Existing comment:
Maryland's given us some major embarassments over time. Spiro Agnew, of course, had been governor before he went off to become Nixon's Vice President . He was convicted in 1975 of having accepted bribes throughout most of his political career . But the slave-holding Marylander who helped give us the Civil War was the one in this statue -- Roger Taney -- who, while chief justice of the US Supreme Court, gave us the Dred Scot Decision. On the opposite side of the building is a memorial to Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court associate justice who helped overturn some of Taney's stupidity.
Roger B. Taney
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Roger Brooke Taney (March 17, 1777 – October 12, 1864) was the twelfth United States Attorney General. He also was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864, and was the first Roman Catholic to hold that office.
Taney died during the final months of the American Civil War, on the same day that his home state of Maryland abolished slavery. |