{"id":149,"date":"2018-06-26T14:50:36","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T14:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/slavery\/?page_id=149"},"modified":"2023-01-02T15:28:17","modified_gmt":"2023-01-02T15:28:17","slug":"roger-taney","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/slavery\/people\/roger-taney\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Taney"},"content":{"rendered":"
PUBLIC MEMORY AT DICKINSON<\/strong><\/h6>\n

\"Taney\"<\/a>For years, the school displayed both a portrait of Chief Justice Taney originally received in 1908 during its 125th anniversary celebration and a bust of the controversial jurist, but those objects have long since been moved into the College Archives.\u00a0 There is, however, a photographic portrait of Chief Justice Taney currently on display at the House Divided studio, paired with one of President James Buchanan, and situated opposite an illustration of Dred and Harriet Scott, the black couple whose rights Taney\u00a0 dismissed in his infamous verdict on their 1857 Supreme Court case.<\/p>\n

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BRIEF PROFILE<\/strong><\/h6>\n

Roger Brooke Taney, a graduate of Dickinson College, might well be the most controversial Supreme Court justice in American history. Taney served as Chief Justice of the United States for nearly thirty years, from 1835 to 1864.\u00a0 But this was a period of bitter sectional controversy over slavery, and Taney\u2019s pro-slavery decisions have since seriously tarnished his reputation.\u00a0 Originally from Maryland, Taney had been a slaveholder until he emancipated his own slaves in 1818.\u00a0 But the Border State judge considered himself a nationalist above all else, and angrily blamed abolitionists for ripping the country apart.\u00a0 So he thought he could save the union with the Dred Scott case of 1857, by rendering a sweeping pro-slavery verdict. The reaction, however, was the opposite of what Taney had expected.\u00a0 By 1860, his ruling against the Scott family had helped elect Abraham Lincoln, an anti-slavery Republican, as president. The aging chief justice then battled fiercely against the aggressive new commander in chief over war powers and other issues.\u00a0 Taney finally died at age 87, in the final months of a bloody Civil War that he had in several ways helped to ignite.<\/p>\n