Roger B. Taney
Chief justice of the United States from 1836 to 1864 (1777–1864) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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 | |
|---|---|
 Photo by Mathew Brady, 1855–1860 | |
| 5th Chief Justice of the United States | |
| In office March 28, 1836 – October 12, 1864 | |
| Nominated by | Andrew Jackson |
| Preceded by | John Marshall |
| Succeeded by | Salmon P. Chase |
| 12th United States Secretary of the Treasury | |
| In office September 23, 1833 – June 25, 1834 | |
| President | Andrew Jackson |
| Preceded by | William Duane |
| Succeeded by | Levi Woodbury |
| 11th United States Attorney General | |
| In office July 20, 1831 – November 14, 1833 | |
| President | Andrew Jackson |
| Preceded by | John Berrien |
| Succeeded by | Benjamin Butler |
| Acting United States Secretary of War | |
| In office June 18, 1831 – August 1, 1831 | |
| President | Andrew Jackson |
| Preceded by | John Eaton |
| Succeeded by | Lewis Cass |
| Attorney General of Maryland | |
| In office September 1827 – June 18, 1831 | |
| Governor | |
| Preceded by | Thomas Kell |
| Succeeded by | Josiah Bayly |
| Member of the Maryland House of Delegates from Calvert County | |
| In office 1799 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Roger Brooke Taney (1777-03-17)March 17, 1777 Calvert County, Maryland, U.S. |
| Died | October 12, 1864(1864-10-12) (aged 87) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Resting place | St. John the Evangelist Cemetery Frederick, Maryland, U.S. |
| Political party |
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| Spouse |
Anne Key
(m. 1806; died 1855) |
| Children | 6 |
| Education | Dickinson College (BA) |
| Signature |  |
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. He was the first of four Democratic appointments to the office of Chief Justice (followed by Melville Fuller, Harlan F. Stone and Fred Vinson). 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]