is infallible.
He was a great, learned, able judge."

Mr. Sumner rejoined with much temper. He said that "Taney would
be hooted down the pages of history, and that an emancipated country
would fix upon his name the stigma it deserved. He had administered
justice wickedly, had degraded the Judiciary, and had degraded the
age." Mr. Wilson followed Mr. Sumner in a somewhat impassioned
speech, denouncing the Dred Scott decision "as the greatest crime
in the judicial annals of the Republic," and declaring it to be
"the abhorrence, the scoff, the jeer, of the patriotic hearts of
America." Mr. Reverdy Johnson answered Mr. Sumner with spirit,
and pronounced an eloquent eulogium upon Judge Taney. He said,
"the senator from Massachusetts will be happy if his name shall
stand as high upon the historic page as that of the learned judge
who is now no more." Mr. Johnson directed attention to the fact
that, whether wrong or right, the Dred Scott decision was one in
which a majority of the Supreme Court had concurred, and therefore
no special odium should be attached to the name of the venerable
Chief Justice. Mr. Johnson believed the decision to be right, and
felt that his opinion on a question of law was at least entitled
to as much respect as that of either of the senators from Massachusetts,
"one of whom did not pretend to be a lawyer at all, while the other
was a lawyer for only a few months." He proceeded to vindicate
the historical accuracy of the Chief Justice, and answered Mr.
Sumner with that amplitude and readiness which Mr. Johnson displayed
in every discussion involving legal questions.

Mr. Sumner's protest was vigorously seconded by Mr. Hale of New
Hampshire and Mr. Wade of Ohio. The former said that a monument
to Taney "would give the lie to all that had been said by the
friends of justice, liberty, and down-trodden humanity," respecting
the iniquity of the Dred Scott decision. Mr. Wade violently opposed
the proposition. He avowed his belief that the "Dred Scott case
was got up to give judicial sanction to the enormous iniquity that
prevailed in every branch of our government at that period." He
declared that "the greater you make Judge Taney's legal acumen the
more you dishonor his memory by showing that he sinned against
light and knowledge." He insisted that the people of Ohio, whose
opinion he professed to represent, "would pay two thousand dollars
to hang the late Chief Justice in effigy rather than