THE CHICAGO LAW TIMES. VOL. II.] OCTOBER, 1888. [No. 4. ROGER B. TANEY. Roger Brooke Taney, fifth Chief-Justice of the United States, was born on the 17th of March, 1777, in Calvert County, in the State of Maryland. His father, Michael Taney, owned a good landed estate, with slaves. His plantation was on the banks of the Patuxent River. The forefathers of Judge Taney, on his father's side, were among the early emigrants to Maryland, and had owned the same estate and lived upon it for many generations. Both of his parents lived to an advanced age. They had four sons and three daughters. Roger B. was the third child and the second son. When not more than eight years old, he was sent, with his elder brother and sister, to a school three miles distant, kept in a log-cabin by a well disposed but ignorant old man, who professed to teach reading, writing and arithmetic as far as the rule of three. They walked every day to and from the school when the weather was good, and when it was unfavorable they staid at home. Their only school books were Dilworth's spelling book and the bible. After leaving this school, he was placed at a grammar school in the county, kept by a man by the name of Hunter, in which the pupils did not exceed twenty. Mr. Hunter was an accomplished classical scholar, and his school had a high reputation. Here Roger commenced studying the Latin language. He was now under the instruction of private tutors for nearly three years, at the end of which time he was sent to Dickinson College, Carlisle, being then but little more than fifteen years of age. His college life was, he afterward said, taken altogether, a pleasant one. He studied closely, was always well prepared in his lessons, and while he gladly joined his companions in their athletic sports and amusements, he found time to read a great deal beyond the books he was required to study. At the close of his college course he was elected by the Society of BellesLettres, to which he belonged, to deliver the valedictory. He graduated in the fall of 1795, being scarcely nineteen years of age. He remained at home during the ensuing winter, which was idly spent in the amusements of the country. In the spring of 1796, he went to Annapolis, to read law in the office of Jeremiah T. Chase, who was at that time one of the Judges of the General Court of Maryland. At the same time he attended the sessions of this Court. Every thing he there saw was calculated to excite his ambition. He declined going into society, and associated only with the students. He says afterward in his autobiography, that he thinks he studied too much at this time, and that it would have been better for him if he had occasionally mixed in the society of ladies and of gentlemen older than the students. "My thoughts" he says, "would have been more cheerful, and my mind refreshed for renewed study, and I should have acquired more ease and selfpossession in conversation with men eminent for their talents and position, and learned from them many things which law books do not teach. I suffered much and often from this want of composure and from the consciousness of embarrassment, when I emerged from my seclusion, and came into the social and business world." While his reading in the office of a judge instead of a practicing lawyer, had some advantages, he thinks, upon the whole, it was a disadvantage to him. "It is true it gave me more time for uninterrupted study, but it gave me no instruction in the ordinary routine of practice, nor any information as o the forms and manner of pleading further than I could gather it from the books. In the office of a lawyer in full practice, the attention of the student is daily called to such matters, and he is employed in drawing declarations and pleas, special and general, until the usual forms become familiar to his mind, and he learns by actual practice in the office, the cases in which they should be respectively used, and what averments are material and what are not. The want of this practical knowledge and experience was a serious inconvenience to me. And for some time after I commenced practice, I did not venture to draw the most ordinary form of a declaration or plea without a precedent before me; and, if the cause of action required a declaration varying in any degree from the ordinary money counts, or the defense required a special plea, I found it necessary to examine the principles of pleading which applied to it, and endeavored to find a precedent for a case of precisely that character; nor was it so easy, in that day, for an inexperienced young lawyer to satisfy himself upon a question of special pleading. Chitty had not made his appearance, and you were obliged to look for the rule in Comyn's Digest, or Bacon's Abridgment, or Viner's Abridgment, and the cases to which they referred; and I have sometimes gone back to Lilly's Entries and Doctrina Placitandi in searching for a precedent." While in Annapolis at this time, he became intimate with William Carmichael, whom he afterward speaks of in terms of affectionate regard. Here also he met Luther Martin, Philip Barton Key, John T. Mason, John Johnson, Arthur Shaaff, James Winchester, and afterward with the celebrated William Pinckney. After studying closely in Judge Chase's office for three years, Mr. Taney was, in 1799, admitted to the bar. His first effort was before Recorder Duvall, in the Mayor's Court of Annapolis, in defense of a man indicted for assault and battery; Duvall being also a Judge of the General Court. The following is his own account of his debut on this occasion: "The case turned out to be a very good one for a speech. As almost always happens when a fight takes place in an excited crowd, there was much contradictory testimony, and it was difficult to say whether our client committed the assault or struck in self-defense. I watched the testimony carefully as it was given in, turning in my own mind the use that might be made of it. I took no notes, for my hand shook so that I could not have written a word legibly if my life had depended on it; and when I rose to speak, I was obliged to fold my arms over my breast, pressing them firmly against my body; and my knees trembled under me so much that I was obliged to press my limbs against the table before me to keep me steady on my feet. A verdict in favor of my client hardly consoled me for the timidity I had displayed. This morbid sensibility has, upon many occasions throughout my professional life, given me deep * ** * * |