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Unfortunately, history has developed an unrelenting pattern of vilifying some unfortunate souls while immortalizing others. The ingredient to which this system of classifying men, into either heroes or villains, neglects to address is the complexity of its figures. Three prominent Dickinsonians had their political and judicial legacies tarnished by the wrath of history; they stood tall in a time of great unrest and never met the proper recognition they deserved. Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, President James Buchanan, and Justice Robert Cooper Grier lived their lives as adamant adherents to the principles and preservations of the law. They looked to extinguish the fires of civil war by bringing resolution to the issue of slavery in the United States. They believed they were rendering a national service by admonishing the moral indecisiveness which had plagued the country for over half a century. It has been argued that Chief Justice Taney, Associate Justice Grier, and President Buchanan were in collusion together to judicially settle the matter of slavery in favor of southern interests; such an accusation could not be farther from the truth. The court, under the leadership of Taney, sought to eliminate the slavery issue in the states by upholding the rightful legality of that system, a system which had been fully recognized by the U.S. Constitution.
Roger Brooke Taney has infamously lived in the minds of many as the dreaded jurist who wrote the extremely unpopular Dred Scott Supreme Court ruling on the eve of the Civil War, in 1857. Chief Justice Taney’s legacy was stained by the Scott ruling, due to the harsh public reaction it received, and the lifetime of dedicated public service he had achieved as a reputable Jacksonian jurist was quickly dismissed. Nevertheless, those who are capable of viewing history contextually associate Taney as a kind and prudent man, second only to Chief Justice Marshall in constitutional scholarship, and a man of unquestionable patriotism who led his life as one of the most impartial and highly principled jurists in American History.
Taney’s tenure as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has been marked by heavy criticism and derision. He always felt adamantly inclined to resist cases spawn from party conflict and had succeeded in steering the court away from such cases until Dred Scott appeared on the court’s docket in December of 1856. It became “the rock on which his reputation was founded and in all our history, no other decision has been so savagely denounced and no other judge so viciously attacked.”[1] Taney wrote the court’s majority opinion in the Scott case, ruling against Negro citizenship and declaring that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional because it violated slaveholders Fifth Amendment Right to protection of private property guaranteed in the Constitution. Taney believed in the power Congress possessed to expand through the acquisition of newly acquired U.S. territories. However, expansion was only truly lawful if it benefited all Americans, which was not so if it Federally barred slavery. He was greatly opposed to the practice of slavery; although an avid supporter of individual rights, he foresaw no available legal channels to abolish the institution without trampling on the rights of slaveholders, something he refused to do. Taney was torn between an institution he held in contempt and which, at the same time, he was obligated to defend as an impartial jurist; the criticism he absorbed from his judicial restraint and impartiality was unfathomable.
Dred Scott had been a slave and the property of Dr. John Emerson, a doctor in the Union Army. Dr. Emerson resided in St. Louis, Missouri although upon an occasion was called to Fort Snelling. Interestingly enough Fort Snelling was located in the Louisiana Territory north of the line to which slavery had been prohibited as a result of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Dr. Emerson later returned to St. Louis and, shortly after, died. Upon his death, Mrs. Emerson inherited Scott and eventually denied him his freedom, before fleeing to live in Massachusetts with her sister. By April of 1846 Scott had found himself represented by an Attorney by the name of Charles Drake, from the prestigious firm of Field and Hall. Atty. Drake brought suit against Mrs. Emerson, on behalf of Scott, claiming damages incurred under her care and requesting his freedom on the grounds that he had gained residency in a free territory prior to being brought back to his master’s home in St. Louis.
