Lincoln And Chief Justice Taney By Author’s Name

It was a fine idea of James F. Simon’s, to draw a parallel between the lives of Abraham Lincoln, arguably the best of all US Presidents, and Roger Taney, certainly the most controversial of Chief Justices.

Simon is particularly well suited for the task, since he’s both a historian and a lawyer. The same formula worked well in the first book of his I came across, and admired as much as this one: ‘What kind of Nation’ traced the contrasts and conflicts between Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall.

Roger Taney was an Andrew Jackson appointee. Lincoln was a long time admirer of Henry Clay. Taney and Lincoln can be seen as the heirs, a generation on, of the political antagonism between those two outstanding figures who dominated the 1830s and 1840s.

Taney represents the tradition of the Democratic Party of his day, committed to the exercise of power by and in the name of the people (or at least that portion of the people that was white and male), and an equal commitment to states rights and more specifically the rights of Southern states. The South felt itself increasingly dominated by the North and West with their burgeoning wealth and populations. And when we talk about defending the South in the period up to the Civil War, we inevitably mean defending slavery.

Here we meet one of the paradoxes about Taney that is central to Simon’s study: Taney, a Marylander, freed his own slaves. He clearly felt badly enough about human bondage not to want to engage in it himself. However, that could never override his feeling that the Federal government had no right, under the Constitution, to legislate on slavery – certainly not in the States where it was legal, but not in any other part of the US either. It was a matter for States to decide for themselves.

Taney’s views weren’t always rigid. Simon, for instance, points to the case of the Amistad. This was a Spanish ship that fell into US hands after its cargo of slaves, taken illegally in Africa, had risen and seized control. Justice Joseph Story, an adversary of Taney’s mentor Jackson, wrote the judgement of the US Supreme Court. He ruled against the ship owners and in favour of the return of the slaves to Africa, on the grounds that the initial seizure had been against the law. Taney sided with this judgement despite, as Simon underlines, his view that slavery was not a matter that ought to be determined at federal level.

In some respects, Lincoln saw things similarly. It’s true that he loathed slavery: “I hate it for the monstrous injustice of slavery itself” is a ringing declaration quoted by Simon. Even so, he was no abolitionist. He made it repeatedly clear that he did not feel the government should interfere with slavery in states where it existed, but slavery should not be allowed to expand beyond those states.

Both men also held similar racial views, at least initially. As Simon points out, Lincoln “agreed with Southerners that the black man was inferior to the white man politically and socially.”

In a sense, the starting points for their political evolution weren’t that far apart. But Simon shows how the pressure the slavery question exerted on the United States as a whole forced them increasingly apart.

The greater damage was done to Taney, whose reputation was forever tarnished by the infamous Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court in 1857. Taney wrote the majority judgement. The concrete issue at stake concerned the right of Dred Scott, a slave, to plead in Federal Court for his freedom, which he claimed he obtained when his master took him into free States and Territories (land belonging to the US but not yet organised as States) before returning him to Missouri.

Taney, however, went far beyond this single question. Aside from whether moving a slave to a free portion of the US freed him, Taney made it clear that no black, slave or free, could ever sue in a US court. Indeed, as Simon writes, “Taney asserted that Dred Scott and every other American black, whether free or not, was forever destined to remain in a degraded status in civilised society and could never rise to the level of national citizen.” In Taney’s own words, blacks “…had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” They never had, in his view, and the founders of the US had made that clear – the words “all men are created equal” evidently applied only to white men, as proved by their actions in allowing the enslaving of blacks. If they could be enslaved, they were obviously degraded.

Simon also shows that in this position Taney, despite his clear dislike of slavery itself, was not taking a novel position: already in 1832, as Andrew Jackson’s Attorney General, he had taken a similar position on the impossibility of black citizenship.

Moreover, in his Dred Scott decision, Taney announced that Congress had no right under the Constitution to ban slavery in new territories of the United States. That was a decision that could only be taken by the population of those territories, as they applied for statehood. So slavery could expand beyond the States where it was already legal.

