Roger B. Taney

Roger B. Taney
Portrait by Mathew Brady, c. 1855–1860
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
Known for	Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), Chief Justice of the United States
Education	Dickinson College (B.A.)
Spouse(s)	Anne Phoebe Charlton Key

Roger Brooke Taney (Template:IPAc-en TAW-nee; 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 the planter aristocracy of southern Maryland, Taney rose through the ranks of state and federal government to become one of the most consequential — and 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 Taney presided over important developments in constitutional law during his nearly three decades as chief justice, his legacy is defined overwhelmingly by his majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), in which he declared 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 is considered one of the worst in the history of the Supreme Court, and it deepened the sectional crisis that led to the American Civil War.

Early Life

Roger Brooke Taney was born on March 17, 1777, in Calvert County, Maryland, to Michael Taney V and Monica Brooke Taney. The Taney family was part of Maryland's landed Catholic gentry, with deep roots in the colonial tobacco-planting economy. His father was a prosperous planter and slaveholder who owned a substantial estate. As was customary for families of their social standing in the colonial and early national period, the Taneys relied on enslaved labor to maintain their plantation.

Roger was the second son in his family. Under the practice of primogeniture still influential among Maryland planter families, the eldest son was expected to inherit the family's lands. As a younger son, Roger was directed toward a career in the professions — specifically law. This arrangement shaped his trajectory from an early age, as his family invested in his education with the expectation that he would earn his livelihood through intellectual endeavor rather than farming.

Growing up in a slaveholding household in southern Maryland, Taney was immersed from birth in the social and economic structures of slavery. This background profoundly shaped his later legal and political views regarding the institution, race, and the constitutional framework of the United States. Despite his later emancipation of the enslaved people he personally owned — reportedly providing pensions to those who were too old to work — Taney maintained throughout his life a belief in the racial hierarchy that undergirded the institution of slavery, a conviction that would find its fullest expression in his Dred Scott opinion.

Education

Taney received his early education from private tutors, as was typical for sons of the Maryland planter class. He then attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he graduated as valedictorian in 1795. After completing his undergraduate studies, Taney read law in the office of Judge Jeremiah Townley Chase of the Maryland General Court in Annapolis, following the apprenticeship model that was the standard path to legal practice in the late eighteenth century. He was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1799 and began his legal career in the state.

Taney's education at Dickinson College placed him among a generation of Maryland lawyers and politicians who combined classical learning with practical legal training. His valedictorian standing indicated his academic distinction and helped establish his reputation as a skilled orator and reasoner, qualities that would serve him in both his legal practice and his political career.

Career

Early Political Career in Maryland

Following his admission to the bar in 1799, Taney began his legal practice in Maryland. He quickly became involved in politics as a member of the Federalist Party. In 1799, at the age of twenty-two, he won election to the Maryland House of Delegates, serving a single term as a Federalist legislator.

After his term in the House of Delegates, Taney relocated his law practice, eventually settling in Frederick, Maryland, and later in Baltimore, where he built a reputation as one of the most accomplished attorneys in the state. He broke with the Federalist Party over the War of 1812, finding himself at odds with the party's opposition to the conflict. This break led him to align with the Democratic-Republican Party, and in 1816 he was elected to the Maryland Senate, where he served a five-year term.

By the 1820s, Taney had established himself as a leading figure in Maryland legal and political circles. In 1827, he was appointed Attorney General of Maryland, the state's chief legal officer, a position that reflected his standing in the state's bar and political establishment.

Alliance with Andrew Jackson

Taney supported Andrew Jackson's presidential campaigns in both 1824 and 1828. When Jackson won the presidency in 1828, Taney became a member of Jackson's newly formed Democratic Party. His loyalty and legal acumen brought him to the attention of the Jackson administration, and following a major cabinet reorganization in 1831 — triggered by the Petticoat affair — President Jackson appointed Taney as United States Attorney General, the chief law officer of the federal government. Taney served in this capacity from July 20, 1831, to November 14, 1833.

Before formally assuming the attorney general role, Taney briefly served as acting United States Secretary of War from June 18 to August 1, 1831, in the interval between the departure of John Eaton and the arrival of Lewis Cass.

The Bank War and Secretary of the Treasury

As attorney general, Taney became one of the most influential members of Jackson's cabinet and a key figure in the administration's war against the Second Bank of the United States. The "Bank War" was one of the defining political battles of the Jacksonian era. Taney advised Jackson on the legal and constitutional grounds for opposing the rechartering of the Bank and played a central role in formulating the administration's strategy.

