roger cheney served as the chief justice of the supreme court and delivered a majority opinion in the controversial dred scott case. a discussion of public opinion of chief justice cheney -- taney . the supreme court historical society hosted this event. it is a little under an hour. [applause] >> thank you very much, mr. goldman. historians like me because every faculty has a legal historian on it but how important they are depends on how much you think the history behind the constitution or any other statute depends upon what was the understanding at the time, which is what historians can tell us. i use historians more than most people and they like me more

than most people. well, i'm happy to welcome all of you to this -- i guess it's the third in our series of lectures named after the former president of the supreme court historical society. and this lecture is as you have heard, it's the third in a four-part series on the supreme court and the civil war revisited. the historical society has an educational outreach mission that includes these lectures. it includes training programs

for teachers. it includes the publication of such publications as court watchers, eyewitness accounts in history which came out a few years ago, which is a general interest history of the court with firsthand anecdotes. my colleagues on the court and i appreciate the society's wide and varied and public understanding of the supreme court and our form of government. i could go on about other efforts that the supreme court has -- historical society has made in that regard, but you are here for a lecture on chief justice roger brooke taney. tonight's lecture is being delivered by professor timothy s. huebner. he received his b.a. from the university of miami and his ph.d. in history from the university

of florida. he is a chair of the department of history at rhodes college in memphis where my grandson has just matriculated this year, namesake actually. some of you may remember that rhodes college is known within these halls as the alma mater of the late justice abe fortas. professor huebner is the author of two books, "the southern judicial tradition state judges and sectional distinctiveness, 1790-1890," and the taney court, justices, rulings, and legacy. he is co-editor with the late kermit hall of the second edition of "major problems in american constitutional history."

currently, he is completing a narrative history of the civil war and american constitutionalism to be published by university of kansas in early 2016. additionally, he serves, and i'm happy to say, as the associate editor of the supreme court historical society's journal of supreme court history. i could continue as professor huebner's accomplishments and publications are many, but that would leave us less time for his words. i hope you will all join me in welcoming professor timothy s. huebner. [applause] >> thank you, justice scalia. thank you jim goldman and david pride and the society for the

invitation. a special thanks to jennifer lowe for making all of this possible. it's an honor to be here. on october 12, 1864, 150 years ago this week, chief justice roger brooke taney died in his rented home in washington d.c. after 28 years as chief justice of the nation's highest court, the death of the 87-year-old maryland native prompted little grief or mourning on the part of the people of the northern states. papers offered words of condolence and respect, taney's republican opponents who were much more numerous were quick to portray his death as a cause for celebration. as soon as word came to massachusetts senator charles

sumner, he dashed off a letter to president abraham lincoln in which he noted, "providence has given us a victory in the death of chief justice taney. it is a victory for liberty and constitution." in the days following, a philadelphia newspaper stated the nation can feel little regret as his removal of office which in his hands has been so promiscuously used. five months later, the atlantic monthly concluded that taney was essentially a partisan judge, and around that same time in early 1865, an anonymous 68-page pamphlet was published called the unjust judge that basically made the same point. roger taney was and is the most infamous chief justice in the

history of the supreme court. tonight i would like to talk about the life and the death of chief justice taney and what his death meant in late 1864 and 1865 when the nation was in the midst of concluding a long and bloody civil war. along the way, i'd like to make various observations about taney, particularly the rise and fall of his reputation. and ultimately i want to show that the way in which taney's death was interpreted tells us a great deal about the meaning of emancipation in 1865, as well as about a transformation in the american understanding of rights. now, taney's poor reputation at the time of his passing stands in stark contrast to his own reputation 10 years before.

although taney had been a controversial nominee to the court in 1836, viewed as someone likely to carry out the political agenda of his mentor and nominate president andrew jackson, taney soon earned as a reputation as a moderate and fair chief justice. under his leadership, the court issued landmark rulings in the areas of contracts, admiralty law and commerce laws. and in each of these decisions, taney sought to solve a legal and a social problem by putting forth a pragmatic solution. after nearly two decades on the court, taney's reputation peaked during the mid 1850's. in 1854, a book described taney in glowing terms. taney, according to van zant had "a reputation beyond reproach, a purity of life that no man can

assail." regarded as a judicial statesman, taney earned bipartisan praise. even the most vocal opponent of his nomination in 1836, representative henry clay, later publicly apologized for his criticism of taney and called him "a worthy successor of chief justice john marshall." as a historian puts it, "had the taney court rested on its morals laurels in 1856, it would

have surely gone down as one of the most popular and effective courts in our history." in 1857, taney's reputation changed dramatically because of his decision in one case, of course, dred scott versus sandford. in that case, dred scott sued for his freedom after he had been taken by his master in a free territory and having lived there for two years before being brought back to missouri. the court ruled against scott holding that he was still a slave. now an enormous about of ink has been spilled on this case and i do not intend to discuss the constitutional and legal details, but a basic understanding of what taney did and wrote in this case is essential for understanding the rapid decline in his reputation.

