The Papers of Roger Brooke Taney

Washington Decr. 21st. 1845My Dear Sir

I have just finished a letter to Mrs. Taney, but as my Cigars are out, & she could not very well attend to that matter, I must impose the trouble upon you. – Do me the favor to ask Smith, (who I believe you know is opposite the Museum in Baltimore Street) to send me a box. Tell him to send them by the 9 oclock Cars of Tuesday morning – & place them under the care of the conductor; and one of the messengers of the Court will be at the Depot here when the Cars arrive & take charge of them. – Of course you do not pay for them. – I settle with him when I return. – He knows the kind I prefer. – Ask him to select for me a good box – and if he has them in a box of 500 of as good quality, he may as well send that number, as I shall want them before I return. – Do not suppose I have used a box of 250 Since I come here – I brought with me only about half that number.

I dined with the President on Friday: – It was a pleasant day as it could be under all circumstances, as the company was very well selected & every thing passed off very well. It is true I dined on bread and water, with a morsel of fish and one potatoe – Yet the meats which were passing round2appeard to be nicely arranged & well served. – I do not exactly understand why Friday has become the fashionable day for dinners here. It was so last winter and the winter before. – And I therefore declined accepting them. And I should have done so on this occasion – but if I had sent an apology – nobody about the Executive would believe that my refusal arose from any thing but resentment. And if the President does not understand official comity, I think I do – and therefore waited on him & dined with him – and when I have paid a visit to Mrs. President (who I think is an amiable and is certainly intelligent & agreeable in conversation) I shall then have done with the courtesies due to the Executive Mansion.

Do you observe the movement in Congress, proposing to Separate the Supreme Court Justices from the Circuits?1 – I should not be surprised if it passed from what I hear. – I see very few of the members of Congress but several of those who I have seen have mentioned the Subject to me – The plan proposed is the one I recommended & think it is the only practicable scheme.

I hear nothing decisive about the vacant Judgeship. The givings out now are that Buchanan remains where he is – and that the delay arises from the difficulty of Selecting between the persons presented for it & pressed by their friends. Such a reason however is rather too absurd to be believed – for the President & those about him3cannot fail to see that that difficulty must daily become greater by delay – and moreover that the Session of the Court imperatively calls for an immediate decision. – The reason assigned therefore must be a pretext to cover the true reason, which it seems cannot be avowed – and that I take to be the one I mentioned in my former letter – It would be a strong measure to push the premier out of the Cabinet by force – and the temptation is therefore kept before him, in the hope that he may voluntarily yield to it – and to the influences which seek to persuade him that it is his true interest & the proper path for his ambition him – and the one in which he will most certainly attain great distinction. – I still think he will ulminately yield – or have to yield with the best grace he may.2 –

Much love to Dear Anne and all your children / affectionately yoursR. B. Taney

Autograph Letter Signed

Maryland Center for History and Culture, Baltimore

Vertical File, Item Q9700000007785

The letter is subscribed as J. Mason Campbell Esqr. / Lexington Street / Baltimore

1

By this time the grueling obligation of Supreme Court justices to "ride circuit" had begun to fall out of favor. Yet it was not until the Judiciary Act of 1869 that Congress reduced this burden, and the practice was not abolished altogether until 1891.

2

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Henry Baldwin died on 21 April 1844. Twice the Senate rejected President John Tyler’s nominees to fill the seat, leaving the vacancy to his successor. On 23 December 1845—two days after Taney wrote this letter—President Polk nominated not James Buchanan but another Pennsylvanian: George Washington Woodward. The Senate voted Woodward down on 22 January 1846. In August, Polk selected Robert Cooper Grier, whom the Senate immediately confirmed. Daniel J. Curran, " Polk, Politics, and Patronage: The Rejection of George W. Woodward's Nomination to the Supreme Court," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Volume 121, Number 3 (July 1997), 163 - 199.