rross374's review against another edition
4.0
Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney is a thought-provoking book by James Simon. The theme of this book are the lives of President Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney and how they were affected especially during the Civil War. I have read several books on the life of President Lincoln and notice but a few facts in his life that I had not read before, but Chief Justice Taney about the only thing I was aware was he was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the Dred Scott Decision in 1857. The author gives great back ground of both men showing both their distinct differences and their views on the Civil War. Taney’s view as a southern slave owner and Lincoln as the great emancipator, even though Taney had eventually freed his slaves by the time the Civil War had begun. Taney presided on the Supreme Court as the 5th Chief Justice for twenty-eight years. He was the Attorney General for Andrew Jackson and nominated for Chief Justice by President Jackson. Taney felt that Slaves were better taken care by slave owners than allowed their freedom. This book is a definite read for anyone interested in the study of Lincoln it shows how he was able to work around the terrible issues of the Civil War with individuals like Taney that thought he was the Law.
phasmtis's review against another edition
4.0
The book was great. It was not bogged about too much analyzing and research where a non history person would enjoy the information.
socraticgadfly's review
5.0
A good explication of the evolution of Lincoln's thought, and the hardening of Taney's, as the nation lurched toward Civil War, including showing how Taney was not only a strict constructionist on the Constitution, but arguably an early "originalist."
evamadera1's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this book, especially because the topics/events discussed coincided with the chapter I read in my American Constitutional History book. The writing is very readable without resorting to dumbing down history. Simon covers a vast range of topics in a neatly concise mannar.
I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about Chief Justice Taney and how he ruled as chief justice. However, I wish more of the book had been spent on the "battle" between Lincoln and Taney. Seeing as how that's the title of the book, I expected more time to be spent on those years. Rather, Simon spends several chapters alternating back and forth between Lincoln and Taney giving brief biographies of both men and occasionally mentioning where they overlapped. That's the main reason that this book got four stars instead of 5.
I may come back and edit/expand upon this review once I complete the required book review.
I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about Chief Justice Taney and how he ruled as chief justice. However, I wish more of the book had been spent on the "battle" between Lincoln and Taney. Seeing as how that's the title of the book, I expected more time to be spent on those years. Rather, Simon spends several chapters alternating back and forth between Lincoln and Taney giving brief biographies of both men and occasionally mentioning where they overlapped. That's the main reason that this book got four stars instead of 5.
I may come back and edit/expand upon this review once I complete the required book review.
ericwelch's review against another edition
5.0
revised 8/21/11
Lincoln and Taney had a lot in common. Both abhorred slavery. Taney (pronounced tawney) freed his slaves early on. Both were ungainly, tall men, who wore ill-fitting clothes. The similarity ended there, for they had decidedly differing views on the future of slavery, secession, and presidential war powers. Taney opposed Lincoln for his suspension of many constitutional civil liberties (sounds like Bush, except that Bush had a Supreme Court in his pocket.) The first third or so of the book provides a welcome and succinct background to the confrontation between Lincoln and Taney: the Missouri Compromise, Dred Scott, the Fugitive Slave Act. (see David Herbert Donald's masterful biography of Charles Sumner for detail on the physical assault on Sumner on the Senate floor.)
It's truly ironic that a man like Taney who had so vigorously defended civil rights, freedom of speech and had attacked slavery as immoral (see his defense of the Methodist minister Gruber who was indicted for supposed insurrectionist speech) has become so vilified and associated with the slavery and the fundamental causes of the Civil War. But his thoughts in Dred Scott were anticipated years earlier in an opinion he filed as Attorney General under Andrew Jackson. He argued that from a constitutional standpoint,blacks were not entitled to any of the rights of free white men, even if they had been freed. He was a strong adherent to the constitutional principle of states' rights as it pertained to slavery, arguing that the framers had clearly delineated slavery rights in the Constitution. His decision in the Charles River Bridge case was considered seminal in attacking monopolies and freeing up competition that laid the groundwork for western and economic expansion.
Issues that presaged the Civil War are clearly delineated and (unfortunately) reminiscent of contemporary language, if directed elsewhere.. The verbal assaults related to the states' rights to maintain and regulate slavery were supported by many northern states including Connecticut and New York, who argued that interference by abolitionist societies was both "improper and dangerous," and condemned "abolitionist agitation." Illinois adopted similar resolutions, even suggesting that slavery could not be eliminated in the District of Columbia. The resolutions passed 72-6. Lincoln was one of the six, but his explanation -- held back from publication until several bills he wanted passed moved through the legislature -- was measured at best not disagreeing with the right of states to slavery and validating the view that while slavery was bad policy and wrong, the abolitionists' action exacerbated the situation. (Reminds me so much of the complaints against Vietnam antiwar demonstrations.) Again, Taney's and Lincoln's positions on slavery were identical: slavery was evil but the right to slavery was guaranteed to the states by the Constitution.
