Address of Mr. S. Teackle Wallis, Chairman of the Committee, with the Reply of His Excellency, Governor Whyte, Delivered in the Senate Chamber, at Annapolis, At the Unveiling of the Statue of Chief Justice Taney, December 10th, 1872
Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1872. First Edition. Printed wraps. Octavo. 18 pages.
The keynote address by Wallis and the response by Maryland Governor Whyte on the unveiling of the statue of Roger Brooke Taney in front of the State House in 1872. Included a single sheet from the publisher dated December 1872 announcing Samuel Tyler's book "A Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney."
Severn Teackle Wallis was a newly elected member of the Maryland House of Delegates when the Civil War broke out in 1861. His refusal to swear a loyalty oath to the Union got him arrested and held without formal charges at Fort McHenry from September 1861 to November 1862.
Roger Brooke Taney was a prominent Maryland lawyer who had served as U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of the Treasury under Andrew Jackson. As the fifth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Taney issued the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case in 1857, which denied citizenship to African Americans, whether slaves or freemen, and found the Missouri Compromise of 1820 unconstitutional.
Taney had clashed with President Lincoln at the beginning of the Civil War over what Taney viewed as Lincoln's abuse of power in jailing Southern sympathizers in the North without benefit of habeas corpus. Because of that it's easy to see why Mr. Wallis would be a fan of Justice Taney.
Wallis here eulogizes Taney as "the worshipper and champion of free institutions," but acknowledges he died "traduced and ostracized" due to the Dred Scott decision. Both Wallis and Governor Whyte anticipate a rehabilitation of Taney's historical standing and consider the monument a proper first step.
The Taney statue was removed from the State House grounds to offsite storage in 2017, 145 years after being formally delivered to the state on the occasion commemorated by the remarks published in this pamphlet.
Bound in salmon-colored wraps over a sewn binding. A few faint soil smudges and some slight extremity wear, else fine. Publisher's advertising leaf has two very short closed tears at top edge.
Item #1724
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