St. Leonard, MD – First of all, there was a lot of good to be said about Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney before he handed down his decisive pro-slavery ruling in the 1857 Dred Scott Case that deemed blacks weren’t citizens of the United States.
He championed the cause of the disenfranchised, encouraged economic growth and competition by rendering decisions which reshaped traditional law concerning property rights and commerce.
It is the Dred Scott Decision for which he is remembered, however, a ruling that threatened to ignite a powder keg.
It enabled slavery to expand into the Western Territories in the mid-19th century, driving a stake between opposing sides of the issue.
It prompted then-Senator Abraham Lincoln, after hearing his rival Stephen Douglas uphold Taney’s ruling in an 1857 oratory, to give one of the most important speeches in American History, asserting that such a decision left the Declaration of Independence a mangled ruin.
Lincoln declared in the speech that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. This government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”
When the powder keg finally exploded, it resulted in the American Civil War.
But did you know Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who authored that volatile document known as the Dred Scott Decision, was born and raised in Southern Maryland?
After a little stretch of road near St. Leonard on the shores of the Patuxent River, Taney was born March 17, 1777, the year after America gained its independence from Great Britain.
Although he would free his own slaves later in life, he was born into a slave-holding family.
He studied law at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania in lieu of the farm. Taney graduated in 1795 and in 1799 was admitted to the bar and elected to the Maryland legislature. He supported the War of 1812 which caused his split with some of his fellow Federalists, where he was a leader.
After the war ended, he continued building a thriving law practice while serving multiple terms in the Maryland Senate.
Taney married Anne Key, sister of Francis Scott Key, author of The Star-Spangled Banner. They had seven children, of which five daughters would survive. One daughter Alice died in 1855 of yellow fever and her brother Augustus died at infancy in 1815.
Susan Hance Wells, president of the Calvert County Farm Bureau, is Taney’s direct descendant.
Taney rose through the ranks of government, supporting Andrew Jackson’s successful 1828 Democratic run for the U.S. presidency. President Jackson did a quid pro quo, naming Taney attorney general in 1831. The new attorney general then promptly dismantled the Second Bank of the United States.
When Jackson appointed Taney to a recess appointment as Secretary of the Treasury in 1833, the Senate, by a vote of 28-18 thwarted the appointment. It was the first time Congress had not approved a presidential nominee’s confirmation for a cabinet post.
When Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall died in 1836, Jackson nominated his friend and Taney was confirmed, becoming the fifth Supreme Court Chief Justice.
He was the first Roman Catholic to head the United States’ highest court.
The years leading up to the War Between the States were tumultuous enough, but when Taney handed down a pro-slavery decision in the Dred Scott v. Sanford case, the act made things considerably worse.
Scott was a slave in the free state of Illinois and free territory of Wisconsin, and wanted his freedom when he moved to Missouri, a slave state. The 7-2 decision, authored by Taney, ruled against Scott, declaring African Americans were not United States citizens.
The Chief Justice also stated that Congress could not forbid slavery in U.S. territories.
It was Taney’s statement that blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” which fanned the fires of abolitionism and erupted in warfare at places like Antietam in Western Maryland, a narrow Union victory in 1862—still considered the bloodiest day of fighting in American History.
That battle, the only campaign fought on Maryland soil in the Civil War, would prompt then-President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that, “All persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state…shall be then, thenceforth, and forever free.”
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com