When Jackson decided to remove federal deposits from the Bank of the United States and place them in selected state banks — a controversial step that alarmed many in Congress — he needed a secretary of the treasury willing to execute the order. After two previous secretaries declined or were dismissed, Jackson appointed Taney as United States Secretary of the Treasury under a recess appointment on September 23, 1833. Taney carried out the removal of deposits, a move that intensified the political conflict between the Jackson administration and the Bank's supporters in the Senate.

Taney's tenure as treasury secretary was brief and contentious. When the Senate considered his nomination to the permanent post, it was rejected on June 24, 1834, in a rebuke driven largely by opponents of Jackson's banking policies. This made Taney the first cabinet nominee in American history to be rejected by the Senate. Taney departed the Treasury on June 25, 1834, and returned to his law practice in Maryland.

Nomination and Confirmation as Chief Justice

In January 1835, Jackson nominated Taney to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, but the Senate postponed the nomination indefinitely — effectively blocking it — in the final hours of the legislative session. After the 1834 midterm elections brought a Democratic majority to the Senate, the political landscape shifted in Taney's favor. 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 confirmation was notable for several reasons: he was the first Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court, and his appointment marked a decisive shift in the Court's ideological orientation. Where Marshall had championed a strong federal government and broad constitutional powers, Taney was expected to bring a more states' rights-oriented jurisprudence to the bench.

The Taney Court

Taney presided over the Supreme Court for twenty-eight and a half years, one of the longest tenures of any chief justice. Under his leadership, the Court shifted toward a greater emphasis on states' rights, though the Taney Court did not reject federal authority as completely as many of Taney's critics had feared. In cases involving commerce, contracts, and the balance of power between state and federal government, Taney guided the Court through a period of rapid national expansion and deepening sectional tension.

In his early years on the bench, Taney authored several significant opinions that shaped the development of American constitutional law. His opinion in Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837), for instance, represented a departure from the Marshall Court's approach to contract rights, holding that public grants should be construed narrowly and that states retained broad power to regulate economic activity in the public interest. This decision was seen as favorable to economic development and competition rather than entrenched monopoly privilege.

By the early 1850s, Taney was broadly respected across the political spectrum, and some political leaders looked to the Supreme Court as an institution that might authoritatively settle the intensifying national debate over slavery in the territories.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

The case that would define Taney's legacy and become, in the judgment of many legal historians, the most notorious decision in the history of the Supreme Court, was Dred Scott v. Sandford, decided on March 6, 1857.

The case involved Dred Scott, an enslaved man who had been taken by his owner to free territories and states before returning to the slave state of Missouri. Scott sued for his freedom, arguing that his residence in free territory had made him a free man. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court.

Taney wrote the majority opinion, in which he made two sweeping pronouncements. First, he held that African Americans — whether free or enslaved — were not and could not be citizens of the United States under the Constitution. In one of the most quoted and condemned passages in American legal writing, Taney wrote that at the time of the Constitution's framing, African Americans were "regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Second, Taney ruled that the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery in certain territories, was unconstitutional, holding that Congress had no power to ban slavery in the territories because doing so would deprive slaveholders of their property without due process of law.

Taney had hoped that the breadth of his ruling would permanently settle the slavery question and remove it from political debate. Instead, the decision had the opposite effect. It inflamed anti-slavery sentiment in the North, galvanized the newly formed Republican Party, and deepened the sectional crisis that was drawing the nation toward civil war. The Republican Party's nominee, Abraham Lincoln, made opposition to the Dred Scott decision a centerpiece of his political platform, and he won the 1860 presidential election.

The Civil War and Ex parte Merryman

After Lincoln's election in November 1860 and the subsequent secession of Southern states, Taney sympathized with the Confederate cause and blamed Lincoln for the war, but he did not resign from the Supreme Court.

During the early months of the Civil War, Taney directly challenged the Lincoln administration's exercise of wartime executive power. In Ex parte Merryman (1861), Taney, sitting as a circuit judge, ruled that President Lincoln did not have the constitutional authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus — a power that Taney argued belonged exclusively to Congress. The case arose from the military arrest and detention of John Merryman, a Maryland landowner suspected of Confederate sympathies, who was held at Fort McHenry in Baltimore.

