The Manichean Paranoia Patch

In the spirit of education, I have decided to start a weekly post about little-known heroes of the past. You won’t see these people lauded in textbooks, but in their own way they were courageous and ahead of their time.

Today’s unsung hero is Henry Taylor Blow. Mr. Blow was born in 1817 in the state of Virginia. His parents, Peter and Elizabeth, were the owners of Dred Scott, the black slave immortalized by the worst Supreme Court ruling in U.S. history. Henry attended St. Louis University in the early 1830s and became a member of the Missouri Senate from 1854 to 1858.

He strongly opposed the Dred Scott ruling, siding with the family slave over his own financial self-interest. Upon Dred Scott’s court defeat, Mr. Blow promptly freed him, allowing Scott to die a free man a short while later. Henry Taylor Blow was eventually appointed the U.S. Minister to Venezuela by President Lincoln and served on the U.S. House of Representatives from 1863 to 1867. During the Grant administration, he was appointed Minister to Brazil and later served as one of the original members of the Washington D.C. Board of Commissions. He died in 1875.