Roger B. Taney - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

• Taney was buried at St. John the Evangelist Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland.

• His home, Taney Place, located at Adelina, Calvert County, Maryland was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

Another Taney home is located in Frederick, Maryland where Taney lived and practiced law with partner Francis Scott Key, the author of "The Star Spangled Banner". The "including the house, detached kitchen, root cellar, smokehouse and slaves quarters, interprets the life of Taney and his wife Anne Key (sister of Francis Scott Key), as well as various aspects of life in early nineteenth century Frederick County."

Taney remained a controversial figure and he was attacked by abolitionists in the Senate even after his death. In early 1865, the House of Representatives passed a bill to appropriate funds for a bust of Taney to be displayed in the Supreme Court alongside with those of the four Chief Justices who preceded him.. As Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts said:

I speak what cannot be denied when I declare that the opinion of the Chief Justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of courts. Judicial baseness reached its lowest point on that occasion. You have not forgotten that terrible decision where a most unrighteous judgment was sustained by a falsification of history. Of course, the Constitution of the United States and every principle of Liberty was falsified, but historical truth was falsified also. . . .

Sumner went further to exclaim "Now an emancipated country should make a bust to the author of the Dred Scott decision?" and "If a man has done evil in his life, he must not be complimented in marble." HE proposed that a vacant spot, not a bust of Taney, be left in the courtroom "to speak in warning to all who would betray liberty!"

Sumner had long exhibited a bitter dislike of the late Chief Justice. Upon hearing the news of Taney's passing the previous year, he wrote President Abraham Lincoln in celebration declaring that "Providence has given us a victory" in Taney's death.

Notwithstanding, after Taney's successor, Chief Justice Salmon Chase, died, in 1873 Congress approved funds for busts of both Taney and Chase to be displayed in the Capitol alongside the other chief justices.

Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis, author of one of the dissents on Dred Scott, held his former colleague in high esteem despite their differences in that case. Writing in his own memoirs, Curtis described Taney:

He was indeed a great magistrate, and a man of singular purity of life and character. That there should have been one mistake in a judicial career so long, so exalted, and so useful is only proof of the imperfection of our nature. The reputation of Chief Justice Taney can afford to have anything known that he ever did and still leave a great fund of honor and praise to illustrate his name. If he had never done anything else that was high, heroic, and important, his noble vindication of the writ of habeas corpus, and of the dignity and authority of his office, against a rash minister of state, who, in the pride of a fancied executive power, came near to the commission of a great crime, will command the admiration and gratitude of every lover of constitutional liberty, so long as our institutions shall endure.

Modern legal scholars have tended to concur with Justice Curtis that, despite the Dred Scott decision, Taney was both an outstanding jurist and a competent judicial administrator. His mixed legacy was noted by Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey:

There comes vividly to mind a portrait by Emanuel Leutze that hangs in the Harvard Law School: Roger Brooke Taney, painted in 1859, the 82d year of his life, the 24th of his Chief Justiceship, the second after his opinion in Dred Scott. He is all in black, sitting in a shadowed red armchair, left hand resting upon a pad of paper in his lap, right hand hanging limply, almost lifelessly, beside the inner arm of the chair. He sits facing the viewer, and staring straight out. There seems to be on his face, and in his deep set eyes, an expression of profound sadness and disillusionment. Perhaps he always looked that way, even when dwelling upon the happiest of thoughts. But those of us who know how the lustre of his great Chief Justiceship came to be eclipsed by Dred Scott cannot help believing that he had that case--its already apparent consequences for the Court, and its soon to be played out consequences for the Nation--burning on his mind.

• Taney County, Missouri, is named in his honor, though it is usually pronounced /ˈteɪni/, not /ˈtɔːni/.
• Taneytown, Maryland, located in Carroll County, is mistakenly thought to have been named for him. Taneytown was established in 1754.
• A statue of Justice Taney is displayed on the grounds of the Maryland State House.
• A street in Baltimore City was named for him.

Chief Justice Taney was the first of the thirteen Catholic justices – out of 112 total – who have served on the Supreme Court.

• The Treasury-class US Coast Guard Cutter Taney was named for him. The ship is now part of the Baltimore Maritime Museum.
• Liberty ship Roger B. Taney also bore his name. After being commissioned on February 9, 1942, on July 2, 1943 she was torpedoed in the South Atlantic. Three crew members died. Many of the crew were involved in an epic 22 day 2,600 mile journey, including surviving a hurricane, and successfully landing in the Bahamas.
• Roger B. Taney Middle School in Temple Hills, Maryland bore his name. When the population of the county changed to majority black, the school was renamed after Justice Thurgood Marshall.