Lincoln was a good advocate and made no distinctions in clients for political reasons. He defended a slave who had lived in (free) Illinois for several years and claimed her freedom (Bailey v Cromwell in which he was successful). Yet he also defended Robert Matson in a famous case (Matson v Rutherford) Matson lived in Kentucky, a slave state, but owned farm land in Illinois. He would annually bring slaves into Illinois to work his land, each year bringing a different group of slaves so as not to run a foul of the Illinois "black laws" which were enacted to prevent fugitive slaves from settling in Illinois. They basically endorsed the right of "transit," i.e. that slaves could be transited through the free states without fear that slaves might be judged as free. One of Matson's slaves escaped and he sued for the return of the slave claiming that his property was protected under the transit laws. Lincoln never applied his own morality to his understanding of the law. Neither did Taney.
By the 1850's there was pressure from abolitionists to resolve the slavery issue in the court. After all, the justices were not elected and would presumably fall back on the Constitution and justice. Well, the former, perhaps. In 1851, in Strader v Graham, those paying attention might have wanted to reconsider that strategy. Graham, a Kentucky slave owner, would send three slaves into Ohio to promote their musical skills. Ohio was a free state and Strader argued that made the slaves free under the Northwest Ordinance. Had the justices ruled the slave provisions of the NW Ordinance unconstitutional, the Civil War might have occurred early. The Taney court unanimously opted to ignore the issues related to the NW Ordinance. Instead, they ruled, that since the slaves had returned voluntarily to Kentucky, their status as slaves was enforced by Kentucky law under the U.S. Constitution. The fact that they might have become free in Ohio was irrelevant.
Taney and Lincoln were at opposite ends of the spectrum during the Civil War with Taney vehemently opposed to Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and other civil liberties. "1. . . . the president [...:] cannot suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, nor authorize a military officer to do it. 2. . . . a military officer has no right to arrest and detain a person not subject to the rules and articles of war [...:] except in aid of the judicial authority, and subject to its control." Lincoln simply ignored the ruling. Deja vue anyone?
This will be a good book for my students to read. Descriptions of important cases are lucid yet brief. I should have remembered more of the details of the Charles River Bridge case when discussing Kelo v New London. Again, another example of the justices having to decide between two competing constitutional values. In Charles, the importance of contracts (supported by the Whigs) and that of the common good (the Jacksonian Democrats.) This is another good example of the illness of a justice affecting the outcome. Had the justice not become ill and been prevented from hearing the case, it would have been decided before Taney became Chief Justice. The other big one I remember is Vinson dying which permitted the appointment of Earl Warren who then set about convincing his colleagues that the country needed a strong unanimous decision in Brown v Board of Ed in 1954. Had Vinson not died, the outcome would have been very different.
Lincoln and Taney had a lot in common. Both abhorred slavery. Taney (pronounced tawney) freed his slaves early on. Both were ungainly, tall men, who wore ill-fitting clothes. The similarity ended there, for they had decidedly differing views on the future of slavery, secession, and presidential war powers. Taney opposed Lincoln for his suspension of many constitutional civil liberties (sounds like Bush, except that Bush had a Supreme Court in his pocket.) The first third or so of the book provides a welcome and succinct background to the confrontation between Lincoln and Taney: the Missouri Compromise, Dred Scott, the Fugitive Slave Act. (see David Herbert Donald's masterful biography of Charles Sumner for detail on the physical assault on Sumner on the Senate floor.)
It's truly ironic that a man like Taney who had so vigorously defended civil rights, freedom of speech and had attacked slavery as immoral (see his defense of the Methodist minister Gruber who was indicted for supposed insurrectionist speech) has become so vilified and associated with the slavery and the fundamental causes of the Civil War. But his thoughts in Dred Scott were anticipated years earlier in an opinion he filed as Attorney General under Andrew Jackson. He argued that from a constitutional standpoint,blacks were not entitled to any of the rights of free white men, even if they had been freed. He was a strong adherent to the constitutional principle of states' rights as it pertained to slavery, arguing that the framers had clearly delineated slavery rights in the Constitution. His decision in the Charles River Bridge case was considered seminal in attacking monopolies and freeing up competition that laid the groundwork for western and economic expansion.
Issues that presaged the Civil War are clearly delineated and (unfortunately) reminiscent of contemporary language, if directed elsewhere.. The verbal assaults related to the states' rights to maintain and regulate slavery were supported by many northern states including Connecticut and New York, who argued that interference by abolitionist societies was both "improper and dangerous," and condemned "abolitionist agitation." Illinois adopted similar resolutions, even suggesting that slavery could not be eliminated in the District of Columbia. The resolutions passed 72-6. Lincoln was one of the six, but his explanation -- held back from publication until several bills he wanted passed moved through the legislature -- was measured at best not disagreeing with the right of states to slavery and validating the view that while slavery was bad policy and wrong, the abolitionists' action exacerbated the situation. (Reminds me so much of the complaints against Vietnam antiwar demonstrations.) Again, Taney's and Lincoln's positions on slavery were identical: slavery was evil but the right to slavery was guaranteed to the states by the Constitution.
