Roger B. Taney

Roger B. Taney
Born	Roger Brooke Taney 17 3, 1777
Birthplace	Calvert County, Maryland, U.S.
Died	Template:Death date and age Washington, D.C., U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Lawyer, politician, jurist
Title	5th Chief Justice of the United States
Known for	Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857); fifth Chief Justice of the United States
Spouse(s)	Anne Phoebe Charlton Key

Roger Brooke Taney (March 17, 1777 – October 12, 1864) was an American lawyer, politician, and jurist who served as the fifth Chief Justice of the United States from 1836 until his death in 1864. Born into a slaveholding planter family on Maryland's Western Shore, Taney rose through the ranks of state and national politics to become one of the most consequential — and ultimately one of the most condemned — figures in American legal history. He served as United States Attorney General and United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Andrew Jackson before his appointment to the Supreme Court, where he succeeded the legendary John Marshall. Taney was the first Roman Catholic to serve on the nation's highest court. Although his early tenure on the bench produced decisions that earned broad respect, Taney's legacy was irrevocably defined by his majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), in which he held that African Americans could not be citizens of the United States and that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in the territories. The decision inflamed sectional tensions and contributed to the political crisis that culminated in the American Civil War. During the war, Taney clashed with President Abraham Lincoln over executive authority, most notably in Ex parte Merryman. He died in office in 1864, and in the decades and centuries that followed, his name became synonymous with judicial overreach in defense of slavery.

Early Life

Roger Brooke Taney was born on March 17, 1777, in Calvert County, Maryland, to Michael Taney and Monica Brooke Taney. The Taney family was part of the Maryland Catholic planter gentry, with deep roots in the colony's tobacco economy. His family owned a plantation and enslaved people, a fact that shaped the economic and social milieu in which Taney was raised. As a younger son who would not inherit the family plantation under the prevailing customs of primogeniture that still influenced Maryland's planter class, Taney was directed toward a career in law and public life.

Taney was educated at local schools in Calvert County before being sent to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Dickinson in 1795, reportedly as the valedictorian of his class. After completing his studies, Taney returned to Maryland to read law under Judge Jeremiah Townley Chase of the Maryland General Court, a common pathway to legal practice in the era before formal law schools were widespread. He was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1799 and began practicing law in the state.

Growing up in a slaveholding household, Taney's personal relationship with the institution of slavery was complex. Later in life, he emancipated the enslaved people he had personally owned and reportedly provided pensions to those who were too old to work. Nevertheless, his legal and political career demonstrated a persistent defense of slaveholders' rights and the institution itself, particularly on constitutional grounds.

Education

Taney attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1795. He subsequently undertook the study of law through an apprenticeship with Judge Jeremiah Townley Chase of the Maryland General Court, which was the standard method of legal education in the late eighteenth century. Taney completed his legal training and was admitted to the bar of Maryland in 1799, beginning his legal career in Annapolis before eventually relocating to Frederick, Maryland, and later to Baltimore.

Career

Early Political and Legal Career in Maryland

After his admission to the bar, Taney established a legal practice and quickly became involved in politics. He was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates as a member of the Federalist Party, serving a single term. However, Taney's relationship with the Federalist Party grew strained over the course of the War of 1812. While many Federalists opposed the war, Taney supported it, leading to a break with the party. He subsequently aligned himself with the Democratic-Republican Party and was elected to the Maryland Senate in 1816, where he served a five-year term.

During the 1810s and 1820s, Taney built a reputation as one of the most skilled attorneys in Maryland. He relocated from Frederick to Baltimore in 1823, where he established a more prominent legal practice. His abilities in the courtroom and his growing political connections earned him the appointment as Attorney General of Maryland in 1827, a position in which he served as the state's chief legal officer.

Taney supported Andrew Jackson's presidential campaigns in both 1824 and 1828. When Jackson won the presidency in 1828, Taney became firmly associated with the emerging Democratic Party. His loyalty to Jackson and his legal acumen positioned him for a move to the national stage.

Service in the Jackson Administration

In 1831, following a major reorganization of President Jackson's cabinet triggered by the Petticoat affair, Taney was appointed United States Attorney General. He served briefly as Acting United States Secretary of War from June 18 to August 1, 1831, before assuming the attorney general post on July 20, 1831. As attorney general, Taney became one of the most influential members of Jackson's inner circle and played a pivotal role in the administration's defining domestic policy battle: the Bank War.

