Roger Taney (American National Biography)

Taney passed his final weeks at home. In 1863 he confided in a friend that, while he knew he was "sick enough for a hospital, . . . that hospital must be my own home." He no longer recognized the American republic and despaired of the rule of law. In August 1863 he told an old friend that he saw no "ground for hope" that the Supreme Court would "ever again be restored to the authority and rank which the Constitution intended to confer upon it. The supremacy of the military power over the civil"--a rank heresy that he blamed almost entirely on Lincoln--"seems to be established; and the public mind has acquiesced in it and sanctioned it." When he died--partly of old age, partly of a broken spirit--he was buried near his mother's grave in Frederick.