[nolu chan]

SOURCE: Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor, 1965, pp. 426-29.

After a war the history books are written by the victors. To say that the Dred Scott decision has not been given fair treatment would be a miracle of understatement. It has even been called the cause of the Civil War.

On the place of the Dred Scott decision in the history of the times, no one has thrown greater illumination than Albert J. Beveridge, lawyer, author, prominent liberal Republican, and for many years United States Senator from Indiana.

Beveridge's Life of John Marshall is one of the truly great American biographies. He himself considered it the most sat­isfying achievement of his extraordinarily active and successful career. So well was it received that scholars and publishers urged him to undertake a life of Chief Justice Taney. His early schooling, however, had left him prejudiced against Taney, and he chose instead to do a life of Lincoln.

In his Abraham Lincoln, Beveridge devoted a long chapter to the Dred Scott case, and with his usual meticulous care he made a painstaking study of letters, newspapers, and other sources re­lating to it. His reaction appears in the chapter itself and is further described by his biographer, Claude G. Bowers, in Bever­idge and the Progressive Era (1932):

"Very quickly under his investigation the charge of 'conspir­acy,' born of the delay of the court, was relegated to the junk heap of political canards... Quite as astonishing was the dis­covery that among the great mass of the people, and even among the politicians, there had been no excitement. Poring over hundreds of the letters exchanged during 1857, he failed to find more than an occasional mild mention of the decision. A careful combing of the letters of John P. Hale, [1] in possession of the New Hampshire Historical Society, failed to disclose any popu­lar interest at all. 'I have gone through them,' he wrote, 'and... no mention is made of the Dred Scott decision during the whole of 1857, except one request immediately after the decision was handed down, from a Republican club for Hale... to make them a speech about it. This is precisely what the letters to Trumbull [2] show; from the time the decision was given down to the end of 1857 only one person that wrote to Trumbull made mention of the decision; and that was done casually and inci­dentally in the course of a long letter on political sub­jects

In his Dred Scott chapter, Beveridge says: "Indeed in all pri­vate political correspondence, North and South, during those months, plenty is said about Kansas, the Mormons, public lands, hard times; but practically nothing about the judicial pro­nouncement which radical newspapers, preachers, and politi­cians were loudly declaring had prepared the way to spread slav­ery over the whole land, and therefore had convulsed with rage the people of the North." Beveridge believed, according to Bow­ers, that "the biggest historical discovery he had made was that there had been no popular excitement over the decision for al­most a year, and until it was made the object of a campaign attack."

It was not until March 1858, a year after the decision, that Senator Seward of New York made his formal "conspiracy" charge in the Senate. Then in his "House Divided" speech in June 1858, Lincoln made a humorous and far more telling charge to the same general effect. The Dred Scott case and its legal consequences became a leading issue in the Lincoln-Douglas de­bates and in the i860 presidential election. It was the 1860 elec­tion, more than anything else, that so firmly riveted the decision into the public mind. The attack was for political effect, but so vicious that the mere name of the case became a slur. The Re­publican victory fortified this attitude and blended it into the hatreds of the Civil War.

At first, Taney took a philosophic view of the attacks. On August 29, 1857, he wrote ex-President Pierce that "At my time of life when my end must be near, I should have rejoiced to find that the irritating strifes of this world were over, and that I was about to depart in peace with all men and all men in peace with me. Yet perhaps it is best as it is. The mind is less apt to feel the torpor of age, when it is thus forced into action by public duties. And I have an abiding confidence that this act of my judicial life will stand the test of time and the sober judgment of the coun­try..." His confidence was not to be justified, and Seward's insinuations infuriated him, as did the repeated accusations of ignorance and bias.

Pride was strong in Taney. He was devoid of arrogance but he set a high value on his integrity. Once again he took up his pen. Pleading lack of time in the preparation of his Dred Scott opin­ion, he prepared a voluminous supplement justifying his conclu­sions on the issue of Negro citizenship. This he left with Samuel Tyler who in due course published it as an appendix to his Mem­oir of Roger Brooke Taney. Although this buttresses the cita­tion of authority in the original opinion, its chief significance is the light it throws on Taney himself. He was unwilling to en­gage in public controversy, but when he was close to the bursting point writing was his safety valve.

The most incisive comment on the Dred Scott case is that of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. "It is unfortunate," he said, "that the estimate of Chief Justice Taney's judicial labors should have been so largely influenced by the opinion which he delivered in the case of Dred Scott... the charge which formed part of the violent and malignant attack upon the de­cision, that it was the result of a conspiracy or political bargain, had not the slightest foundation... Whatever may be said of the merits of the case... there can be no doubt of the in­tegrity of the members of the Court and of the sincerity of the action of the Chief Justice, who thought he was rendering a national service. In looking at the background of the decision, it is apparent that there was a fundamental error in the supposi­tion that the imperious question which underlay the controversy could be put at rest by a judicial pronouncement..."

