His decision presented his version of the origins of the United States and the Constitution as the basis for his holding that Congress had no authority to restrict the spread of slavery into federal territories, and that such previous attempts to restrict slavery's spread as the 1820 Missouri Compromise were unconstitutional. The framers of the Constitution, he wrote, believed that blacks
had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it.Referring to the language in the Declaration of Independence that includes the phrase, "all men are created equal," Taney reasoned that
it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration. . . .
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Dred Scott
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The Dred Scott v. Sandford decision was widely condemned at the time by opponents of slavery as an illegitimate use of judicial power. Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party accused the Taney Court of carrying out the orders of the "slave power" and of conspiring with President James Buchanan to undo the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Buchanan put significant political pressure behind the scenes on Justice Robert Grier to obtain at least one vote from a justice from outside the South to support the Court's sweeping decision.
Taney's intemperate language only added to the fury of those who opposed the decision. As he explained the Court's ruling, he noted that African Americans, free or slave, had not been considered part of the original community of people covered by the Constitution, but people of "an inferior order". Because they were originally excluded, he contended that neither the Court nor Congress could now extend rights of citizens to them.
One of the two dissenters, Justice Benjamin Curtis, was so upset by the decision that he resigned from the court.
Taney labeled the opposition to slavery as "northern aggression," a popular phrase among Southerners. He hoped that a Supreme Court decision declaring federal restrictions on slavery in the territories unconstitutional would put the issue beyond the realm of political debate. His decision galvanized Northern opposition to slavery while splitting the Democratic Party on sectional lines.
Many abolitionists — and some supporters of slavery — believed that Taney was prepared to rule that the states had no power to bar slaveholders from bringing their property into free states, and that laws of free states providing for the emancipation of slaves brought into their territory were unconstitutional. A case, Lemmon v. New York, that presented that issue was slowly making its way to the Supreme Court in the years after the Dred Scott decision. The outbreak of the American Civil War denied Taney the chance to rule on the issue, as the Commonwealth of Virginia seceded and no longer recognized the Court's authority.
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| Lincoln's Inauguration |
Taney personally administered the oath of office to Lincoln, his most prominent critic, on March 4, 1861.
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| John Merryman |
Taney was instrumental in the case of John Merryman, a citizen of the state of Maryland who, in May 1861, was accused of burning bridges and destroying telegraph poles. He was seized in his home at 2:00 am by military authorities and taken to Fort McHenry. His was the first arrest under President Abraham Lincoln's suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus.
Taney declared Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus unconstitutional (see Ex parte Merryman). Merryman was indicted by the grand jury of a United States District Court for burning bridges and destroying telegraph wires. While Merryman was in jail awaiting a hearing, Taney had furniture and home-cooked meals brought to him in his cell. Merryman later named one of his sons Roger B. Taney Merryman in the Chief Justice's honor.
Taney, sitting as a federal circuit court judge, ruled that the authority to suspend habeas corpus lay with Congress, not the president. President Lincoln ignored the ruling, as did the Army under Lincoln's orders. The case was rendered moot by Lincoln's subsequent order in February 1862 to release almost everyone held as a political prisoner. In response to opposition to conscription, however, Lincoln again suspended habeas corpus six months later, this time throughout the entire country. The passage of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act in March 1863 ended the controversy, at least temporarily, by authorizing the suspension of habeas corpus upon Congress's authority rather than on the president's authority.
Taney, whose health had never been good, spent his final years in worsening health, near poverty, and despised by both North and South. Since the Merryman ruling, he was all but ignored by Lincoln and his cabinet.
Taney lost his Maryland estates to the Civil War and suffered from his poverty: "All my life I have felt the obligation to pay my debts . . . and my inability to do so at this time is mortifying." He explained that his Washington, D.C. rent had been raised from $4,000 to $8,000, but that he had been prevented from moving to cheaper quarters due to the failing health of his daughter Ellen, who lived with him. The miserable financial situation was maddening to him. . . . A few months later Taney wrote ". . . about peaceful, bygone days . . . walks in the fresh country air. But my walking days are over." (Note: Taney's yearly salary was approximately $10,000. In the inflationary Washington, D.C. of this time, the yearly rent for his boardinghouse rooms had jumped from $4,000 to $8,000, with no increase in pay.)
On October 13, 1864 the clerk of the Supreme Court announced that "the great and good Chief Justice is no more." He had died at the age of eighty-seven the previous evening, having served for more than twenty-eight years as the fifth Chief Justice of the United States.
President Lincoln made no public statement. Of his cabinet, Lincoln and three members —Secretary of State William Seward, Attorney General Edward Bates, and Postmaster General William Dennison — attended Taney's memorial service in Washington, D.C. Only Bates joined the cortège to Frederick, Maryland for Taney's funeral and burial at St. John the Evangelist Cemetery.
