## The Legal World She Navigated
The legal constraints that shaped Mason’s life after emancipation are worth laying out clearly, because they formed the environment in which her achievements took place.
She was freed by a court ruling in a free state under a state constitutional provision. The federal legal environment was moving in the opposite direction: the *Dred Scott* decision in 1857 held that enslaved people could not be citizens and had no standing to sue in federal court, and that slavery could not be prohibited in federal territories. This federal ruling made the path Mason had used — a free-state freedom suit — legally more complex, though California state courts retained some jurisdiction over their own constitutional provisions.
The Civil War (1861-1865) and the constitutional amendments that followed transformed the legal landscape. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery throughout the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) guaranteed citizenship and equal protection to all persons born in the country. The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race. These amendments remade the formal legal status of Black Americans, though their enforcement was uneven and contested.
For Mason, the period from 1856 to 1865 was a time when she was legally free in California but would have had no claim to freedom if she had been transported to a slave state. After 1865, her freedom was guaranteed by federal law. After 1868, her right to hold property and enter contracts was guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, though California state law had been protecting her property rights since her 1866 purchase.