Roswell Field, ca. 1850
Oil Painting
Attributed to Chester Harding
Eugene Field House Collection

Portrait Description           
Dressed in a formal black suit and bow tie, Roswell Field looks directly toward the viewer. Though his attire suggests he is a privileged gentleman, the book he leans his arm upon reminds us that Roswell was a middle-class lawyer who relied on knowledge to make his living. His face has a kind and almost gentle expression, perhaps revealing something about the heart of one who continued another’s fight for freedom when it seemed nearly impossible. 

From Vermont to St. Louis
Born and raised in Vermont, Roswell Martin Field became a well-respected lawyer early on in life. In 1825, at the age of 18, he was admitted to the bar in Vermont. Moving to St. Louis in 1839, his early practice dealt largely with land claims, where his facility with foreign languages was helpful. Soon after, he met Frances Maria Reed, a teacher, also from Vermont. They married in 1848. Two years later, to escape the cholera epidemic that killed their son Theodore, the Fields moved to the more “suburban” Walsh’s Row about a mile from downtown St. Louis. They rented the second house, now 634 S. Broadway, where surviving sons Eugene and Roswell Jr. were born.

Roswell Field was a devoted husband and father. He often went to the nursery to play with his sons and was also known to sit on the front steps and serenade the neighborhood with his violin music. But family life changed dramatically in 1856 when his wife, Frances, died. Soon after, Roswell sent his sons to live with their aunt in Massachusetts. However, Field continued to rent the house on Walsh’s Row so his sons could have a place to return during vacations. In 1864, he gave up the house and moved into his office apartment.  On July 12, 1869, Roswell Martin Field died at age sixty-two.

Field’s Fight for Dred Scott Freedom
Roswell Field's greatest achievement is arguably his innovative defense of Dred Scott, the enslaved man whose freedom case Field took on in the early 1850s. He first argued Scott’s case in the federal courts in 1854. On December 24, 1854, Field wrote Montgomery Blair to ask for his help in defending Scott in the U.S. Supreme Court. Blair would serve as Field’s co-counsel on the case.

While these cases were common in the federal courts, Field's legal strategy was unique.  He was the first lawyer to argue a freedom suit based on diversity jurisdiction; which results from different parties in a lawsuit residing in different states or territories. Roswell argued that Dred Scott, as a resident of Missouri, was a citizen of that state. Even though citizenship did not entail all the rights it does today, it did include the concept that a citizen could not be forced into another territory against his will. This legal concept is what brought the case to the United States Supreme Court, where Roswell’s colleague Montgomery Blair argued that Dred Scott became a free man upon being taken into free territory.

On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the opinion of the Court, arguing that whether slave or free, blacks were not citizens, and had no standing to sue in Court. Dred Scott, he noted, was private property, and could thus be taken anywhere.  This effectively invalidated the thirty-year-old Missouri Compromise, which had prohibited slavery in territories north of Missouri. This decision would be noticed by an unknown lawyer in Illinois named Abraham Lincoln, who would use it as part of his 1860 Presidential platform.

Roswell Field's contribution to the legal system would eventually help free an entire race of people. 

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