The Scott decision was handed down by the court on March 6th, 1857. In a 7-2 ruling, rendering the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and denying the right of Negroes to attain citizenship, the court had established precedent by “invalidating, for the first time in U.S. history, a major piece of federal legislation; denying to Congress a power that it had exercised for two-thirds of a century…and infusing the due-process clause with substantive meaning.”[2] The court declared that Dred Scott was still a slave and was not a citizen of Missouri “within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States”[3] and thus not entitled to sue in its courts. Taney and his colleagues further ruled that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional because it violated slaveholders Fifth Amendment Right to protection of private property guaranteed in the Constitution. Taney stated that “it is the opinion of the court that the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the line therein mentioned, is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void.”[4] “The Constitution gave recognition to the institution of slavery by the 3/5ths Compromise, guaranteed to owners of fugitive slaves the right to the return of their property, and by prohibiting the further importation of Negroes after 1808.”[5]
Justices McLean and Curtis, the two dissenting members of the court, rendered the minority opinions which were read the following day.“Dissenting Justices McLean and Curtis, submitted two of the three longest opinions, constituting about 44 percent of the total judicial wordage.As a professional performance, Curtis’s contribution was more thorough, scholarly, and polished. McLean’s opinion, as a consequence, and also in view of his presidential aspirations, has been taken less seriously by historians.”[6] Justice McLean was the only member of the court who openly supported the abolitionist movement, a position which brought him great respect and leadership within the emerging Republican Party during that time period.McLean’s presidential aspirations had refuted his impartiality throughout his judicial career; in the case of Scott his anti-slavery feelings prevailed. It has often been asserted that McLean had been “blinded by political ambition”[7] and “he indulged his weakness for playing to the anti-slavery gallery.”[8] Historically, his place on the court was always overshadowed by his political aspirations and “his hankering for the presidency became something of an embarrassment to the court.”[9] Justice McLean used the Scott case to further his own interests in the arena of politics, hoping a fervent denunciation of slavery would secure the Republican presidential nomination in the 1856 election. McLean desperately fought for the Republican ticket in 1856, receiving 196 votes at the convention, and returned in 1860 to challenge Lincoln for the nomination as well. “In his 36 page dissenting opinion McLean lashed out at the Court, as a politician and a moralist.”[10] Justice McLean’s opinion supported the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise and upheld Scott’s claim to having gained freedom by having temporarily achieved residence in a free territory, although “his argument lacked coherence.” [11]
Justice Curtis supported the Missouri Compromise and Scott’s right to citizenship, refuting various assumptions Taney had developed through his interpretation of the intentions of the founding fathers and the post American Revolution time period. Curtis’s opinion had been the stronger of the two dissents because it was “written out of the warp and woof of the law itself and not because it was intended to ignite a crusade for freedom.” [12] Curtis wrote the longest opinion of the court, totaling 67 pages. He argued that the Federal Government did possess the authority to limit and restrict slavery, therefore declaring that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was legitimate in the eyes of the U.S. Constitution. Curtis’s opinion was a surprise to the court and the nation because he had supported fugitive slave laws throughout his career and had at one point defended a slave owner in Massachusetts as a young lawyer.Curtis was not openly opposed to slavery and had never associated himself with any anti-slavery groups, referring to abolitionists and the Republicans as radicals. His analysis of the Constitution and Negro citizenship told a story very different from Taney’s, yet no less convincing or persuasive. Curtis gave the founders far more credit than they deserved; they neglected to ever directly confront the issue.
The founders, men of southern agrarian heritage, supported the institution of slavery, and while acknowledging its moral dilemmas, believed it to be an invaluable economic tool.The only initial attempt tolimit slavery was the banning of the slave trade in 1808, an action that was taken after a slave holding aristocracy had already developed in the south and when southerners were no longer dependent upon the slave trade. They viewed the practice as beneficial to the Negro, never alluding to any conception that therace of Africans who had been transported to the new world ever possessed any degree of equality.Northern law and society, while not condoning slavery, did consider the Africans to be of an inferior race and procured a strong disparity between race relations. Various Northern laws which were in existence during the Revolutionary War act as a valuable index toward evaluating the founder's views on citizenship and the Negro race. Northern states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts legislated laws which outlawed miscegenation, the right to vote, and Negro enrollment in militias at the time of the writing of the constitution, these laws remained in place well into the early 1800's. Chief Justice Taney’s viewpoint on slavery was often compatible with many of the beliefs of the founding fathers. The Chief Justice, in his decision, cited a Federal Naturalization Law of 1790 expressly limiting eligibility to “free white persons” and a 1792 Federal Militia Law excluding Negroes from participation. He deemed that these two pieces of Federal Legislation were particularly “worthy of notice, because many of the men who assisted in framing the Constitution, and took an active part in procuring its adoption, were then in the halls of legislation, and certainly understood what they meant when they used the words peoples of the United States and citizen."[13] Many of the founding fathers believed that slavery was morally wrong yet because of its foundation in early southern colonial society they favored gradual emancipation.
Thomas Jefferson always believed slavery to be morally repugnant yet had the capacity to understood the paternalistic ideology which had been accepted by the southern slaveholding aristocracy.Jefferson supported gradual manumission by expressing his views in a letter he had written in 1814, “My opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them, we should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from ill usage, require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen, and be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, and our duties to them. The laws do not permit us to turn them loose, if that were for their good.”[14] He believed that it was temporarily within the slaves best interest to remain enslaved and that it was the southern gentleman’s duty to provide and care for the Africans who had unfortunately found their way to the new world. Jefferson saw no possible legal means of surrendering the slaveholding power his generation had inherited from their European ancestry. Slavery, regardless of how morally reproachable the system, had become inextricable entwined within early American society and thus inevitably found its way into Constitutional legitimacy. Taney was raised out of that generation and despite his own personal disapproval of slavery, he was incapable of acknowledging any legal means of abolishing the institution.
