The Important Slave Case on Trial in Washington

THE IMPORTANT SLAVE CASE ON TRIAL IN WASHINGTON.-The Washington correspondent of the Baltimore Sun gives that paper a brief history of the important case now being tried before the United States Supreme Court, in which Dred Scott, colored, sues for freedom. He says:

Dr. Edmondson, of the U.S. Army, removed with a slave (Scott) from Missouri to Rock Island, Illinois and after remaining here three years removed to some other military post in Iowa. Major Taliaferro had also carried a slave woman to Fort Snelling, who there married Scott. They have two children, one of whom was born in Iowa, or some place north of 36 deg. 30 min., and the other in Missouri. The parties finally went to Missouri, and became the property of Sanford by purchase. Dred Scott brought an action in Missouri for the recovery of his freedom and that of his wife and their issue, on the ground that, by having been voluntarily by their owners taken into free territory, and becoming domiciled there, they had become free. The court, Judge Scott presiding, decided against the claim of the parties to freedom, on the ground, I believe, that their owners had done no act exhibiting an intention to [illegible] them, and that, therefore, under the Missouri law, they were slaves.

Dred Scott now brings this suit as plaintiff in error to the Supreme Court.

The case was argued at the last term of the Court. It was then thought to be a made up case-made up perhaps by politicians, with a view to test some points of constitutional law relative to territories, popular sovereignty, the right of free travel of slave owners with their slaves through free territory, the constitutionality of the act of 1820 prohibiting slavery north of 36 deg. 30 min, &c.

The decision was deferred till this term, and another hearing ordered-probably because the Court did not like to make a decision on political questions upon the eve of a very exciting election.

The correspondent of the Journal of Commerce thus defines the three questions involved:

1st, whether a person of color is a citizen of the U. States, and, as such, has a right to bring a suit in the Supreme Court of the United States; 2d, whether having been voluntarily taken into a Territory where slavery was not tolerated, and there manumitted, the party can be upon a return to Missouri, claimed as a slave; and 3d, whether slavery was not constitutionally prohibited by the 8th section of the act of 1820, for the admission of Missouri, in all the territory North of the latitude of 36 deg. 30 min., and in which Territory the party and her children resided.