The Late Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. 



27 



singular circumstances and influences, Mr. Taney was 

 appointed attorney general of the United States, and thus 

 came into association and friendly relations with one of 

 the most remarkable men ever chosen to the presidency. 

 Without going into particulars, it is clear that his appoint- 

 ment was suggested and brought about through the in- 

 fluence of his friends ; and that he afterwards won the 

 confidence of Jackson. Martin Van Buren did the same 

 thing. And yet these two men, of about equal powers and 

 with some points of resemblance, were utterly unlike each 

 other in the real substratum of character, and they were 

 both utterly unlike the old hero of New Orleans, whose 

 inflexible will appears everywhere as the chief element, 

 the main strength of his nature. 



Every one knows the steps of Taney's advancement ; 

 how President Jackson waged war on the United States 

 bank ; how the bank used its means, its peculiar weapons 

 of offence without scruple or conscience ; how the president 

 resolved on the removal of the United States deposits to 

 the state banks ; how his secretary of the treasury, William 

 J. Duane, refused to make the order to that effect; how 

 Jackson removed him at once and appointed Taney in his 

 stead ; how the latter immediately made the order, appoint- 

 ing certain state banks as the depositories of the public 

 funds ; how this act was justified in the president's message 

 to congress, and criticised by that body; how the appoint- 

 ment of the new secretary of the treasury was sent to 

 the senate for confirmation, and instantly rejected by that 

 body ; and how Mr. Taney thereupon resigned the office 

 and went home to Baltimore, a political martyr, as Mr. 

 Van Buren came home from England. 



Early in 1835, a vacancy happening on the bench of the 

 United States Supreme Court, the president at once nomi- 

 nated Mr. Taney for the place, and the nomination was 

 " indefinitely postponed." The war of parties went on; the 



