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Had Chief-Justice Taney's delineation been historically correct, it would have been nevertheless unwise and unchristian to embody it in the form of a disqualifying legal sentence and an indelible political brand. But its manifest untruth was clearly shown by Justice Curtis in his dissenting opinion.
By the irony of fate it was Chief Justice Taney of the Dred Scott Decision who inaugurated Lincoln into office, that Lincoln might later make Taney's decision forever null and void. And that no dramatic note might be wanted, both Taney and Douglas heard Lincoln plead with indescribable pathos, majesty and beauty, for the very Union whose existence their words had threatened.
He had said he would not argue the question whether slavery was right or wrong. He had adopted Taney's assertion that the negro had no share in the Declaration of Independence. He had asserted that uniformity was impossible, but that freedom and slavery might abide together forever.
It was now, as it seemed, proposed to abandon that principle and assume it to be good or at least indifferent. If that principle were accepted there was nothing to prevent the institution being introduced not only into the free territories but into the Free States. And indeed the reasoning of Taney's judgment, though not the judgment itself, really seemed to point to such a conclusion.
The President declared in favor of the admission of Kansas, with a Constitution agreeable to a majority of the settlers. He also referred to an impending decision of the Supreme Court, with which he had been made acquainted, and asked acquiescence in it. This was Judge Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case, rendered two days after Buchanan's inauguration.
Now this young son of Parker Willits's" here his wrinkled face tightened up into a pucker as if he had just bitten into an unripe persimmon "good enough young man, may be; goin' to be something great, I reckon in Mr. Taney's office, I hear, or will be next winter. I 'spect he'll keep out of jail most Willitses do but keep an eye on him and watch him, and watch yo'self too.
To me this opinion, like Taney's opinion in the Charles River Bridge Case, indicates that the tension had reached the breaking point, the court yielding in all directions at once, while the dominant preoccupation of the presiding judge seemed to be to plant his tribunal in such a position that it could so yield, without stultifying itself hopelessly before the legal profession and the public.
They refused to confirm Taney's nomination as Secretary to the Treasury, as a little later they refused to accept him as a Judge of the High Court. They passed a solemn vote of censure on the President, whose action they characterized, in defiance of the facts, as unconstitutional. But Jackson, strong in the support of the nation, could afford to disregard such natural ebullitions of bad temper.
The address was issued on March 4, 1837, and followed closely the copy subsequently found in Taney's hand writing in the Jackson manuscripts. Its contents were thoroughly commonplace, being indeed hardly more than a resume of the eight annual messages; and it might well have been dismissed as the amiable musings of a garrulous old man.
It would serve no useful purpose to enter upon a detailed consideration of the various decisions upon constitutional questions made during the twenty-eight years of Taney's Chief Justiceship. They were marked by great diversity of views among the members of the Court.
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