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To: DoodleDawg; FLT-bird
Then why did none of the biographers, or Taney himself, mention it in any of his biographies?

There is no autobiography by Taney. There is a Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, LL.D. by Samuel Tyler. The first edition was published in 1872. I have a copy of the Second Revised and Enlarged Edition published in 1876. Taney did start writing a story of his life in 1854, but never completed it. At the start of Chapter I of Tyler's Memoir, Tyler stated "Written by Mr. Taney himself." Chapter I covers 1777-1801. The chapter begins on page 17 and ends on page 95, where Tyler adds, "Thus far Mr. Taney wrote his own life, but no farther." As Taney's biographical contribution only extended to 1801, that explains why Taney did not mention any event after 1801.

It is not particularly relevant that Taney's biographers did not dwell at length about the purported arrest warrant. The warrant was never even alleged to have been served upon Taney, so all he could contribute is hearsay about an unseen warrant. Biographer Tyler did reference the matter at page 427: "But the Chief Justice, with the weight of eighty-four years upon him, as he left the house of his son-in-law, Mr. Campbell, remarked that it was likely he should be imprisoned in Fort McHenry before night...."

See also Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861, by George William Brown, Chief Judge of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore, and Mayor of the City in 1861, page 90:

After the court had adjourned, I went up to the bench and thanked Judge Taney for thus upholding, in its integrity, the writ of habeas corpus. He replied, "Mr. Brown, I am an old man, a very old man" (he had completed his eighty-fourth year), "but perhaps I was preserved for this occasion." I replied, "Sir, I thank God that you were."

He then told me that he knew that his own imprisonment had been a matter of consultation, but that the danger had passed, and he warned me, from information he had received, that my time would come.

The charges against Merryman were discovered to be unfounded and he was soon discharged by military authority.

However, the warrant is mentioned by biographers of Lincoln, who is alleged to have signed the warrant.

It was finally determined to place the order of arrest in the hands of the United States Marshal of the District of Columbia. This was done by the president with instruction by him to use the marshal’s own discretion about making the arrest unless he should receive further orders from Mr. Lincoln. This writ was never executed, and the marshal never regretted the discretionary power delegated to him in the exercise of his official duty.1338

- - - - - - - - - -

1338 Ward Hill Lamon, the author of this manuscript, was the U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia. He was appointed for a four year term on July 26, 1861. Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln's "Particular Friend," pg. 216.

Ward Hill Lamon, The Life of Abraham Lincoln as President, A personal account by Lincoln's Bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon, Edited by Bob O'Connor, 2011, pg. 341.

The matter is also referenced in the memoir of a contemporary U.S. Supreme Court justice.

I cannot take leave of this case [wp - Dred Scott] and its various incidents, without expressing my regret that Chief Justice Taney did not finish the autobiography which he began at Old Point Comfort, when he was in the seventy-eighth year of his age. The fragment of his own life which he then wrote, and which has been used in Mr. Tyler's memoir of him published at Baltimore in 1872, is one of the most beautiful pieces of that kind of writing that I know of in the English language. The late Chief Justice was master of a singularly graceful and easy style, perfectly perspicuous and correct; and when he sat down in his old age, during a vacation at the sea-shore, to write an account of his own life, he commenced a work which, if he had completed it, would have been a most valuable addition to our political, juridical, and personal literature. He had lived and acted in scenes of great importance in our history, had the means of throwing much light upon the motives and characters of the distinguished persons with whom he had been associated in public life, and as Chief Justice of the United States for a period of more than thirty years, beginning with the administration of General Jackson and coming down to the early years of our civil war, he conld have told of much that it would have been very desirable to know, and he would have told it in a charming way. What prevented his completion of the work which he had so felicitously begun, we are not informed. Nor can I pass from the mention of his name, without a tribute of respect to his public and private virtues. He was indeed a great magistrate, and a man of singular purity of life and character. That there should have been one mistake [wp - Dred Scott opinion] in a judicial career so long, so exalted, and so useful, is only a proof of the imperfection of our nature. The reputation of Chief Justice Taney can afford to have any thing known that he ever did, and still leave a great fund of honor and praise to illustrate his name. If he had never done any thing else that was high, heroic, and important, his noble vindication of the writ of habeas corpus, and of the dignity and authority of his office, against a rash minister of state [wp - Lincoln] who, in the pride of a fancied executive power, came near to the commission of a great crime [wp - the arrest of Chief Justice Taney], will command the admiration and gratitude of every lover of constitutional liberty, so long as our institutions shall endure.1

1 I refer to the case of John Merriman, a citizen, who in 1861 was imprisoned in Fort McHenry, near Baltimore, by a military order and in whose case the writ of the Chief Justice of the United States was refused entrance into the fort, upon the excuse, that the President had suspended the writ of habeas corpus.

Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, LL.D. (1879) by George Tichnor Curtis, edited by Benajmin R. Curtis, the son of the Supreme Court justice. George Tichnor Curtis was the elder brother of Justice Curtis. Justice Curtis wrote the famous dissent in the case of Scott v. Sandford. George Tichnor Curtis acted as counsel for Dred Scott on constitutional issues.

103 posted on 01/23/2022 8:57:21 PM PST by woodpusher
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To: woodpusher
There is no autobiography by Taney.

Semantics. There are number of excellent biographies and one memoir of Taney. And not a single one of them mentions the arrest warrant. So either there is a grand conspiracy among Taney biographers to suppress the information or else each biographer analyzed the evidence during the course of their research and none of them found the evidence credible enough to include in their book.

It is not particularly relevant that Taney's biographers did not dwell at length about the purported arrest warrant.

They didn't touch on it at all. Why not? Wouldn't it be an important part of the Ex Parte Merryman narrative?

However, the warrant is mentioned by biographers of Lincoln, who is alleged to have signed the warrant.

The biographer, singular, in question is the same man that is the primary source for the claim - Ward Lamon. His book as been subject to its own scrutiny and has been found wanting.

104 posted on 01/24/2022 3:46:44 AM PST by DoodleDawg
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