The Bank War centered on President Jackson's opposition to the Second Bank of the United States, which Jackson viewed as a corrupt institution that concentrated economic power in the hands of a moneyed elite. Taney was among the most vocal opponents of the bank within the cabinet and advised Jackson to veto the bill rechartering the institution. After the veto, Jackson decided to remove federal deposits from the bank and redistribute them to selected state banks — a controversial action that became known as the removal of the deposits. When Secretary of the Treasury William Duane refused to carry out the order, Jackson dismissed him and appointed Taney as secretary of the treasury under a recess appointment on September 23, 1833.

Taney carried out Jackson's directive and ordered the removal of the deposits, directing federal revenues to state banks. However, when the full Senate reconvened, it rejected Taney's nomination as secretary of the treasury on June 24, 1834 — making him the first cabinet nominee in American history to be rejected by the Senate. Taney left office on June 25, 1834, and was succeeded by Levi Woodbury. The rejection was driven largely by Whig senators and opponents of Jackson's banking policies who viewed Taney's actions as an abuse of executive power.

Appointment as Chief Justice

In January 1835, Jackson nominated Taney to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, but the Senate, still controlled by Jackson's opponents, voted to postpone the nomination indefinitely, effectively killing it. The political landscape shifted dramatically later that year when Democrats gained a majority in the Senate following the 1834 elections. When Chief Justice John Marshall died on July 6, 1835, Jackson nominated Taney to succeed him as Chief Justice of the United States on December 28, 1835. The newly constituted Senate confirmed Taney on March 15, 1836, by a vote of 29 to 15.

Taney's appointment marked a significant transition for the Supreme Court. Marshall had served as chief justice for thirty-four years and had established the Court as a powerful institution committed to a broad interpretation of federal authority. Taney's ascension to the bench was seen by many as the beginning of a new era emphasizing states' rights and a more limited view of federal power, consistent with the Jacksonian Democratic philosophy.

The Taney Court: Early Jurisprudence

During his first two decades on the bench, Taney presided over a Court that shifted the balance of constitutional interpretation somewhat toward the states, though not to the radical degree that many of his opponents had feared. The Taney Court recognized broader state regulatory authority under the police power doctrine while still upholding certain exercises of federal power, particularly in the area of interstate commerce.

One of the Taney Court's earliest significant decisions came in Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837), in which Taney wrote for the majority that a state charter granting a company the right to build a bridge did not implicitly prohibit the state from chartering a competing bridge. The decision was a departure from the Marshall Court's more protective stance toward corporate charters and was seen as favoring public interest over vested property rights.

By the early 1850s, Taney had earned a reputation as a competent and generally respected chief justice. Some political leaders hoped that the Supreme Court might be able to resolve the increasingly bitter national debate over slavery in the territories — a hope that would prove catastrophic.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

The defining moment of Taney's career — and the decision for which he is most remembered — came with Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857. The case involved Dred Scott, an enslaved man who sued for his freedom on the grounds that he had been taken by his owner into the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin, where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise.

Taney delivered the majority opinion, which made three sweeping pronouncements. First, he held that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not and could never be citizens of the United States under the Constitution, and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court. Second, he declared that the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery in federal territories north of the 36°30′ parallel, was unconstitutional because Congress did not have the authority to ban slavery in the territories. Third, he ruled that enslaved people were property protected by the Fifth Amendment's due process clause, and that slaveholders could not be deprived of their property simply by moving to a free territory.

Taney's opinion went far beyond what was necessary to dispose of the case and appeared designed to settle the slavery question permanently in favor of slaveholders. Rather than quieting the national debate, however, the decision had the opposite effect. It was met with outrage throughout the Northern states and galvanized the anti-slavery Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican nominee, pointed to the decision as evidence of a conspiracy to spread slavery throughout the nation, and his election to the presidency in 1860 was fueled in part by Northern anger over the ruling.

The Dred Scott decision is considered one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court. It undermined the Court's moral authority for a generation and contributed directly to the sectional crisis that led to the Civil War.

The Civil War Years

After Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860, several Southern states seceded from the Union, and the Civil War began in April 1861. Taney sympathized with the seceding states and blamed Lincoln for the conflict, but he did not resign from the Supreme Court. His remaining years on the bench were marked by bitter disagreement with the Lincoln administration over the scope of executive power in wartime.

