I don't have to prove a statement made in a newspaper over 140 years ago. The Chief Justice thought enough of the passage to quote it, when he could have used any of hundreds of other accounts. I am satisfied that Taney was guilty of both poor legal judgment and likely misconduct in the Merryman affair. Rehnquist as much as says it too. Fehrenbacher also said it about Taney in Dred Scott. You may disagree; that is your right. But don't expect me to swallow your pathetic attempts of "proof" or your whining. Neither are persuasive.
Bates kept a somewhat sporadic diary, and its entries during April 1861 give no indication that he was consulted about or participated in Lincoln's decision to suspend the writ of habeas corpus by the proclamation of April 27. Following Lincoln's justification, in his July 4 speech to Congress, for disregarding Taney's Merryman decision, Bates issued an opinion justifying the President's action. It was not a very good opinion. It essentially argued that each of the three branches of the federal government established by the Constitution was coequal with and independent of the other two. The President was thus not subordinate to the judicial branch, and so the latter could not order him, or his subordinates, to free Merryman. This proposition had been refuted by Chief Justice Marshall's opinion in Marbury v. Madison more than half a century earlier. Bates also described the suspension of habeas corpus as a "political" rather than a "judicial" matter and on that ground as well not subject to judicial intervention. The opinion would persuade only those who were already true believers.
William H. Rehnquist, All the Laws But One, p. 44
You do when that statement is demonstrably false. Merryman lived in Cockeysville and Taney lived in Washington. Therefore they were not neighbors.
Now there's a fine appeal to authority.