taney's opinion in dred scott contained two significant points of law. first, taney held that african americans, whether slaves or free, had not been included in the political community at the time of the founding. therefore, he reasoned, neither they nor their descendents were citizens in the state within the meaning of the constitution. now this ruling in and of itself at the time was not the most controversial part of the decision. as one scholar has noted, many state courts in the south and the north had already held the same thing, that african americans were neither citizens of their states nor of the united states. but taney seemed to further than just denying blacks citizenship. and reviewing the history of the writing of the declaration of

independence and the constitution, taney held that the founders had not acknowledged or included african americans in the people of the united states. taney reasoned that the fact that so many of the founders held slaves proved that they had no intention of applying the "all men are created equal" language of the declaration to african americans. it was too glaring of a contradiction. in making this point, taney wrote these memorable words. "it is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the declaration of independence. they had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order and

altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might be justly and lawfully reduced to slavery for his benefit." now i will come back to these words. the second point of law decided by taney, and more significant in the context of the political debates of the time, was that congress had no power to prohibit slavery in federal territories. taney put it this way, "the right of property and slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the constitution." for this reason taney believed congress had no power to interfere with his right by

banning slavery in federal territories. this was at the time was the most controversial part of the opinion. the big question of the 1850's was whether slavery would be allowed to spread into new territories and his answer to that question was a resounding yes, slave owners had a right to take slaves into new territory and congress could not interfere with those rights. in other words, the more pressing rights issue at the time was not whether african american slave or free possessed the rights of citizenship under the constitution, rather rights in the context of the heated debates of the 1850's meant the rights of slave holders. those were the rights that a man from south carolina had championed in that southerners

were beginning to rally behind in the late 1850's and those were the rights that taney had protected. strikingly absent from the mainstream national debate over slavery in fact, was a discussion of the rights of black people. white abolitionists seemed perfectly content to debate the constitutionality and the morality of slavery in an abstract way and republicans seemed to focus on preventing the spread of slavery into new territories, but few abolitionists or republicans championed racial equality under the constitution or the law. abraham lincoln, in fact, stayed away from this issue as much as he could in his debates with steven douglas, and referred

only to the basic rights which he believed was in the declaration of independence that one person could not be owned by another person. in their criticism of the dred scott decision, northern white republicans focused relentlessly on the slavery part of the decision rather than the black citizenship or rights aspect of it. african americans, however, had a different reading of this case. rather than focusing on the question of slave holders' rights, they zeroed in on the issue of black rights, their rights. taney's bold claim that blacks had no rights that the white man was found to respect became somewhat of a rallying point for the growing group of northern black activists who sought not only to end slavery, but also to

advance the aspirations of black people throughout the united states. it may well have been the most offensive phrase and the one that had the most galvanizing effect on a segment of the population in the history of the supreme court. in 1858, a year after the issuing of taney's opinion that the sufferage convention of the colored citizens of new york, african american leaders made clear exactly what they thought taney's opinion. playing off taney's language, they held that, "the dred scott decision is a foul and infamous lie which neither black men nor white men are bound to respect." the delegates expressed particular outrage of taney's

interpretation of the declaration of independence. the idea that blacks had not been included in the political community at the time of the founding and that therefore the government of the united states was a white man's government. the delegates announced, "we therefore call upon all who subscribe to the theory of human rights set forth in the declaration of american independence to trample in self-defense, the dicta of judge taney beneath their feet as of no binding authority." the emphasis that african americans placed on the citizenship part of the decision part rather than the slavery part stands out because it taught against the political grain during the late 1850's. the other striking element of the african american critique of

the decision was the way this which they personalized their criticism, training their aim specifically on chief justice taney. now, taney was one of seven justices in the majority in this case and each justice wrote an opinion, but it was taney's opinion with his infamous words "they have no rights" that most offended african americans. the events of 1861 and 1862 contributed even further to this close identification of chief justice taney with the court's dred scott decision. lincoln was elected president in 1860, and when white southerners feared that the rights to hold slaves would not be protected under the incoming president

they succeeded from the federal union and the civil war began. the northern war effort began as an attempt simply to restore the union as an attempt put down the southern rebellion. but by 1862, union policy changed largely because of pressure exerted by african americans, but also because of the republican belief that liberating slaves helped the union cause, emancipation started to become the policy of the union government in washington. in a span of several months, congress enacted legislation forbidding slavery in the

territories in defiance of the dred scott ruling and ending slavery in washington, d.c. congress also passed an act which made possible the emancipation of slaves owned by confederates. and then on january 1, 1863, abraham lincoln issued the whichpation proclamation, declared all slaves in nonunion held areas of the confederacy forever free. every one of these policies instituted by lincoln and republicans constituted a gradual, methodical assault on the dred scott decision. particularly on the slavery part of that decision. by 1863, slavery was slowly losing its grip on the southern states in the midst of war.