The most notable confrontation came in Ex parte Merryman (1861). John Merryman, a Maryland resident and Confederate sympathizer, was arrested by Union troops and held at Fort McHenry in Baltimore without charge. Taney, sitting as a circuit judge, issued a writ of habeas corpus demanding that the military produce Merryman in court. General George Cadwalader, the commanding officer at Fort McHenry, refused to comply, citing President Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Taney ruled that only Congress, not the president, had the constitutional authority to suspend habeas corpus and ordered Cadwalader to release Merryman. When the general again refused, Taney attempted to hold him in contempt of court, but the military ignored the judicial order.

Lincoln's administration invoked nonacquiescence — effectively refusing to comply with Taney's ruling while not directly challenging the court's authority. The episode highlighted the limits of judicial power in wartime and became a significant chapter in the constitutional history of civil liberties during national emergencies.

Taney continued to serve as chief justice through the war years, increasingly isolated and embittered. He died on October 12, 1864, in Washington, D.C., at the age of eighty-seven. He was succeeded as chief justice by Salmon P. Chase, who was nominated by President Lincoln.

Personal Life

Roger B. Taney married Anne Phoebe Charlton Key on January 7, 1806. Anne was the sister of Francis Scott Key, the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The marriage connected Taney to one of Maryland's most prominent families and deepened his ties to the state's social and political elite. The couple had several children together.

Taney was a devout Roman Catholic throughout his life, and his appointment as chief justice made him the first Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court. His faith was a notable aspect of his identity in an era when anti-Catholic prejudice was common in American public life.

Despite having grown up in a slaveholding family, Taney emancipated the enslaved people he personally held and reportedly provided pensions to those who were too old to support themselves. This personal act stood in sharp contrast to his public legal stance, which consistently upheld the rights of slaveholders and the constitutionality of the institution of slavery.

Taney's wife Anne died in 1855, and their daughter Alice died of yellow fever in the same year. These personal losses deeply affected Taney in his later years.

Recognition

Taney's tenure as chief justice was the second longest in American history at that time, spanning twenty-eight years from 1836 to 1864. For much of his career, he was a respected figure in American jurisprudence, and his early opinions on the Court were seen as carefully reasoned contributions to constitutional law.

However, the Dred Scott decision irreparably damaged his reputation. In the years following the Civil War and Reconstruction, Taney became a symbol of judicial support for slavery and racial inequality. His name and likeness became subjects of public controversy, particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as debates over Confederate monuments and symbols associated with slavery intensified.

A bust of Taney was displayed in the Old Supreme Court Chamber at the United States Capitol. In 1993, Prince George's County, Maryland, renamed a middle school that had borne Taney's name, replacing it with the name of Thurgood Marshall, the first African American justice of the Supreme Court.

In August 2017, the city of Baltimore removed a statue of Taney from its grounds along with other Confederate monuments. The state of Maryland subsequently removed a statue of Taney from the grounds of the Maryland State House.

The United States Coast Guard cutter Taney (WHEC-37), named in his honor, served from 1936 to 1986 and was notable as the last warship afloat that was present during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Legacy

Roger B. Taney's legacy is defined primarily by the Dred Scott decision, which stands as one of the most consequential and condemned rulings in the history of American jurisprudence. The decision attempted to resolve the slavery question through judicial fiat but instead accelerated the nation's descent into civil war. Legal scholars and historians have consistently ranked Dred Scott among the worst Supreme Court decisions ever rendered, citing its tortured constitutional reasoning, its denial of citizenship to millions of people based on race, and its invalidation of a major congressional compromise.

Taney's broader judicial career, however, presents a more nuanced picture. His early decisions on the Court reflected a thoughtful, if ideologically driven, jurisprudence that expanded the regulatory authority of state governments and moved away from the Marshall Court's emphasis on federal supremacy and vested property rights. Decisions such as Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837) contributed to the development of American commercial law and the principle that public interest could override narrow corporate privileges.

Taney's confrontation with President Lincoln over habeas corpus in Ex parte Merryman also occupies an important place in constitutional history. While the ruling was effectively ignored by the Lincoln administration, the legal questions it raised about the limits of executive power in wartime remain relevant. Legal scholars have revisited the case in the context of subsequent debates over civil liberties during national emergencies, including during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Nevertheless, the moral weight of Dred Scott overshadows all other aspects of Taney's career. The removal of his statues and the renaming of institutions that bore his name in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries reflected a broader societal reassessment of public honors for figures associated with the defense of slavery. Taney's legacy serves as a cautionary example of the dangers of embedding racial prejudice into constitutional interpretation and of the potential for judicial power to be wielded in the service of injustice.