October 12, 1864---The death of Chief Justice Taney

OCTOBER 12, 1864:                    

Roger B. Taney   (1777-1864) the sepulchral Chief Justice of the United States, a Unionist, a Maryland slaveholder, a States’ Rights advocate, and an opponent of the President, whose overreaching holding in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) can arguably be said to have caused the Civil War, died at age 87 in Washington, D.C. Although a more than competent jurist, and Chief Justice for 28 years, Taney’s legacy was ruined by Dred Scott and by Ex parte Merryman (1861), delivered as Circuit Justice, which challenged President Lincoln’s suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus. In the chaos that was the Civil War, Lincoln simply ignored Taney’s Circuit ruling and later released Merryman via an amnesty. Merryman’s case never reached the full Supreme Court.