Likewise contributing to the rehabilitation of Taney was the publication in 1910 of the Catron and Grier letters informing Buchanan that the two dissenting justices had forced the Court majority to undertake a broad decision instead of the narrow one originally planned. As a consequence, much of the blame for the resulting judicial disaster could be shifted from Taney to Curtis and McLean. Frank H. Hodder thought that Curtis was the worst offender of the three, but McLean's notorious presidential ambitions made him the more obvious culprit. In 1927, Beveridge confided to Hodder: "Justice Holmes told me (but this is confidential, and you cannot use it unless you find it out some other way) that the tradition in the Court is that McLean stirred up the whole mess and that Curtis probably would not have peeped if McLean had not ripped and torn around so much and blew off so loudly."
Source: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case, 1978, p. 590
Ferebacher barf alert. Chief Justice Taney's jurisprudence needs no rehabilitation. His decision was the correct one. Personally, Justice Taney considered slavery wrong, and had freed his slaves by 1827. Taney was also the first justice to wear long pants under his robe.
And this is what Chief Justice Rhequist had to say about Chief Justice Taney,
Today, when historians and legal scholars speak of the greatest Justices ever to have served on the Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Justice Taney usually makes the list. I think I would have to agree with that assessment.