Dred Scott, born into slavery in Southampton County around 1798, was acquired by the Peter Blow family, taken to Alabama and later to St. Louis, Missouri, and then sold to John Emerson, a physician serving in the U.S. Army. After Dr. Emerson died in 1843, his wife Irene inherited Scott, his wife, and their two daughters. Scott tried to buy his freedom, but Irene Emerson refused, so he filed suit in 1850. The St. Louis Circuit Court ruled that Scott and his family should be free because they had been illegally held as bondsmen when Dr. Emerson took them on Army assignments in the free jurisdictions of Illinois and Wisconsin Territory. Irene Emerson appealed, and in 1852 the Missouri Supreme Court reversed that decision and returned the Scotts to slavery. With new lawyers, including Montgomery Blair, Scott took the case to federal court, and on March 6, 1857, it reached the United States Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's majority opinion held that under the Constitution, people descended from Africans, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens of the United States, that neither the Northwest Ordinance nor the Missouri Compromise could exclude slavery, and that Scott could not be freed by legislative action because he was subject to the Fifth Amendment's protection of property from being taken without due process. The Blow family later purchased Dred Scott and his family and set them free. Taney's ruling deepened tensions between North and South, and the Civil War began four years later.