude could sue for freedom if they had evidence of wrongful enslavement. The territorial statute was codified in Missouri state law in 1824 and remained in effect until after the Civil War. Most of the persons using this law to obtain freedom were enslaved Africans. Since their cases were all brought for the same reason, to obtain the basic right to freedom, collectively, historians refer to the cases as “freedom suits.”
In 1795, Winny, the slave of Phoebe Whitesides, was moved from Kentucky to the Indiana Territory with her owners and held as a slave there. The 1787 Northwest Ordinance, however, prohibited slavery in the Indiana Territory. The Whitesides later moved to the Missouri Territory, where Winny sued for freedom, stating she was freed by living in free territory. Justices Mathias McGirk and George Tompkins stated in their majority opinion that “.this court thinks that the person who takes his slave into said Territory and by the length of his residence there indicates an intention of making that place his residence & that of his slave and thereby induces a jury to believe that fact does by such residence declare his slave to have become a free man.” This 1824 decision set Missouri’s long-standing precedent of “once free, always free” in determining the outcome of slave freedom suits.
“Winny,” who petitioned the Missouri Supreme Court, and her case established the Missouri precedent for freeing slaves who had lived in free territory. She claimed that her owner Phoebe Whitesides had imprisoned her without cause. Whitesides had moved from North Carolina to St. Louis, Missouri. If Winny were declared free, her nine children and grandchildren would also be declared free. This case went to trial in the St. Louis circuit court on February 13, 1822. The jury’s decision freed Winny and her descendants. Whitesides appealed the case and it came before the Missouri Supreme Court in 1824. Again, the court decision favored Winny and her descendants. The court ruled, “We are clearly of opinion that if, by a residence in Illinois (Whitesides) lost her right to the property in the defendant, that right was not revived by a removal, of the parties to Missouri.”
Missouri was the “Gateway to the West” and a slave state, but it was bordered by free states, including Illinois. In addition, it was a center for military personnel who were traveling to assignments in free territories, such as in the current state of Minnesota, and who resettled in Missouri. The Saint Louis circuit court heard hundreds of freedom suits. St. Louis developed its own network of people who supported slaves seeking freedom. Prominent attorneys were among those appointed as counsel by the court to argue for slaves seeking freedom. In 1824, the Missouri courts established the precedent known as “once free, always free”, freeing slaves in Missouri based on their having been held by their masters illegally in free states or territories.
Some 301 freedom suits were filed between 1814–1860. Records show that within the state, jurors often decided in favor of the enslaved. In fact, slaves gained freedom in 57 percent of the cases in Saint Louis.
Even so, by the 1850s, pro-slavery judges elected to the Missouri Supreme Court were willing to discard legal precedent to further the political end of aligning Missouri more closely with southern states. The 1852 majority opinion in the Dred Scott case, written by William Scott and concurred in by John Ryland, ended the ability of slaves in Missouri to sue for their freedom based on residence in a free state or territory. Justice Scott did not mention the precedent-forming Winny v. Whitesides. Instead, he wrote, “Times are not now as they were when the former decisions on this subject were made.”