Roger B. Taney
Roger Brooke Taney (/ˈtɔːni/; March 17, 1777 – October 12, 1864) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the fifth chief justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. Taney infamously delivered the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), ruling that African Americans could not be considered U.S. citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the U.S. territories. Prior to joining the U.S. Supreme Court, Taney served as the U.S. attorney general and U.S. secretary of the treasury under President Andrew Jackson. He was the first Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court.[1]
Roger B. Taney
October 12, 1864 (aged 87)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
St. John the Evangelist Cemetery
Frederick, Maryland, U.S.
- Federalist (before 1812)
- Democratic-Republican (1812–1828)
- Democratic (1828–1864)
6
Taney was born into a wealthy, slave-owning family in Calvert County, Maryland. He won election to the Maryland House of Delegates as a member of the Federalist Party but later broke with the party over the War of 1812. After switching to the Democratic-Republican Party, Taney was elected to the Maryland Senate in 1816. He emerged as one of the most prominent attorneys in the state and was appointed as the Attorney General of Maryland in 1827. Taney supported Andrew Jackson's presidential campaigns in 1824 and 1828, and he became a member of Jackson's Democratic Party. After a cabinet shake-up in 1831, President Jackson appointed Taney as his attorney general. Taney became one of the most important members of Jackson's cabinet and played a major role in the Bank War. Beginning in 1833, Taney served as secretary of the treasury under a recess appointment, but his nomination to that position was rejected by the United States Senate.
In 1835, after Democrats took control of the Senate, Jackson appointed Taney to succeed the late John Marshall on the Supreme Court as Chief Justice. Taney presided over a jurisprudential shift toward states' rights, but the Taney Court did not reject federal authority to the degree that many of Taney's critics had feared. By the early 1850s, he was widely respected, and some elected officials looked to the Supreme Court to settle the national debate over slavery. Despite emancipating his own slaves and giving pensions to those who were too old to work, Taney was outraged by Northern attacks on the institution, and sought to use his Dred Scott decision to permanently end the slavery debate. His broad ruling deeply angered many Northerners and strengthened the anti-slavery Republican Party; its nominee Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election.
After Lincoln's election, Taney sympathized with the seceding Southern states and blamed Lincoln for the war, but he did not resign from the Supreme Court. He strongly disagreed with President Lincoln's broader interpretation of executive power in the American Civil War. In Ex parte Merryman, Taney held that the president could not suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Lincoln retaliated to the ruling by invoking nonacquiescence. Taney later tried to hold George Cadwalader, one of Lincoln's generals, in contempt of court and the Lincoln Administration again invoked nonacquiescence in response. In 1863, Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation notwithstanding Taney's rulings on slavery. Taney finally relented, saying: "I have exercised all the power which the Constitution and laws confer on me, but that power has been resisted by a force too strong for me to overcome." Taney died in 1864, and Lincoln appointed Salmon P. Chase as his successor. At the time of Taney's death in 1864, he was widely reviled in the North, and Lincoln declined to make a public statement in response to his death. He continues to have a controversial historical reputation, and his Dred Scott ruling is widely considered to be the worst Supreme Court decision ever made.[2][3][4]
Early life and career[edit]
Taney was born in Calvert County, Maryland, on March 17, 1777, to Michael Taney V and Monica Brooke Taney. Taney's ancestor, Michael Taney I, had settled in Maryland from England in 1660. He and his family established themselves as prominent Catholic landowners of a flourishing tobacco plantation powered by slave labor.[5] As Roger Taney's older brother, Michael Taney VI, was expected to inherit the family's plantation, Taney's father encouraged him to study law. At the age of fifteen, Taney was sent to Dickinson College, where he studied ethics, logic, languages, mathematics, and other subjects. After graduating from Dickinson in 1796, he read law under Judge Jeremiah Townley Chase in Annapolis. Taney was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1799.[6] In 1844, Taney was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.[7]
Marriage and family[edit]
Taney married Anne Phoebe Charlton Key. They had six daughters together. Though Taney himself remained a Catholic, all of his daughters were raised as members of Anne's Episcopal Church.[8] Taney rented an apartment during his years of service with the federal government, but he and his wife maintained a permanent home in Baltimore. After Anne died in 1855, Taney and two of his unmarried daughters moved permanently to Washington, D.C.[9]
Early political career[edit]
After gaining admission to the state bar, Taney established a successful legal practice in Frederick, Maryland. At his father's urging, he ran for the Maryland House of Delegates as a member of the Federalist Party. With the help of his father, Taney won election to the House of Delegates, but he lost his campaign for a second term. Taney remained a prominent member of the Federalist Party for several years until he broke with the party due to his support of the War of 1812. In 1816, He won election to a five-year term in the Maryland State Senate.[10] In 1823, Taney moved his legal practice to Baltimore, where he gained widespread notoriety as an effective litigator. In 1826, Taney and Daniel Webster represented merchant Solomon Etting in a case that appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1827, Taney was appointed as the Attorney General of Maryland.[11] Taney supported Andrew Jackson in the 1824 presidential election and the 1828 presidential election. He joined Jackson's Democratic Party and served as a leader of Jackson's 1828 campaign in Maryland.[12]
Taney considered slavery to be an evil practice.[13] He freed the slaves that he inherited from his father early in his life, and as long as they lived, he provided monthly pensions to the older ones who were unable to work.[14] He believed, however, that slavery was a problem to be resolved gradually and chiefly by the states in which it existed,[13] and, as a nationalist, blamed abolitionists for "ripping the country apart".[15] In 1819, nevertheless, Taney defended an abolitionist Methodist minister, Jacob Gruber, who had been arrested for his criticism of slavery. Gruber was charged with attempting to stir up "acts of mutiny and rebellion".[16] Taney claimed that the prosecution lacked a case against Gruber and argued that, lacking evidence of criminal intent, Gruber's freedom of conscience and freedom of speech needed to be protected.[16] Taney delivered "an impassioned defense of Gruber" and, in his opening argument, Taney condemned slavery as "a blot on our national character".[17] After listening to the defense, the jury acquitted Gruber.[16]
Death[edit]
Taney died on October 12, 1864, at the age of 87,[63] the same day his home state of Maryland passed an amendment abolishing slavery.[64] The following morning, the clerk of the Supreme Court announced that "the great and good Chief Justice is no more." He served as chief justice for 28 years, 198 days, the second longest tenure of any chief justice,[63] and was the oldest ever serving Chief Justice in United States history.[65] Taney had administered the presidential oath of office to seven incoming presidents. Taney's estate consisted of a $10,000 life insurance policy (equivalent to $190,000 in 2023[66]) and worthless bonds from the commonwealth of Virginia.[67]
President Lincoln made no public statement in response to Taney's death. Lincoln and three members of his cabinet (Secretary of State William H. Seward, Attorney General Edward Bates, and Postmaster General William Dennison) attended Taney's memorial service in Washington. Only Bates joined the cortège to Frederick, Maryland, for Taney's funeral and burial at St. John the Evangelist Cemetery.[68] After Lincoln was re-elected, he appointed Salmon P. Chase, a strongly anti-slavery Republican from Ohio, to succeed Taney.[69]