in the meantime, it looked in the background. the chief justice held a unique position as the only southerner on the court to be part of the dred scott majority who sympathized with the confederacy. five of the seven justices in the majority had been seven or's. -- had been southerners. justice daniel of virginia died in 1860. john campbell of alabama, another justice in the majority of dred scott, because of his loyalty to his home state and secessionist course that it took, resigned his seat on the high court in early 1861 and went back home to the south. he ended up serving as the

assistant secretary of war for the confederacy. justice john became famous for his support of the federal union. in 1861, upon attempting to hold circuit court in his home state, he encountered a group of confederates outside of nashville who informed him that if he entered the city to hold court, they could not guarantee his safety. he left. when federal forces occupied nashville in early 1862, he came back as somewhat of a conquering hero to unionist in the city, and he did all the u.s. circuit sessions in the summer of 1862. justice wayne of georgia earned the scorn of his fellow

georgians for his faithful devotion to the union. with daniel dead, and others thoroughly but devoted to the union, that left one. -- taney. bitter, and increasingly partisan and angry. from his position as chief justice, he did all he could do to thwart lincoln's administration. he voted against the constitutionality of lincoln's blockade of southern ports. he drafted a hypothetical opinion challenging the constitutionality of the federal

draft law should it come before the court. it didn't. of course, he seeds over -- see that -- of course, he over lincoln's emancipation proclamation. he was so opposed to lincoln's policies, and so sure that the administration hated him for it, he wondered aloud after the decision in the habeas corpus case whether the president might order his arrest. throughout 1863 and 1864, as union army may greater inroads -- made greater inroads into the confederacy, his opinions and he himself seemed more and more the relics of a bygone era. it came more and more under criticism. only six years between the issuing of the dred scott decision and the announcement of the emancipation proclamation,

america was undergoing a radical transformation. congress, lincoln, and the union military were enacting and implementing policies making freedom possible. while african-americans were taking matters into their own hands by walking off southern plantations and toward federal military lines, many of those who moved out of slavery, the men anyway, were moving into the union army. 200,000 black men were serving as union soldiers or sailors. for blacks during the civil war, military service offered a way to overcome the stamp of ney'siority inherent in ta opinion.

a way to assert they were men and a way to claim equal rights and an equal share of the american heritage. john rock, a black man from new jersey who had become a leading lawyer and activist, insisted that the war presented just such an opportunity. listen to his words from a speech in january of 1862 in boston and mocking paraphrase. -- in mocking paraphrase of taney. "75,000 freeman capable of bearing arms and three quarters of a million slaves wild with the enthusiasm caused by the dawn of the glorious opportunity of being able to strike a blow for freedom will be a power that white men will be bound to respect." with the nation swept up in revolutionary change, he spent his last few years holed up in his rented home on indiana

avenue in washington. sick, mostly homebound, in the care of his daughter's and and servants, and disgusted by the policies of president lincoln and official washington, he practically ceased to carry at his duties. he spent much of his time in that reading newspapers and smoking cigars. although he held the title of chief justice of the united states, taney's sympathies clearly laid with the confederate government in richmond. his son-in-law, husband of his daughter maria, served in the confederate army. pictures of both of them hung on the wall in his house. with him confined to his home, the chief justice is ill health and impressive longevity became

a subject of some conversation and speculation in washington. in 1863, the republican senator of ohio quipped, "i prayed with earnestness for his life to be prolonged throughout the canyons administration, and by god, i'm afraid i have overdone it." [laughter] his time did eventually come. hours before his death, taney was presented with the opportunity to take an oath of allegiance to the united states government, an oath proposed by president lincoln and provided for maryland's constitution. the chief justice stubbornly refused.

