Roswell Martin Field (February 2, 1807 – July 12, 1869), was an American lawyer and politician. He served on the

Vermont House of Representatives The Vermont House of Representatives is the lower house of the Vermont General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Vermont. The House comprises 150 members, with each member representing around 4,100 citizens. Representatives ar ...

. Field was one of the attorneys for the enslaved Dred and Harriet Scott and their daughters in 1853; as related to '' Dred Scott v. Sandford,'' where he argued for the rights of African-Americans to earn United States citizenship. He was from the prominent Field family of Vermont.

Biography

Roswell Martin Field was born on February 2, 1807, in Newfane,

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

, to parents Esther Smith (née Kellogg) and Gen. Martin Field. He was born in southern Vermont to a prominent New England family. Field studied at

Middlebury College Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalists, Middlebury was the first operating college or university in Vermont. The college currently enrolls 2,858 undergraduates from all ...

(class of 1822), where he studied under his uncle Hon. Daniel Kellogg. Field became a lawyer in Vermont in 1825. He served in the

from 1935 to 1837, and was succeeded by James Elliot. Field had married in October 1832 after a very short period of dating, and his new wife Mary Almira Phelps was asking for a private

annulment Annulment is a legal procedure within Law, secular and Religious law, religious legal systems for declaring a marriage Void (law), null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually ex post facto law, retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is c ...

their marriage after it was not

consummated In many traditions and statutes of civil or religious law, the consummation of a marriage, often called simply ''consummation'', is the first (or first officially credited) act of sexual intercourse between two people, following their marriage t ...

. Phelps then married another man in Boston within one month of her marriage to Field, and Field spent the next nine years in courts trying to legally prove his marriage was valid. He lost his very public case in the

Vermont Supreme Court The Vermont Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority of the U.S. state of Vermont. Unlike most other states, the Vermont Supreme Court hears appeals directly from the trial courts, as Vermont has no intermediate appeals court. The Court ...

. He left his home state after dealing with his marriage humiliation, and in 1839, Field moved to St. Louis. In 1848, Field married Frances Reed in St. Louis, who was also from Vermont.

''Dred Scott v. Sandford''

Roswell Field was of no family relation to lawyer Alexander Field, who had worked on the Dred Scott legal case earlier, but they were friends. In 1853, Roswell Field agreed to start work on the Scott case,

pro-bono ( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...

, and suggested a lawsuit in the

federal courts Federal court may refer to: United States * Federal judiciary of the United States ** United States district court, a particular federal court Elsewhere * Federal Court of Australia * Federal courts of Brazil * Federal Court (Canada) * Federal co ...

under the diverse-citizenship clause, to allow lawsuits between parties who are residents of different states. Field had arranged for Montgomery Blair, a high-profile lawyer living in Washington, D.C. to serve as the defense counsel and argue the Scott's case before the United States Supreme Court. Dred Scott was the slave of a United States Army physician, who had taken his enslaved servant along for prolonged stays in free territory. On Scott's behalf, Blair argued that the time the black man had spent in the free state of Illinois and in Minnesota, free territory since the

Northwest Ordinance of 1787 The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio and also known as the Ordinance of 1787), enacted July 13, 1787, was an organic act of the Congress of the Co ...

, therefore it made him a free man.

Death and legacy

Field died on July 12, 1869, in St. Louis, Missouri. He had six children but four of them died in early childhood. His two sons became writers and poets, one was Roswell Martin Field (1851–1919), and the other was

Eugene Field Eugene Field Sr. (September 2, 1850 – November 4, 1895) was an American writer, best known for his children's poetry and humorous essays. He was known as the "poet of childhood". Early life and education Field was born in St. Louis, Missour ...

. They all lived together in a house in St. Louis which is now a museum called the "Eugene Field House", or alternatively the "Field House Museum". Field was the subject of the biography, ''Dred Scott's Advocate: A Biography of Roswell M. Field'' (

University of Missouri Press The University of Missouri Press is a university press operated by the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and London, England; it was founded in 1958 primarily through the efforts of English professor William Peden. Many publications a ...

, 1996) by Kenneth C. Kaufman.

Biography

''Dred Scott v. Sandford''

Death and legacy

See also

References

Further reading