Winny v. Whitesides alias Prewitt (1 Mo. 472, 1824 WL 1839 [1824]) was the first freedom suit heard by the Supreme Court of Missouri. The case established the state's judicial criteria for an enslaved person's right to freedom. The court determined that if a slave owner took a slave into free territory and established residence there, the slave would be free. The slave remained free even if returned to slave territory, engendering the phrase "once free, always free."[1]
For two decades, the "once free, always free" precedent was upheld in a number of freedom suits.[2]