he died on the evening of october 12, and the very next day, voters in his home state approved an amendment to the state constitution abolishing slavery. it was a fitting event to occur the day after the death of the proslavery chief justice. a few days later, a group of family members, friends, dignitaries, and onlookers gathered to pay their last respects. president lincoln and three cabinet members were there. afterward, a train took his body and a small group of family members to frederick, maryland where the funeral service took place. during the next three months, in late 8064 and early 1865,

lincoln won reelection as president. the union forces, under the command of sherman in georgia, continued their march to sea, and eventually northward into south carolina. congress debated and passed a 13th amendment to the constitution. it ended slavery and overturned the slavery portion of the dred scott decision. meanwhile, the public debate over taney's legacy and the meaning of emancipation had begun. by this time, the emphasis that african-americans had always placed on the no rights aspect became an important part of the national discussion. as the 13th amendment moved swiftly toward ratification by the states that year, the

question of black citizenship and lack rights moved to the black rights moved to the forefront. s were free, what right did they have? in the midst of this, taney and dred scott, now more closely connected than ever, became a symbol of the old proslavery order. the pre-civil war slave power. on february 23, 1865, when senator lyman trumbull of illinois introduced a bill providing for the placement of a marble bust in the supreme court taney, where busts of the previous chief justices were already displayed, senator sumner rose in opposition.

"i object to that," he said. sumner continued, "the judgment is beginning now. -- an emancipated country will fasten upon taney the stigma which he deserves." others joined sumner in his criticism. senator benjamin wade remarked his constituents would " pay $2000 to hang this man in effigy, rather than $1000 for a bust to commemorate his efforts." later that year, in a speech on the floor of the house in which he laid out his views on reconstruction policy, republican congressman thaddeus stevens of pennsylvania took an even stronger position against him.

referring to his dred scott decision, stevens argued that the notion that america was a white man's government only was "as atrocious as the infamous sentiment that dammed the chief justice to everlasting fame and accurately everlasting fire." and a link the keys on his legacy published that year in the atlantic monthly, the author made clear that none of his other work on the court would matter. in comparison to his infamous decision in the case of dred scott. libertyession, war, and will be the theme of the world and the theme of all who

precipitated him will likely to be held in remembrance. for he did more than any other individual to extend the slave power." he went on to discuss his motives in the decision. here he used similarly stark language. he noted that "the worst is the disposition to serve the cause of evil." he argued that he knew exactly what he was doing. his decision attempted to snuff out all hope of rights and liberties to the nations free and enslaved african-americans. he portrayed chief justice taney as ignoring all of the precepts of the christian religion, the declaration of independence, and the constitution. finally, going through a long list of english judges with reputations for unfairness and infamy, including george jefferies of england, the

infamous persecutor of protestants, he concluded that taney was the worst of all. the low point in his reputation came with the 1865 publication of an anonymous 68-page pamphlet entitled, "the unjust judge." the pamphlet accused taney of the worst abuses of the judicial power. it asserted that the dred scott opinion alone with shape his reputation. much of the pamphlet argues that the framers had been anti-slavery, and that the constitution and body the spirit of the declaration of independence, particularly its assertion that all men were created equal.

the author of "the unjust judge" took satisfaction in showing how early in his career taney viewed slavery as incompatible. it is true that as a young lawyer in maryland, he had defended jacob gruber, an anti-slavery methodist minister accused of a disturbing the peace and inciting rebellion, and in the process, taney had cited the declaration of independence in support of his antislavery views and had actually called slavery "a blot on our national character." the author made much of this apparent change of heart, describing taney as failing to

live up to his early ideals as well as those of the nation's founders. in its analysis of the dred got case, the pamphlet attempted to demonstrate that african-americans, contrary to taney's assertion, had been included in the political community at the time of the founding. more than an academic criticism of taney's reasoning in the dred scott opinion, the unjust judge constituted a rhetorical assault on the character of the nation's chief justice. it considered him a malevolent old man engaged in the most nefarious of purposes, a man untrue to the principles of the christian religion as he was to the ideals of the constitution. in his perversion of the law and his misuse of his power, taney equaled the infamous judge

jeffries "in his worst days." moreover, the author contended, "he exceeded justice in which jeffries, as a tourist, or as a judge in which character he will be most remembered, he was next to pontius pilate, the worst to ever occupy the seat of judgment among men." the evolution in the response from republicans was clear. from being hooted down the page of history to condemn to help

l for the decision to be the worst judge in the history of the english speaking world to being next to pontiff pilate, the worst ever to occupy the seat of judgment among men. the rush of union victory in the triumph of emancipation made taney appear by comparison to be on the wrong side of history, to be an abuser of power, and a force for evil. so, what does this interpretation of taney's death mean? what does it tell us about chief justice taney and america at the end of 1864 and early 1865? i think it tells us three things. first, it tells us that by the time of his death taney had come to embody the slave power, the

entrenched pro-slavery interests that the union was attempting to defeat. they have no rights language of dred scott, the union adoption of a policy of emancipation, and tawny's attempts to throw at the taney's attempts to thwart the lincoln administration turn him into a highly visible public enemy. by 1864, it was clear that he stood for the rights of slaveholders, for no rights for black people, and taney stood opposed to lincoln's efforts to prosecute the war. in the north, there may have been no greater symbol of the south and all that it stood for then chief justice taney. -- than chief justice taney.

