215 (1847), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision involving the constitutionality of slavery that was a predecessor of Dred Scott v. Sandford.

The Supreme Court was then led by Chief Justice Roger Taney, who owned slaves and wrote the Dred Scott decision but not Jones.

The Court unanimously reached the decision that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was constitutional and that the institution of slavery remained a matter for individual states to decide.

The driver and a 30-year-old black man, named Andrew, escaped, but the slavecatchers took the wagon with the rest to a jail in Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River and about 10 miles from the stop.

Abolitionists used Van Zandt's Supreme Court appeal as a vehicle to reach the underlying constitutional question, since Ohio had been a free state since the Northwest Ordinance, even before its statehood.