a past symbolized by the aging proslavery tawny. it is not easy for 21st century that it wouldknow 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, history backwards, rather than forwards, to say from our perspective that the war did not really change much. when we look closely at what s said, we can see the rapid downfall of the chief justice's reputation speaks to pths 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. finally, the story of tawny's rapidly declining reputation reveal something about black agency and activism, about the extent to which african-americans shaped the times. course, the fact of war was the driving force in bringing about emancipation. it was african-americans themselves who were fleeing to federal m

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 n