Learning About Roger Taney

I don't know if it's obvious, but I've finally succumbed to podcasts just a bit. I have a small set that I'm trying to keep up with most of the time, and I've mentioned most of them once or twice.

A new one is Contempt of Court from Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation. He's made three episodes so far, largely echoing some of the arguments made in his excellent book Allow Me to Retort, with on hand guests to bring additional perspectives and updating to the latest Supreme Court corruption scandals featuring Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Another legal podcast that Mystal used be involved with is More Perfect, from WNYC. They just reran an episode from 2017 about the Dred Scott case. It's partly about present-day reconciliation among the families of Scott's descendants and the families of Roger Taney, the Supreme Court Chief Justice who wrote the terrible decision against Scott and all Black people in the U.S.

I've read before about Dred and Harriet Scott because their story together began here in Minnesota, and was part of the basis for the lawsuit. I've visited the courtroom in Saint Louis where one of the trials took place along the way to the final Supreme Court case. But I never have looked into Chief Justice Roger Taney before.

I knew that his statue was just recently removed from the U.S. Capitol and that he wrote the Dred Scott decision, but that was about it. Here are a few of the key facts I found out from his Wikipedia page:

• He was the second son of an aristocratic Maryland family, born just as the American Revolution was getting underway. 
• Maryland was part of the south, and his family ran a forced labor camp, growing tobacco. 
• Maryland, you will remember, was a Catholic stronghold, and the Taneys were Catholic. When he was appointed to SCOTUS, he was the first Catholic on that bench.
• His wife was the sister of Francis Scott Key, and like Key he was essentially a "white moderate." In those days, that was someone who thought enslavement was bad but also thought it couldn't be abolished any time soon, and that Blacks were inherently inferior.
• Taney was a big supporter of Andrew Jackson. He held several posts in his administration until Jackson appointed him Chief Justice.
• He served in that role for the second longest length of time of anyone.
• He clashed with Lincoln several times. He died just before the end of the Civil War, age 87, the same day that Maryland abolished enslavement. Note that this was after the Emancipation Proclamation, which had exempted Maryland and other states that remained loyal to the Union.

"A man of his times," as they say. And now we are in our times, and I'm glad they've finally removed him from the Capitol.