Lincoln was a good advocate and made no distinctions in clients for political reasons. He defended a slave who had lived in (free) Illinois for several years and claimed her freedom (Bailey v Cromwell in which he was successful). Yet he also defended Robert Matson in a famous case (Matson v Rutherford) Matson lived in Kentucky, a slave state, but owned farm land in Illinois. He would annually bring slaves into Illinois to work his land, each year bringing a different group of slaves so as not to run a foul of the Illinois "black laws" which were enacted to prevent fugitive slaves from settling in Illinois. They basically endorsed the right of "transit," i.e. that slaves could be transited through the free states without fear that slaves might be judged as free. One of Matson's slaves escaped and he sued for the return of the slave claiming that his property was protected under the transit laws. Lincoln never applied his own morality to his understanding of the law. Neither did Taney.
By the 1850's there was pressure from abolitionists to resolve the slavery issue in the court. After all, the justices were not elected and would presumably fall back on the Constitution and justice. Well, the former, perhaps. In 1851, in Strader v Graham, those paying attention might have wanted to reconsider that strategy. Graham, a Kentucky slave owner, would send three slaves into Ohio to promote their musical skills. Ohio was a free state and Strader argued that made the slaves free under the Northwest Ordinance. Had the justices ruled the slave provisions of the NW Ordinance unconstitutional, the Civil War might have occurred early. The Taney court unanimously opted to ignore the issues related to the NW Ordinance. Instead, they ruled, that since the slaves had returned voluntarily to Kentucky, their status as slaves was enforced by Kentucky law under the U.S. Constitution. The fact that they might have become free in Ohio was irrelevant.
Taney and Lincoln were at opposite ends of the spectrum during the Civil War with Taney vehemently opposed to Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and other civil liberties. "1. . . . the president [...:] cannot suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, nor authorize a military officer to do it. 2. . . . a military officer has no right to arrest and detain a person not subject to the rules and articles of war [...:] except in aid of the judicial authority, and subject to its control." Lincoln simply ignored the ruling. Deja vue anyone?
This will be a good book for my students to read. Descriptions of important cases are lucid yet brief. I should have remembered more of the details of the Charles River Bridge case when discussing Kelo v New London. Again, another example of the justices having to decide between two competing constitutional values. In Charles, the importance of contracts (supported by the Whigs) and that of the common good (the Jacksonian Democrats.) This is another good example of the illness of a justice affecting the outcome. Had the justice not become ill and been prevented from hearing the case, it would have been decided before Taney became Chief Justice. The other big one I remember is Vinson dying which permitted the appointment of Earl Warren who then set about convincing his colleagues that the country needed a strong unanimous decision in Brown v Board of Ed in 1954. Had Vinson not died, the outcome would have been very different.
skjam's review
3.0
Those of us with a cursory knowledge of American history, like myself, have heard of the Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney opined that the black man had no rights that the white man was bound to honor. An unjust decision that was swept into the dustbin of history with the outcome of the American Civil War, along with Justice Taney himself. But as with many pieces of history, there’s a lot more to be learned.
This book focuses on a compare and contrast of Abraham Lincoln and Roger Taney, specifically the areas where their political and philosophical ideas clashed. The Lincoln material is pretty standard; if you’ve ever read a good Abraham Lincoln biography, there’s nothing new here.
So let’s take a look at Taney. He was born in Maryland in 1777, while the American Revolution was still in progress. After success as a trial lawyer, showcasing his legal knowledge and reasoning ability, Mr. Taney served as a state legislator. During this time period, Taney was known for being anti-slavery, as he believed the practice to be immoral. He freed his own slaves, and encouraged others to free theirs where economically possible.
However, Taney was a proponent of “gradualism”, the position of moderates in the South. The idea was that as new ways to manage agriculture were found, the economic necessity to employ slave labor would lessen, and it would be more possible to free the enslaved without going broke. Moral suasion would do the rest, and slavery would gradually vanish.
The more radical abolitionists, on the other hand, felt that the moral evil of slavery was such that it was best to eliminate the practice as quickly and totally as possible, even if this caused economic disaster for those areas that depended on slave labor. Naturally, this viewpoint was much more popular in the Northern states, where slavery was much less economically necessary and several states had already banned slave labor.
Politically, Mr. Taney was allied with the Anti-Federalist movement, which distrusted centralized government and wanted to keep as much power as possible at the state or even local level. While Attorney General for Maryland, he fought hard for the populist candidate, Andrew Jackson. Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams in a rare House of Representatives decision, but succeeded on a second try.