[1] Abolitionist Senator from New Hampshire.

[2] United States Senator from Illinois, also a prominent abolitionist, although more moderate than Hale.

[4CJ]

"Indeed in all pri­vate political correspondence, North and South, during those months, plenty is said about Kansas, the Mormons, public lands, hard times; but practically nothing about the judicial pro­nouncement which radical newspapers, preachers, and politi­cians were loudly declaring had prepared the way to spread slav­ery over the whole land, and therefore had convulsed with rage the people of the North." Beveridge believed, according to Bow­ers, that "the biggest historical discovery he had made was that there had been no popular excitement over the decision for al­most a year, and until it was made the object of a campaign attack."

Worth repeating - excellent post!

[capitan_refugio]

"Beveridge believed, according to Bow­ers, that 'the biggest historical discovery he had made was that there had been no popular excitement over the decision for al­most a year, and until it was made the object of a campaign attack.'"

A demonstration of shoddy scholarship on Lewis's part. Professor Fehrenbacher documents that, "Meanwhile, a few newspapers had awakened to the potential significance of Dred Scott v. Sandford. The first was the Washington Evening Star, which on February 12 [1856!] declared, 'The public of Washington do not seem to be aware that one of the most important cases brought up for adjudication by the Supreme Court is now being tried before that august tribunal' .... Horace Greeley reported that the Court would soon decide 'a most important case, involving the validity (in its day) of the Missouri restriction.'"

Fehrenbacher further shows that "By Christmas 1856, Dred Scott's name was probably familiar to most Americans who followed the course of national affairs. Major newspapers throughout the country carried summaries of the four-day reargument." The ramifications of the decision were important enough that at least two members of the Court (Catron and Grier) "tipped off" doughface President-elect Buchanan as to the verdict prior to his inauguration speech. DS was probably the most anticipated decision of the Supreme Court up to that time.

Fehrenbacher notes in Chapter 18, "The Judges Judged," that "The first wave of public comment on the Dred Scott Decision was in response to the newspaper summaries of the oral opinions delivered on March 6 and 7, 1857.... Horace Greeley's New York Tribune set the pace with editorials almost every day denouncing this 'atrocious,' this 'wicked,' this 'abominable' judgement, which was no better than what might be obtained in any 'Washington bar-room' - denouncing the 'cunning chief' who collation of false statements and shallow sophistries' reavealed a 'detestable hypocrisy' and a 'mean and skulking cowardice'.... The Chicago Democrat-Press "expressed 'a feeling of shame and loathing' for 'this once illustrious tribunal, toiling meekly and patiently this dirty job.'; and the Chicago Tribune, which declared: 'We scarcely know how to express our detestation of its inhuman dicta, or to fathom the wicked consequences which may flow from it.'" Interestingly, in footnotes Fehrenbacher remarks, "For extensive quotations from press opinion, see Albert J. Beveridge..."

Fehrenbacher then notes, "A new surge of public interest in Dred Scott's case during late May and early June, 1857, resulted from news of his manumission and the curious circumstance surrounding it, but also from the publication of the official version of the decision in Howards Report's." "Most remarkable, however, was the extensive newspaper coverage in a day when only a few major journals exceeded four pages." "Montgomery Blair heard John McLean's opinion read from a pulpit on the first Sunday after it was read in court. One of the most notable performances was a series of sermons denouncing slavery and the Supreme Court by George B. Cheever of the Church of the Puritans in new York City." The Congregationalist weekly, the Independent called the decision a "vain attempt to change the law by power of Judges who have achieved only their own infamy." The decision was a "deliberate, willful perversion, for a particular purpose," the paper said. "If the people obey this decision, they disobey God."

The statement that the politicians did not take note of the DS decision for some time is also incorrect and specious. Comment concerning the case from the Congress wasn't going to happen until the Congress was back in session - December 1857, if I am not mistaken. But notables such as Thomas Hart Benton, "... smelling far too much essence of Calhoun in Taney's opinion, turned aside [from his Debates in Congress] to write 'with incredible speed' a book of 130 pages (plus a 62-page appendix'" about the failings of the decision.

So Walker Lewis is just wrong. If for no other reason, however, Lewis's scholarship should be questioned for this boner: "Slavery violated [Taney's] conscience. His opposition to abolition was not because he wished to perpetuate slavery but because he believed abolitionists misguided."