will be most likely, after
the traitor leaders, to be held in infamous remembrance; for he did more
than any other individual,--more than any President, if not more than
all,--more in one hour than the Legislature in thirty years,--to extend
the Slave Power. Indeed, he had solemnly decided all and more than all
that President Buchanan, closing his long political life of servility in
imbecility, in December, 1860, asked to have adopted as an "explanatory
amendment" of the Constitution, to fully satisfy the Slave Power. Well
would it have been for that Power, for a while at least, had its members
recollected that "no tyranny is so secure, none so remediless, as that
of executive courts"; well for them,--if it is better to rule in hell
than serve in heaven,--but worse for the world, had they been patient.
But the dose of poison was too great. Nature relieved itself. War came,
not the ruin, but the only salvation, of the state.

The movements of events have been so rapid, the work of generations
being done in as many years, that Taney's character is already historic;
and we can judge of it by his relation to the great event which alone
will preserve it from oblivion.

In judging his public character as the head of the Judiciary of America,
consider the _cause_ he sought to promote, his motives, the means he
used, his resources as a jurist and a lawyer in that cause, the intended
effect and actual results.

And of the cause this must be said and agreed by all, that there was
never one of which a court could take cognizance in America, England, or
the world so utterly evil and infamous as that of Slavery in the United
States. Did he realize its extent? Yes, there were "few freedmen
compared with the slaves," say only sixty thousand out of seven hundred
thousand in 1789. He fully realized that, in repudiating the promise
made for those seven hundred thousand, a pledge made with the most
solemn appeal to man and to God, he utterly destroyed the rights and
hopes of four million men. He knew he was deciding, for a vast empire,
weal or woe; and he knew it was woe, or he had no sense of justice.

And his motives? He was not venal, not corrupt, not a respecter of
persons. But there is something bad besides venality, corruption, and
personal partiality. The worst of motives is disposition to serve the
cause of evil. The country knows, the world will declare, none served it
so well. But was he conscious of serving it? Yes,--unless