{{Short description|American lawyer, politician (1807–1869)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=October 2025}} {{Infobox officeholder | name = Roswell Martin Field | birth_date = February 2, 1807 | birth_place = Newfane, Vermont, U.S. | death_date = July 12, 1869 | death_place = St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. | occupation = Lawyer, politician | image = Roswell M. Field.jpg | children = 6, including Eugene Field | office = Member of the Vermont House of Representatives from Newfane | term_end = 1837 | succeeded = James Elliot | term_start = 1835 | relations = Daniel Kellogg (maternal uncle) | alma_mater = Middlebury College | resting_place = Bellefontaine Cemetery | spouse = Mary Almira Phelps (annulled),<br/> Frances Reed (m. 1848–1856; death) }}
'''Roswell Martin Field''' (February 2, 1807 – July 12, 1869) was an American lawyer and politician. He served on the Vermont House of Representatives. 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,''<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage">{{Cite web |title=Dred Scott Case, 1846–1857 |url=https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/africanamerican/scott/scott.asp |access-date=2023-03-04 |website=Missouri Digital Heritage}}</ref> where he argued for the rights of African-Americans to earn United States citizenship. He was from the prominent Field family of Vermont.<ref name="Thompson-2004">{{Cite book |last=Thompson |first=Slason |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12984/12984-h/12984-h.htm |title=Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions |date=July 22, 2004 |publisher=The Project Gutenberg}}</ref>
== Biography == Roswell Martin Field was born on February 2, 1807, in Newfane, Vermont,<ref name="House Divided: Dickinson College">{{Cite web |title=Field, Roswell Martin |url=https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5653 |access-date=2023-03-04 |website=House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College}}</ref> 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 (class of 1822),<ref name="The Burlington Free Press-1869">{{Cite news |date=1869-08-07 |title=Necrology of Middlebury College, 1868–69 |pages=3 |work=The Burlington Free Press |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120141913/necrology-of-middlebury-college/ |access-date=2023-03-04}}</ref> where he studied under his uncle Hon. Daniel Kellogg.
Field became a lawyer in Vermont in 1825.<ref name="Lindley-1997">{{Citation |last=Lindley |first=Lester G. |title=Review of Kaufman, Kenneth C., Dred Scott's Advocate: A Biography of Roswell M. Field |date=October 1997 |url=https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=1385 |access-date=2023-03-04 |publisher=H-Law, H-Review |language=en}}</ref> He served in the Vermont House of Representatives from 1835 to 1837, and was succeeded by James Elliot.{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}}
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 their marriage after it was not consummated.<ref>{{Cite news |date=1832-12-18 |title=Married |pages=3 |work=Vermont Gazette |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120143247/married/ |access-date=2023-03-04}}</ref><ref name="Lindley-1997" /> 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.<ref>{{Cite news |date=1834-05-31 |title=The Wife With Two Husbands |pages=2 |work=The Evening Post |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120143503/the-wife-with-two-husbands/ |access-date=2023-03-04}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=1833-03-11 |title=A Yankee Trick |pages=4 |work=North Star (Danville, Vermont) |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120143371/a-yankee-trick/ |access-date=2023-03-04}}</ref><ref name="Lindley-1997" /> He lost his very public case in the Vermont Supreme Court.<ref name="Lindley-1997" /> He left his home state after dealing with his marriage humiliation, and in 1839, Field moved to St. Louis.<ref name="Lindley-1997" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Eugene Field House |url=http://www.thecivilwarmuse.com/index.php?page=field-house |access-date=2023-03-04 |website=The Civil War Muse}}</ref> In 1848, Field married Frances Reed in St. Louis, who was also from Vermont.
=== ''Dred Scott v. Sandford'' === {{Main|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.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" /> In 1853, Roswell Field agreed to start work on the Scott case, pro-bono, and suggested a lawsuit in the federal courts under the diverse-citizenship clause, to allow lawsuits between parties who are residents of different states.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" />
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.<ref name="Missouri Digital Heritage" /> 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, therefore it made him a free man.
== Death and legacy == thumb|right|200px|Field's gravestone
Field died on July 12, 1869, in St. Louis, Missouri,<ref name="The Burlington Free Press-1869" /><ref>{{Cite web |others=The Library of Congress |title=Field, Roswell M. (Roswell Martin), 1807-1869 |url=https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n88001574.html |access-date=2023-03-04 |website=LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies {{!}} Library of Congress, from LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress)}}</ref> and is interrned at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.
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.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-09-24 |title=Eugene Field (1850 - 1895) |url=https://history.denverlibrary.org/colorado-biographies/eugene-field-1850-1895 |access-date=2023-03-04 |website=Denver Public Library History |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Thompson-2004" /><ref name="Field House Museum-2015">{{Cite web |date=2015-09-10 |title=Field Family History |url=https://fieldhousemuseum.org/about/field-family-history/ |access-date=2023-03-04 |website=Field House Museum |language=en-US}}</ref> 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".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Field, Roswell Martin |url=https://dynamic.stlouis-mo.gov/history/peopledetail.cfm?Master_ID=997 |access-date=2023-03-04 |website=St. Louis Historic Preservation, Mound City on the Mississippi}}</ref><ref name="Field House Museum-2015" />
Field was the subject of the biography, ''Dred Scott's Advocate: A Biography of Roswell M. Field'' (University of Missouri Press, 1996) by Kenneth C. Kaufman.
== See also == * Diana Cephas
== References == {{Reflist}}
== Further reading == *''[https://books.google.com/books/about/Dred_Scott_s_Advocate.html?id=F1-PAAAAMAAJ Dred Scott's Advocate: A Biography of Roswell M. Field]'' by Kenneth C. Kaufman, Columbia: University of Missouri Press (1996)
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Field, Roswell M.}} Category:1807 births Category:1869 deaths Category:People from Newfane, Vermont Category:Members of the Vermont House of Representatives Category:American civil rights lawyers Category:Lawyers from St. Louis Category:Middlebury College alumni Category:19th-century American lawyers Category:19th-century members of the Vermont General Assembly Category:Burials at Bellefontaine Cemetery