This statue of Judge Roger Taney is if front of the Maryland Capital Building in downtown Annapolis. Judge Taney was a local politician in the years leading up to the Civil War. He was a slave owner. In 1836 he was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Andrew Jackson and in 1857 he wrote the Dred Scott Decision that confirmed that blacks were not citizens had no rights even if they escaped to a free state.

By all accounts he was a good man who served his country well but on this the most important issue of the times he was, at least in retrospect, completely wrong.

Why would the citizens of Maryland allow this statue honoring him to be mounted near the capital? There is right and there is wrong. Taney was wrong and in my opinion no honor should go to him.