President Jackson did not forget Taney’s service, and soon appointed him as Attorney General of the United States. The big public legal question of the time was the power of the Bank of the United States. This central government bank had been the brainchild of Alexander Hamilton, who thought it necessary to maintain the young country’s economic stability and provide the federal government the ability to meet its fiscal responsibilities.
Jackson and his allies felt this centralized fiscal power far too much in the hands of the central government, and it did not help that the Bank had become something of a fiefdom under its president Nicholas Biddle. They launched repeated attacks against the Bank, with Taney providing the Constitutional arguments. When the then Secretary of the Treasury balked at carrying out an order to withdraw all federal funds from the Bank, President Jackson fired the man and put Taney in his place.
The Bank’s allies in Congress refused to confirm Taney’s nomination at Treasury, and then also denied him a nomination for Supreme Court Justice. But the next mid-term election went Jackson’s way, and a more compliant Congress accepted Taney’s nomination for Chief Justice.
As a Supreme Court Chief Justice, Roger Taney was an “originalist” who put much more emphasis on “what did the Founders intend at the time they wrote the Constitution?” than on “given changing circumstances, what interpretation of the Constitution produces the most just outcome?” Like many originalists, Chief Justice Taney tended to rely on the Founders whose words supported his preferred outcome, while ignoring those that did not (like Alexander Hamilton most of the time.)
With his distrust of centralized government power, Taney on average ruled to limit expansion of federal dominion. And as he was very good at clearly presenting the logic and making restrained, narrowly defined judgments, this worked well for many years. Taney earned a reputation for being an excellent jurist.
But as the decades passed, slavery became much more of a pressing issue. The abolitionist view had gained much more credence in the North and West, while in the South, those in power were pro-slavery hardliners, who not only wanted to preserve their “peculiar institution” but expand it. Due to the country’s development pattern, the South had had a disproportionate influence on the Supreme Court and Congress, but this was waning as more “free” states joined the Union. Taney became more and more disgruntled with Yankees who sat on a moral high horse when it came to Southerners and slavery. He feared a civil war.
Then came the Dred Scott case. To vastly simplify the case, Mr. Scott was a slave who had been taken north to a free state, and under that place’s laws had become free. After spending some time as a free man there and in a free territory, Dred Scott voluntarily returned to his home state–but under their laws he was still a slave, a piece of property. He was filing to have his freedom recognized.
Chief Justice Taney saw an opportunity to heal the wounds of the nation and head off war by settling the question of slavery once and for all. Now, had he followed his usual custom and ruled on the narrow question of “is Dred Scott still a slave?” Taney could have relied on ample precedent and the Tenth Amendment to say “yes.” It would have been an unjust outcome, but not particularly controversial.
But instead Roger B. Taney created a long decision which selectively cited various Founders and colonial/early state laws to claim that the Founding Fathers had never intended for black people to have any rights under the United States Constitution, and therefore, black people did not in fact have any Constitutional rights and were hereby prohibited from bringing suit in Federal court. (Any rights granted by individual states ended at the state’s borders.)
Much to Taney’s surprise, this decision was vastly unpopular outside the slave states, seen as unjust, and only inflamed passions. Another Supreme Court Justice actually resigned in protest! One of the politicians energized by the decision was Abraham Lincoln, who mistakenly believed it was part of a conspiracy to force slavery to be legal in all parts of the United States.
Lincoln was in fact a moderate on slavery by comparison to the fire-breathing Radical Republicans, but by the time he ran for president, the slave states would not accept anything but a full-throated support for slavery from a potential president. The Democrats split their votes between their own moderate and a pro-slavery candidate, and so Lincoln won. The Southern states began to secede.
Chief Justice Taney believed that a state was constitutionally allowed to peacefully secede from the Union, while Lincoln did not. The point never got to court, as the Confederate Army fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, turning the secession into a civil war.
President Lincoln was faced with many difficult decisions during the Civil War, some of which he attempted to solve with his war powers. Sometimes he overstepped, as with suspending habeus corpus for civilians accused of aiding the enemy. The now elderly and ailing Taney tried to rein in what he saw as abuse of power with his decisions. The Chief Justice died in October of 1864, with the great conflict he’d tried to stave off still raging. Salaries for Supreme Court justices were actually quite low, and he died in poverty, his female heirs having to find jobs despite their own advanced age.
President Lincoln brought the Civil War to a successful conclusion, but did not survive to win the peace.
This book was interesting because of its long and in-depth look at one of the people usually remembered only for his one huge mistake, winding up in the “villain” column of history. There are no pictures, but decent endnotes and a full index. I found the writing readable, but mostly adequate.
Recommended for history buffs, particularly those interested in the lead up to the American Civil War, and those who want to know more about the Supreme Court and how it functioned.
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