Taney declared Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus unconstitutional (see Ex parte Merryman). Merryman was indicted by the grand jury of a United States District Court for burning bridges and destroying telegraph wires. While Merryman was in jail awaiting a hearing, Taney had furniture and home-cooked meals brought to him in his cell. Merryman later named one of his sons Roger B. Taney Merryman in the Chief Justice's honor.
Taney, sitting as a federal circuit court judge, ruled that the authority to suspend habeas corpus lay with Congress, not the president. President Lincoln ignored the ruling, as did the Army under Lincoln's orders. The case was rendered moot by Lincoln's subsequent order in February 1862 to release almost everyone held as a political prisoner. In response to opposition to conscription, however, Lincoln again suspended habeas corpus six months later, this time throughout the entire country. The passage of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act in March 1863 ended the controversy, at least temporarily, by authorizing the suspension of habeas corpus upon Congress's authority rather than on the president's authority.
Taney, whose health had never been good, spent his final years in worsening health, near poverty, and despised by both North and South. Since the Merryman ruling, he was all but ignored by Lincoln and his cabinet.
Taney lost his Maryland estates to the Civil War and suffered from his poverty: "All my life I have felt the obligation to pay my debts . . . and my inability to do so at this time is mortifying." He explained that his Washington, D.C. rent had been raised from $4,000 to $8,000, but that he had been prevented from moving to cheaper quarters due to the failing health of his daughter Ellen, who lived with him. The miserable financial situation was maddening to him. . . . A few months later Taney wrote ". . . about peaceful, bygone days . . . walks in the fresh country air. But my walking days are over." (Note: Taney's yearly salary was approximately $10,000. In the inflationary Washington, D.C. of this time, the yearly rent for his boardinghouse rooms had jumped from $4,000 to $8,000, with no increase in pay.)
On October 13, 1864 the clerk of the Supreme Court announced that "the great and good Chief Justice is no more." He had died at the age of eighty-seven the previous evening, having served for more than twenty-eight years as the fifth Chief Justice of the United States.
President Lincoln made no public statement. Of his cabinet, Lincoln and three members —Secretary of State William Seward, Attorney General Edward Bates, and Postmaster General William Dennison — attended Taney's memorial service in Washington, D.C. Only Bates joined the cortège to Frederick, Maryland for Taney's funeral and burial at St. John the Evangelist Cemetery.
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| Taney Tombstone |
Taney, whose wife had pre-deceased him by nearly twenty years, was survived by two daughters: the sickly Ellen, and a second, widowed daughter with a small child; he left a small life insurance policy and a bundle of worthless Virginia bonds.
In early 1865, the House of Representatives passed a bill to appropriate funds for a bust of Taney to be displayed in the Supreme Court alongside with those of the four Chief Justices who preceded him. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts said: "I speak what cannot be denied when I declare that the opinion of the Chief Justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of courts. Judicial baseness reached its lowest point on that occasion. You have not forgotten that terrible decision where a most unrighteous judgment was sustained by a falsification of history. Of course, the Constitution of the United States and every principle of Liberty was falsified, but historical truth was falsified also. . . . Now an emancipated country should make a bust to the author of the Dred Scott decision? . . . If a man has done evil in his life, he must not be complimented in marble." He proposed that a vacant spot, not a bust of Taney, be left in the courtroom "to speak in warning to all who would betray liberty!"
After Taney's successor, Chief Justice Salmon Chase, died, in 1873 Congress approved funds for busts of both Taney and Chase to be displayed in the Capitol alongside the other chief justices.
In early 1865, the House of Representatives passed a bill to appropriate funds for a bust of Taney to be displayed in the Supreme Court alongside with those of the four Chief Justices who preceded him. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts said: "I speak what cannot be denied when I declare that the opinion of the Chief Justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of courts. Judicial baseness reached its lowest point on that occasion. You have not forgotten that terrible decision where a most unrighteous judgment was sustained by a falsification of history. Of course, the Constitution of the United States and every principle of Liberty was falsified, but historical truth was falsified also. . . . Now an emancipated country should make a bust to the author of the Dred Scott decision? . . . If a man has done evil in his life, he must not be complimented in marble." He proposed that a vacant spot, not a bust of Taney, be left in the courtroom "to speak in warning to all who would betray liberty!"
After Taney's successor, Chief Justice Salmon Chase, died, in 1873 Congress approved funds for busts of both Taney and Chase to be displayed in the Capitol alongside the other chief justices.
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| Taney Bust in Capitol |
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