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Here young Roger Taney lingered, while the horn and hounds were loud, To behold the pompous Pinkney scattering learning to the crowd; And old men great Wirt remembered, while their minds he strove to win, As a little German urchin drumming at his father's inn.
"Do you know what I'm going to do, James Harrison?" asked Taney, with bitter irony in his voice. "I'll apprentice myself to a paperhanger, and learn to paper my rooms with my worthless railway shares. I imagine I can still learn that much." "Ah, that's the way the wind blows!" cried the other, whistling softly. "What did you think?" "It was pretty bad, I suppose?" "Bad? It was hell "
In the case of Dartmouth College vs. New Hampshire was declared the unconstitutionally of a state law which impaired the obligation of contracts. A very important case decided by Chief Justice Taney was that of Dred Scott vs. Sandford in 1857. Dred Scott, a negro slave in Missouri, had been carried into the Territory of Minnesota, where, by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, slavery did not exist.
II, p. 272; see also p. 270, for Chancellor Kent's unfavorable reaction to these decisions. But the radical impulse soon spent itself. Chief Justice Taney himself was a good deal of a conservative.
Calhoun in the Senate and Mr. Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision. On these points I make bold to repeat what I felt warranted in saying a fortnight ago within sight of Bunker Hill that there is every evidence that the American people have distinctly and definitely made up their minds.
What practical effect would hereafter be given to the opinion of six out of the nine judges in that Court might depend on many things. But to the Republicans, who appealed much to antiquity, it was maddening to be thus assured that their whole "platform" was unconstitutional. In the long run, there seems to be no doubt that Taney helped the cause of freedom.
When the lines began to tighten in the summer of 1833, Duane weakened and finally refused to withhold the government deposits from the Bank. He was dismissed from office and Roger B. Taney, the Attorney-General, took the vacant place and agreed to do Jackson's bidding.
He took part in the famous Dred Scott case, in which he dissented from Taney, maintaining that slavery had its origin merely in power and was against right. Adlai Ewing Stevenson, Assistant Postmaster-General, later became Vice-President. His four sons all became prominent in law and theology.
There never came to Lincoln requirement to say to his correspondent, "Burn this letter." In 1856, the Supreme Court, under the headship of Judge Taney, gave out the decision of the Dred Scott case.
The opinion read by Chief-Justice Taney was long and elaborate, and the following were among its leading conclusions: That the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States do not include nor refer to negroes otherwise than as property; that they cannot become citizens of the United States nor sue in the Federal courts.
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