Hmmmmmm....
I was under the impression that a number of southern justices resigned to join the confederacy, and that while Taney didn't resign he was quite sympathetic.
Now I see that only Alabaman John Campbell actually resigned, and served in the Confederate government.
Others like Georgian James Wayne and Tennessean John Catron remained on the Court.
Wayne's son was a Confederate general.
In the 1863 Prize Cases, Taney and Catron opposed President Lincoln, while Wayne was the deciding vote authorizing Lincoln's blockade of southern ports.
Bottom line: seems to me, while Taney opposed secession in theory, in practice, he did everything he could to block Lincoln from defeating the Confederacy.
Do you agree?
In part. Let me begin by saying I'm no Civil War expert, and my knowledge of Taney comes from paper I had to do on him years ago in college, dealing with Scott v. Sanford. But I learned a lot more about him in the course of my research.
To answer your question, I don't think Taney supported the Southern acts of secession. Taney first and foremost believed what he said in Dred Scott. He did not believe blacks were citizens or that they ever could be citizens. This was a belief he had been expressing back when he was in Andrew Jackson's cabinet. He believed slavery was legal and the government had no place interfering with it. He also had a narrow view of the Constitution and his opposition to Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus was due to that and not due to any sympathy with the Southern cause. He voted in the minority in the Prize Cases because Lincoln had not asked Congress to recognize the existence of the rebellion prior to the establishment of the blockade. It may appear that Taney acted in the manner he did out of loyalty to the South but that would be wrong. He acted as he did out of loyalty to his view of the Constitution. An odd view at times to be sure. But in that he was no different than current justices like Sotomayor or Roberts.