First Bloom of Activism

The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law & Politics By Don E. Fehrenbacher Oxford University Press, 741 pp., $25 It has been 115 years since Chief Justice Roger B. Taney died in Washington, un-mourned, amid the great Civil War some blamed him for helping start. “The temple of the man-stealers has been rent from foundation to roof,” gloated the Chicago Tribune, “and the ancient High Priest lies cold at the altar.”

High priest of the man-stealers? The Tribune’s harsh allusion was to Justice Taney’s astonishing decision seven years earlier in Dred Scott v. Sanford, a decision to which historians customarily assign a pivotal role in blasting the Union asunder. All future discussion of the case and its effects must now begin with Don E. Fehrenbacher’s magisterial book. Mr. Fehrenbacher, who teaches at Stanford, won my admiration some years ago with a splendid little book on the early political career of Abraham Lincoln. He has renewed it here.

EY

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Edwin M. Yoder Jr.

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The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law & Politics By Don E. Fehrenbacher Oxford University Press, 741 pp., $25 It has been 115 years since Chief Justice Roger B. Taney died in Washington, un-mourned, amid the great Civil War some blamed him for helping start. “The temple of the man-stealers has been rent from foundation to roof,” gloated the Chicago Tribune, “and the ancient High Priest lies cold at the altar.”

High priest of the man-stealers? The Tribune’s harsh allusion was to Justice Taney’s astonishing decision seven years earlier in Dred Scott v. Sanford, a decision to which historians customarily assign a pivotal role in blasting the Union asunder. All future discussion of the case and its effects must now begin with Don E. Fehrenbacher’s magisterial book. Mr. Fehrenbacher, who teaches at Stanford, won my admiration some years ago with a splendid little book on the early political career of Abraham Lincoln. He has renewed it here.