The recent Paper Lantern Writer anthology, Echoes of Small Things, contains stories about minor events that may have changed history. Μy story, “Eight,” centers around Harriet Robinson and Dred Scott. The couple features prominently in my novel The River Remembers—Harriet is one of my Point of View characters. The novel tells the story of how they met and married while enslaved at Fort Snelling in the 1830s. The incident in their lives that would make history, though, happened after the novel ends.

In 1846, Harriet and Dred Scott sued for their freedom. Other slaves had done so and won, but the Scotts would fight in the courts for eleven years only to lose. The case escalated tensions between abolitionists and pro-slavery citizens that would lead to the Civil War. Lea Vandervelde, author of Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier, believes that suing for freedom was Harriet’s idea. In Vandervelde’s words, VanderVelde argues that Harriett had the stronger case for freedom:

• “Harriett Scott would have been at least 28 years old in 1846, which, according to Pennsylvania laws of manumission, would have made her a free woman.
• She was “given” to Dred in a marriage that followed the traditional civil ceremony of the day and that was presided over by one of the highest civil authorities in the Northwest Territories, an indication that Taliaferro (the Indian agent who owned Harriet and brought her to Fort Snelling) knew he was freeing her.
• She likely knew the lawyer who brought her case through Taliaferro (the two grew up in the same area of Pennsylvania) and through her church.
• She had been friends with, or at least acquainted with, a slave named “Rachel” while at Fort Snelling. Rachel had been returned to St. Louis and successfully sued for her freedom on the grounds that she had resided in free territory.
• Perhaps most importantly, Harriett had the most to lose. As the primary caretaker for her family, she worried that her growing daughters would be taken from her and sold to other slaveowners.”

The Scotts lived in St. Louis when their owner brought them south from Fort Snelling. Under Missouri law, enslaved children could be sold away from their parents when they reached eight years of age. Harriet’s oldest daughter turned eight in 1846, the same year the Scotts brought their lawsuit. I chose to write about the pivotal importance of that birthday to the lives of Harriet and her family as well as to a country splitting apart over its citizens’ views on slavery.

I hope you enjoy the story of Harriet and Dred, and go on to read the novel.