Taney was never a pro-slavery man; he manumitted seven of his own slaves in 1818 and another in 1821. He emancipated two more slaves, who he had inherited from his father, while practicing law in Frederick. It has also been proven that he made loans out, on at least one occasion, to assist a Negro in buying his wife and family out of slavery. He despised the practice of slavery, and when his brother in law, Francis Scott Key, assisted in founding the American Colonization Society, Roger Taney became a local officer of that Society and later a vice president. Taney’s first criminal case was in 1809; on this occasion he defended a Negro by the name of Thomas Burke. Burke had been charged with criminally assaulting a twelve year old girl and despite Taney’s reputable defense was found guilty and ordered to be hanged. This case gained tremendous notoriety in Maryland; it was alleged that Burke was guilty of the crime, and many of the states most prominent attorneys were reluctant to take his case. Another incident to draw particular interest to is Taney’s defense of Reverend Jacob Gruber in March of 1819, while still practicing law in Frederick. Gruber had been charged with “instigating slaves to commit acts of mutiny and rebellion” and was tried before a three-judge panel, all of whom were slaveholders. Taney at one point referred to slaveholders as “those reptiles who live by trading in human flesh and enrich themselves by tearing the husband from the wife and the infant from the mother’s bosom.”[15] He concluded by adding: “A hard necessity, indeed compels us to endure the evils of slavery for a time. It was imposed upon us by another nation while we were yet in a state of colonial vassalage. It cannot be easily and suddenly removed. Yet, while it continues, it is a blot on our national character; and every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away.”[16] Taney earned an acquittal, as well as the deepest appreciation and respect of his client; he had crossed the color line, offering his legal talents to any man. The Gruber defense has been noted as Taney’s finest courtroom performance.
Taney’s earliest experiences with slavery would compel any reasonable minded scholar to assume that he was not a defendant of that institution. He was in fact a supporter of gradual emancipation, a cure that time would grant. Taney was torn between an institution he held in contempt and to which at the same time he would later have to defend as an impartial jurist. “History books are often written by the victors…to say that the Dred Scott decision has not been given fair treatment would be a miracle of anunderstatement.” [17] The Chief Justices opinion in Scott was brilliant, not because it ruled against Negro citizenship and rendered the geographic limitations of slavery to be unconstitutional, but because it thoroughly evaluated the beliefs of the founding fathers and the legitimacy of a system under attack by fanatical abolitionists in the north. Taney believed that “Congress had no constitutional power to prohibit slavery in the territories because such a prohibition would constitute a taking of private property without due process of law.”[18] The Chief Justice felt obligated to protect a system which had been legally recognized and protected by the constitution, not because of any partiality toward slavery but out of respect for the law. The issue of slavery had developed into a moral question; although “Taney did not regard it as the function of the Supreme Court to lead the moral sentiment of the times…in the Dred Scott case he was not concerned with the morality of slavery but with its legality. Finding slavery sanctioned by the Constitution he applied to it the same rules that would be applied to any other kind of property. And there cannot be much doubt that his application of the due process clause to prevent the abolition of slavery in the territories would have met with little objection had the property, in question been any other than human slaves.”[19] Justice Taney looked to avert war and save the Union by ending the question of slavery through a coherent display of legal reasoning. He would not have labored so vigorously in writing the lengthy majority opinion if he hadn’t intended his judicial resolution to be a final end to northern and southern hostilities. Considered by many, “From the standpoint of technique in interpreting the Constitution as it was written, Taney’s opinion in the case is one of the best he ever wrote.” [20]
Unfortunately the Scott case only further embittered northern anti-slavery sentiment and heightened regional animosity in the short years up until the war. Inevitable, Taney, Buchanan, and Grier all shared in the misfortunes of having been involved in the Dred Scott case. Although the accusation has been made that all three men were highly involved in a political-judicial conspiracy, none were proponents of slavery. They were well intentioned men who believed they were settling a national problem, a problem they believed needed to be legally affirmed as legitimate in order to quell abolitionist fanatics, who they believed represented the greatest danger to the nation. The system of slavery was a constitutionally protected enterprise that needed to be defended by men who had the strength to set aside their personal and moral beliefs and remain impartial, an obligation they respected, in order to preserve the constitution.