Taney issued a writ of habeas corpus ordering General George Cadwalader to bring Merryman before the court, but Cadwalader refused to comply, citing presidential authorization. Taney then attempted to hold the general in contempt of court, but the military again refused to comply. Taney wrote an opinion asserting the unconstitutionality of Lincoln's action, but the Lincoln administration invoked a policy of nonacquiescence, effectively ignoring the ruling. The episode underscored the extraordinary tensions between the judiciary and the executive branch during wartime and raised fundamental questions about the limits of presidential power that continue to resonate in American constitutional law.

Taney remained on the bench throughout the Civil War, increasingly embittered and in declining health. He continued to oppose what he regarded as the Lincoln administration's overreach of executive authority.

Death

Roger B. Taney 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, a former anti-slavery politician and Lincoln's secretary of the treasury. Taney's death drew little public mourning in the North, where his name had become synonymous with the Dred Scott decision and with support for the institution of slavery.

Personal Life

Taney married Anne Phoebe Charlton Key on January 7, 1806. She was the sister of Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The Taneys had six daughters who survived to adulthood and one son who died in infancy. Anne Taney died on September 29, 1855, and her death was a profound personal blow to the chief justice.

Although Taney was raised in a slaveholding family and grew up in a culture built on enslaved labor, he emancipated the enslaved people he personally owned during his lifetime and reportedly gave pensions to those who were too old to work. This fact has been cited both by those who have sought to complicate the historical portrait of Taney and by those who note that his personal actions did not prevent him from issuing a sweeping legal ruling that sought to entrench the institution of slavery and deny the humanity and citizenship of African Americans.

Taney was a lifelong Roman Catholic, and his faith was a notable aspect of his public identity at a time when anti-Catholic sentiment was widespread in the United States. He was the first Catholic to serve as Chief Justice of the United States.

Recognition

During his lifetime, Taney received significant official recognition. A bust of Taney was placed in the United States Capitol as part of the collection honoring former chief justices. A statue of Taney stood on the grounds of the Maryland State House in Annapolis for many years, and another was placed outside Baltimore's Mount Vernon Place.

In the decades following the Civil War and during the Civil Rights Movement, Taney's public memorials became increasingly controversial due to his authorship of the Dred Scott decision. In August 2017, the city of Baltimore removed its statue of Taney as part of a broader effort to take down monuments associated with the Confederacy and the defense of slavery. The statue at the Maryland State House was also removed.

In February 2023, the bust of Taney was removed from the United States Capitol. Senator Amy Klobuchar released a statement following the removal, noting the significance of removing a monument to the author of the Dred Scott decision from the nation's legislative seat.

In Prince George's County, Maryland, a road formerly named for Taney was renamed, and a middle school bearing his name was renamed in honor of Thurgood Marshall, the first African American justice of the Supreme Court.

The USCGC Taney, a United States Coast Guard cutter, was named after him and is now preserved as a museum ship in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

Legacy

Roger B. Taney's legacy is dominated by the Dred Scott decision, which is regarded as one of the most egregious rulings in the history of the United States Supreme Court. The decision's assertion that African Americans "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect" became one of the most infamous phrases in American legal and political discourse, and it has been cited for more than a century and a half as an example of the judiciary's capacity to entrench injustice under the guise of constitutional interpretation.

Far from resolving the slavery question, as Taney had intended, the Dred Scott decision accelerated the political crisis that led to the Civil War. The ruling strengthened the Republican Party by providing a focal point for anti-slavery sentiment and helped propel Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860. The decision was effectively overturned by the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), which abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), which granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States.

Taney's confrontation with the Lincoln administration over habeas corpus in Ex parte Merryman has been evaluated more favorably by some legal scholars, who see in it a principled defense of civil liberties against wartime executive overreach. The case remains a touchstone in debates over the proper limits of presidential power during national emergencies.

The removal of Taney's statues, busts, and other public memorials in the twenty-first century reflects a broader reckoning with the commemoration of historical figures associated with slavery and racial injustice. The replacement of Taney's name with that of Thurgood Marshall in Prince George's County carried particular symbolic weight, juxtaposing the author of the most infamous pro-slavery ruling with the attorney who argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Court and later became the first African American Supreme Court justice.

The National Judicial College, in assessing Taney's career, noted that despite serving as chief justice for twenty-eight and a half years and issuing numerous consequential opinions, Taney's legacy was ultimately defined by a single decision — an observation that underscores both the enduring power and the moral weight of the Dred Scott ruling.