second, it tells us that these really were revolutionary times. it is striking that in a nation that had so valued its institutions, its founders, it's constitution, and its court constitution, and its court system for decades that one of its most distinguished and longest-serving justices might experience so rapid a fall in the minds of the notary public. -- northern public. in 1864 and 1865, many northerners really did see themselves as bringing about a profound revolutionary break with their past. a past symbolized by the aging proslavery taney. it is not easy for 21st century americans who know that it would take a civil rights movement to bring about further change to understand the swift and revolutionary pace of events

during the civil war. it is often our tendency to, -- read history backwards, rather than forwards, to say from our perspective that the war did not really change much. when we look closely at what contemporaries said, we can see the rapid downfall of the chief justice's reputation speaks to the depths of the revolutionary aspirations of the day. slavery, a 250 year old institution on american soil, went down to defeat on the battlefields of the civil war. along with it, its most prominent judicial defender. these were revolutionary times.

third and finally, the story of taney's rapidly declining reputation reveal something about black agency and activism, about the extent to which african-americans shaped the times. now, of course, the fact of war was the driving force in bringing about emancipation. it was african-americans themselves who were fleeing to federal military lines. it was african-americans who always focused on the rights portion of the dred scott decision. who always drew their inspiration from the all men are created equal language of the declaration of independence. and who always pushed the debate forward to emancipation, yes, but beyond to the rights of black people in the republic. the arguments of white, radical republicans owed a great deal to

blacks' decades long attempts to push the declaration of independence to the forefront of american political discourse. thus, it was african-americans who helped to bring about a fundamental shift in american notion of rights, from the rights that taney had to discuss in dred scott, the rights of slaveholders, to the rights of enslaved persons. taney had relied on the fifth amendment of the constitution to emphasize the rights of property, but african-americans look to the declaration of independence to champion the rights of all human beings. the passing of taney, the

revolutionary nature of the times, and the role of african-americans in bringing about that revolution was probably most evident in the truly historic event on february 1, 1865, less than four month after taney's death, a month before lincoln's second inauguration, and two and a half months before lee's surrender at appomattox. on that day, john as law of rock of massachusetts became the first african-american to gain admission to the bar of the united states supreme court. when he was admitted to practice by the new chief justice, salmon p. chase. the new orleans tribune, a black newspaper, took note with pride. the newspaper reported that he would be practicing were

-- where previously, and was and -- listen how they put it, "the infamous taney sat enthroned, decreeing that a colored man has no rights that the white man is bound to respect." it was indeed a new era. thank you. [applause] >> the c-span cities tour takes tv and american history tv on the road, traveling to u.s. cities to learn about their history and literary life.

next weekend we partner with charter communications for a visit to madison, wisconsin. >> the call, to every citizen. it is an unending struggle to keep government representative. >> he is probably the most important political figure in wisconsin history, and one of the most important in the history of the 20th century in the united states. he was a reforming governor. he defined what progressivism is. he was one of the first to use the term. he was a united states senator who was recognized by his peers in the 1950's as one of the five greatest senators in american history. he was an opponent of world war i. he stood his ground, advocating

for free speech. above all, he was about the people. after the civil war, america changed radically from a nation of small farmers and producers and manufacturers, and by the late 1870's, 1880's, 1890's, we had concentrations of wealth. we had growing inequality. we had concern about the influence of money in government. he spent the later part of 1890's giving speeches all over wisconsin. if you wanted us be your for -- if you wanted a speaker for your club or group, he would give a speech. he went to county fairs. he went to every kind of event you can imagine. he built a reputation for himself. by 1900, he was ready to run for governor, advocating on behalf of the people. he had two issues. one, the direct primary, no more selecting candidates and

-- in convention. two, stop the interests. specifically the railroads. >> watch all of our events from madison next saturday starting at noon eastern. and next saturday starting at 3:00 on c-span3. >> each week american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's college professors. you can watch the classes every saturday evening at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern. next holy cross professor edward , o'donnell talked about the prejudice many immigrants faced in the 19th century with regard to religion, customs, and social status. professor o'donnell says this often lead to fights over what would be taught in public schools, questions of loyalty of catholic politicians, and job postings statihi