An emancipated country should not make a bust of the author of the Dred Scott decision.” The motion to take up prevailed, when Mr.

If a man has done evil during life, he must not be complimented in marble.

And if indiscreetly it is proposed to decree this signal honor, then the evil he has done must be exposed; nor shall any false delicacy seal my lips.

It is not enough that he held high place, that he enjoyed worldly honors, or was endowed with intellectual gifts.

Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave, Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.

What is the office of Chief Justice, if it has been used to betray Human Rights?

If asked, Sir, to mention the incident of our history, previous to the Rebellion, most worthy of condemnation, most calculated to cause the blush of shame, and most deadly in its consequences, I do not doubt that you would name the Dred…

But when a proposition is made to honor the author of this enormity with a commemorative bust, at the expense of the country, I am obliged to speak plainly.

I am not aware that the English judges who decided contrary to Liberty in the case of ship-money, sustaining the king in those pretensions which ended in Civil War, have ever been commemorated in marble.

I am not aware that Jeffreys, Chief Justice and Chancellor of England, famous for talents as for crimes, has found any niche in Westminster Hall.

They have been left to the judgment of history; and there I insist that Taney shall be left in sympathetic companionship.

But the power Taney served was none other than that Slave Power which has involved the country in hideous war.

I speak what cannot be denied, when I declare that the opinion of the Chief Justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of courts.

Then and there judicial baseness reached its lowest point.

You have not forgotten that terrible decision, where an unrighteous judgment was sustained by falsification of history.

Of course the Constitution of the United States and every principle of Liberty were falsified; but historical truth was falsified also.

He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it.

In these words, solemnly and authoritatively uttered by the Chief Justice of the United States, humanity and truth were set at nought, and the whole country was humbled.

And yet this Chief Justice, whom you would honor with a marble bust, had the strange effrontery to declare that at that time, as well abroad as at home, colored men were regarded as having “no rights which the white man was bound to…

If you have money to commemorate the dead, let it be in honor of the defenders of Liberty gathered to their fathers.

Let their busts be placed in the Court-Room, where with marble lips they can plead always for human rights, teaching judge and advocate the glory and the beauty of justice.

Then will you do something not entirely unworthy of a regenerated land, something to be an example for future times, something to help fix the standard of history.

Let such a vacant space in our Court-Room testify to the justice of our Republic, and may it speak in warning to every one who would betray Liberty!

But they who seek to canonize one of the tools of Slavery are responsible.

Taney shall not be recognized as a saint by any vote of Congress, if I can help it.