Roger Taney and Dred Scott
Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney was not from Annapolis, although he had deep roots here. While working here for Maryland Judge Jeremiah Chase he met Francis Scott Key and married his daughter, Anne Phoebe Carlton Key. He also is thought to have formed the foundations of his legal theory here in Annapolis — associating with old Maryland families landed in the traditions of the early state.
He then returned to Frederick and served in the House of Delegates for a year and the Maryland Senate for five years. He also was Maryland’s attorney general and became, after aligning himself with Andrew Jackson, Attorney General of the United States.
In 1836 he was nominated to replace the venerable John Marshall as Chief Justice. Although politically controversial, he was confirmed on a vote of 29 to 15. He was the fifth Chief Justice and the first Roman Catholic to sit on the Supreme Court.
The court under his direction emphasized states rights and a common sense approach to the application of law to everyday life. However, his reputation came under fire in the most controversial of his court’s decisions – the Dred Scott case.
In 1857, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Dred Scott, an African American who had lived in the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin for years prior to his move to Missouri in 1843. There he claimed his freedom through the courts.
Taney’s court decided that black men, slave and free, in the United States were property and declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. This decision shocked many in the North including an ambitious politician from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. It also directly increased sectional tensions leading to the Civil War and tarnished Taney’s reputation forever.
Ironically, it was Taney in his mid-eighties who administered the oath of office to the newly elected Abraham Lincoln in March 1861.
Today Annapolis holds at least two Taney remembrances. Justice Taney can be seen on the east side of the Capitol seated and gazing off into space (offset on almost the exact opposite side of the Capitol by Thurgood Marshall) and a street named after him in the Murray Hill neighborhood.
