in important and intricate cases, and confronted the leaders of the Maryland bar. He was a candidate for the house of delegates on the Federalist ticket in 1803, but was defeated. On 7 Jan., 1806, he married Anne Phebe Charlton Key, sister of Francis Scott Key, who had been his fellow law-student. In 1811 he defended Gen. James Wilkinson on his trial before a court-martial, thereby sharing the odium that then attached to that officer, yet refusing to take a fee for his services. During the war with Great Britain he led the wing of the Federal party that upheld the policy of the government, and was a candidate for congress, failing of election by a few votes. He was sent to the state senate in 1816, and drew up many of the bills that were passed during his term of service. He endured the disapprobation of his neighbors by courageously appearing in 1819 in defence of Jacob Gruber, a Methodist minister from Pennsylvania, who in a camp-meeting had condemned slavery in bitter language, and who was indicted as an inciter of insurrection among the negroes. In his opening argument Taney declared of slavery that “while it continues, it is a blot on our national character.” In 1821 he was counsel in the important case of Brown vs. Kennedy, which involved the question of the original proprietary title to lands that had been reclaimed from the navigable waters of Maryland, and in the following year in one connected with the law of charitable trusts. He removed in 1823 to Baltimore, where the death of William Pinkney, the retirement of Luther Martin, and the decease of other eminent lawyers left him at the head of the bar until William Wirt came in 1829 to divide with him that distinction. With many other Federals of the south, Taney passed over into the Democratic party, and supported the candidacy of Andrew Jackson for the presidency in 1824. In 1826 he argued the case of Ringgold vs. Ringgold, in which the doctrine of trusts was discussed, and, with Wirt, represented the state of Maryland in the Lord Baltimore case before the U. S. supreme court. In 1827 he was appointed attorney-general of Maryland, and on 27 Dec., 1831, he succeeded John M. Berrien as attorney-general of the United States. He became President Jackson's most trusted counsellor, and encouraged and sustained him in his determination to remove the government deposits from the United States bank. There were only two members of the cabinet that approved this action, and when William J. Duane hesitated to carry out the president's decree he was removed and Taney was appointed secretary of the treasury. He entered upon the duties of the office on 24 Sept., 1833, and two days afterward issued the order for the removal of the deposits on 1 Oct. The bank therefore called in its loans and refused accommodation, locking up a large part of the currency, and producing a financial stringency that affected all classes, for which the president was held responsible by the opposition. Sec. Taney was a special object of vituperation and scorn, because he was supposed to have been the “pliant instrument” of the president in his arbitrary purpose from motives of selfish ambition. His nomination to the office was sent to the senate for confirmation on 23 June, 1834, having been withheld till near the close of the session, which, owing to the subject most prominently brought up in debate, has been known as the “panic session.” On 24 June the hostile majority rejected the appointment, it being the first time that a president's selection of a cabinet officer had not been confirmed. On the following day Mr. Taney sent in his resignation, which was accepted by President Jackson in a letter expressing gratitude for his patriotic and disinterested aid during the crisis. In January, 1835, on the retirement of Gabriel Duval, associate justice of the U. S. supreme court, President Jackson named Mr. Taney for the vacant judgeship; but the senate refused to ratify the nomination. During the ensuing year the political complexion of the senate was changed, and when, after the death of John Marshall, the president, on 26 Dec., 1835, nominated Mr. Taney to be chief justice of the United States, he was confirmed on 15 March, 1836, by 29 votes against 15, notwithstanding the denunciations of Henry Clay and other political opponents. He took his seat on the bench as circuit judge at Baltimore in April, beginning his functions by abolishing the custom of giving preliminary instructions to the grand jury. In January, 1837, he presided over the full bench.
His first decisions showed divergence between his view of the constitution and that of his predecessor, who had been more and more drawn to allow a wide scope to the powers of congress and to limit the sphere of state sovereignty. In the case of the City of New York vs. Miln, Chief-Justice Taney and the majority of the court decided that an act of the legislature of New York requiring masters of vessels to make reports of passengers on arriving was a police regulation that did not interfere with the power of congress to regulate foreign commerce. In the case of Briscoe vs. the Bank of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the court reversed the decision of Marshall, who held that the act establishing the bank was a violation of the provision of the constitution that restrains states from emitting bills of credit. In the Charles-river-bridge suit he delivered a judgment under which state legislatures were free to authorize bridges, railroads, and similar improvements without regard to implied contracts in former grants and monopolies. These decisions almost impelled Justice Joseph Story to resign, and caused Chancellor James Kent to say that he had lost confidence in the constitutional guardianship of the supreme court. In the case of disputed boundaries between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the chief justice, dissenting from the judgment of the court, held that the Federal tribunal had no power to decide questions of political jurisdiction between sovereign states. In 1839 he delivered the opinion in the case of the Bank of Augusta vs. Earle, in which he laid down the principle that corporations chartered in one state may make contracts in others by the comity of nations. The claim of the proprietors of East Jersey to the oyster-fisheries in Raritan river was disallowed on the ground that fishery rights had passed with the powers of government into the hands of the state. In the case of Prigg vs. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the chief justice for the first time pronounced a state law unconstitutional. Prigg, as