This was too much for Lincoln. He drew heavily on the dissenting view on the Supreme Court expressed by Justice Curtis, to argue that Taney was profoundly mistaken on the citizenship question. Lincoln “honed in on Taney’s claim that the African Americans were purposely excluded by the framers of the Constitution. Contrary to Taney’s historical argument, said Lincoln, Justice Curtis demonstrates in his dissent ‘with so much particularity as to leave no doubt of its truth’ that free blacks voted in five of the original states and, in proportion to their numbers, ‘had the same part in making the Constitution that the white people had.’”

But Lincoln becomes even more powerful in his rhetoric on the question of general principle. Again, Simon quotes his words, on whether the proclamation in the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal, applied only to a single race:

“I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal – equal in ‘certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ This they said, and this [they] meant.”

Both men disliked slavery. Both men felt that blacks were racially inferior. But in the face of the pressures to break up the union that the slavery question would generate, Lincoln increasingly evolved towards a view of that inferiority as smaller than had been previously asserted, and less significant. Certainly, unlike Taney, he felt the fundamental right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness belonged to them as much as to whites. By the end of the Civil War, Lincoln was already backing voting rights for “more intelligent” blacks (whatever that may mean) and any who had fought for the Union. It would have been fascinating to see how far he would have gone towards embracing racial equality, had an assassin’s bullet not struck him down so prematurely.

Taney, on the other hand, reacted to the degenerating atmosphere of his country, by then only three years from secession and Civil War, by solidifying his stance and arguing for it more powerfully than ever. Or perhaps I should say intensely, rather than powerfully: as Simon makes clear, his arguments are badly built and draw on far too little authority to be even remotely convincing.

Lincoln had to react not only to the claims concerning black citizenship but, and even more strongly, to the notion that Congress could not legislate on slavery in the territories. Here was a particularly dangerous new development. Like many moderates in the free States, his position that slavery should be allowed to continue in the states where it was legal, was based on the conviction that it could never spread beyond them. But if Congress could not legislate on the subject, then it would be possible to see the peculiar institution spread across new States. Where would that end? Might it not even be reintroduced in the States that had banned it?

That was intolerable.

Between them, therefore, Lincoln and Taney drew the battle lines over which the Civil War would be fought. And one of the great features of Simon’s book is how he traces the continuing conflict right through that War. This part of their common history takes us into further ironies, for Lincoln undoubtedly pushed his notion of Presidential war powers a great deal further than many might have believed, or even believe today, they should really go.

There was a time, for instance, when Washington DC was in serious danger of being entirely isolated from the rest of the Union, with Virginia already seceded and Maryland, which surrounds the city on its other three sides, in serious danger of following suit. Lincoln was not above arresting secessionists in Maryland to prevent them acting on that threat. In these, and other similar cases throughout the war, Taney took a strong individual rights stance against Lincoln. It’s clear that on many occasions, he was driven by his undoubted southern sympathies, but it would be unfair to deny the value of having basic rights ably and actively defended at the highest judicial level, even in war time.

All these ironies, these great conflicts, these resolving and evolving contradictions, Simon traces with clarity and elegance. It’s a delight to read this excellent book. It shines a strong light on some of the greatest questions of their time, and on principles that still resonate today.

PS. The audio version.

As well as the printed book, I also listened to the version from Audible, read by Richard Allen. I enjoyed listening to it, although I found some of the inaccuracies of reading quite breathtaking: Salmon P. Chase became “Salmon P. Chance of Ohio”; it seems Lincoln wasn’t keen on “sectional welfare”, where the printed book suggests what he rejected was “sectional warfare”; I also liked the reference to the “130-man” Army of the Potomac, which somehow managed to lose 17,000 men.

I only wish these were the only errors. And even if they had been, I feel audio books deserve editing as carefully as their printed equivalents. Why are these faults allowed to stand?

Excellent book. Provided great factual insight into the Civil War and Lincoln’s violations of the Constitution as well as Taney’s failure to avoid committing the unpardonable sin of judicial activism in Dred Scott.

A worthwhile read for anyone interested in how a sitting President can fundamentally transform a nation without the consent of the governed. While Taney and Lincoln agreed on many issues, their disagreements are what’s important. Lincoln dealt with dissenters in the North as harshly as he did with those in the south. ‘…punish our enemies…’ is rooted here. Taney was simply pointing out that Lincoln had no LAWFUL authority to dictate his agenda. We see something very similar happening in our country today. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it seems to rhyme.” ~Mark Twain