Roger Brooke Taney, 1777 - 1864

Roger Brooke Taney, 1777 - 1864. Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Roger Brooke Taney was born in Calvert County, Maryland. After serving as attorney general of the U.S. and secretary of the Treasury, he was sworn in as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on March 15, 1836. He served until his death in 1864., Although Taney considered slavery an evil, he believed its abolition had to be led by the states in which slavery existed. He freed his own slaves when he inherited them and provided pensions to those too old to work., In the infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, Taney wrote that persons of African descent did not possess rights of citizenship, because, he said, the framers had not included blacks, either free or enslaved, in the original community of people covered by the Constitution. The court also held that the 1820 Missouri Compromise which prohibited slavery in the western territories, was unconstitutional., Aside from the Dred Scott decision, Taney is considered by many legal scholars and historians to have been a great magistrate and a distinguished chief justice., Photo , Roger Brook Taney , Bendann Bros, 1850-1864 , Maryland State Archives, Monument , Roger Brook Taney , William Henry Rinehart (1825-1874) , Bronze, 1872 , Maryland State Archives