Monthly Archives: February 2024

Symmetry

This reactionary-looking gent is Marylander Roger Brooks Taney, an Andrew Jackson appointee to the Supreme Court. History remembers Justice Taney as the author of the Court’s most infamous ruling in Scott V Sandford (1857).  

Before his rise to the Court, Taney had made no secret of his opinion on slavery and citizenship, insisting that blacks in the country had no rights white men were bound to respect. A free black had requested documents for overseas travel that Roger Taney, as then US Attorney General, rejected. Taney declared his view that blacks were not citizens, and never would be. Travel documents for this man of color were denied.

Another important element in this story concerns the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Settled eight years prior to the election of Andrew Jackson, this legislation directed that, with the exception of the new state itself, slavery would be forbidden westward along Missouri’s southern border. Most Americans hoped that this Compromise Line would endure forever, clearly delineating for posterity new slave states from free.

By the time the Scott case wound its way to the highest court, violence and bloodshed had erupted on those very western lands, on the Kansas prairie. Emigrants raced from both northern and southern states, dead set to vote upon the status of slavery in the new state’s pending constitution. A volatile mix of invading, pro-slave Missouri Ruffians assaulted Free-State Jayhawkers near Lawrence, sparking deadly violence across the region. Unrepentant slaveholders demanded their 5th Amendment property rights (meaning slaves) be allowed any place slaveholders settled. At the same time, equally fervent opponents contended the “peculiar institution” would remain only where it existed, never to pollute new territories, or America’s future.

Justice Taney, as Chief Justice, took umbrage at these incessant attacks, and at those Northern rabble rousers who would not obey the law. When the Dred Scott case entered deliberations it appears Taney intended to settle the question for all time, silencing forever those interfering, and self-righteous Yankees. When the Court finally issued its ruling in 1857, Justice Taney’s opinion rang out with certainty, and finality.

Taney wrote

I Despite Dred Scott once residing in free territory with his master, he was still a slave.

II As a slave, Dred Scott was not a citizen and had no standing in court.

With those two main points established, Taney could have ended his decree, but the Chief Justice had some personal venom to add.

III Congress had exceeded its authority in legislating the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and the 1820 law was unconstitutional. 

IV Movable property, (slaves) could not be restricted by boundary lines or by popular vote. Property was protected by law.

Believing he had settled the dispute, Justice Taney had, in fact, only stoked a more massive inferno.

Indeed the Civil War exploded within four years of Taney’s ruling, and blazed for four bloody years. In the aftermath, an interesting turn of symmetry, the Fourteenth Amendment was submitted for adoption, flipping all of Taney’s arguments, provision by provision. 

I By virtue of birth in the United States, one was a citizen. 

II As a citizen a person was due all rights and immunities, with equal protection under the law. 

This amendment reads as if the Scott Decision acted as a template for reversal.

Fast forward to 2008. 

President-Elect, Barack Obama, in a conscious effort to mirror the sequence of fellow Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural, deliberately followed the 1861 Lincoln festivities. The Obamas rode the same train route as had the Lincoln’s, breakfasted on the same meal inauguration day, and when the moment came for the swearing in, President Obama chose the same Bible as touched by Abraham Lincoln’s right hand in 1861.

In this last twist of symmetry that Bible belonged to Justice Roger B Taney, the man who decreed blacks were not citizens and never would be. A very satisfying turn, indeed.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Both are available on Kindle. Chumbley has also penned three stage plays, “Clay,” “Wolf By The Ears,” and “Peer Review.” She has cowritten “Dancing On Air,” a film script.

gailchumbley@ymail.com

Meet The Beatles

It was the night of February 9, 1964, a Sunday, when my older brother and I had to make a crucial little kid decision. The situation we faced left us over stimulated, careening off the living room walls. Our dilemma concerned whether or not to watch “Davy Crockett at the Alamo” on Disney, or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Adding even more adrenaline to the mix, our shared birthday was the next day, Monday, the 10th.

Agony.

In 1964 there were no video players, no DVD players, no home computers, or dvr’s. Our television stood inside a wood frame measuring about the size of Volkswagen Bug and beamed three network channels in glorious, flickering, black and white. This night’s decision was a one-off with no do-overs. Period.

Dale and I liked Davy Crockett an awful lot. We had watched all the previous episodes, and Davy biting the dust in San Antonio was the much anticipated grand finale. But, oh, the Beatles! “Please Please Me” had infiltrated AM radio, and the fever on the airwaves was palpable. 

This was a single decision, and a weighty conundrum for an almost 10, and almost 9 year-old. We had to choose.

In the end we tuned into Ed Sullivan and our world permanently shifted on its axis. George’s opening chords launched into John and Paul’s vocals. “Oh, yeah I’ll tell you something, I think you’ll understand.” The look, the sound, the energy knocked us both for a loop. And the band seemed so delighted with performing, visibly getting a kick out of the reaction of the screaming studio audience, and by extension, all of America. And then that deep bow at the end of the song! Wow.

In fan magazines we learned more about each individual: who was quiet, cute, endearing, and the leader, but those were minor details. That moment, on February 9th all we sensed was joyful wonder. John Sebastian said it best later, singing “how the magic is the music and the music’s in me,” and magic struck on that winter’s night.

The introduction of the Beatles to America reset the course of music world wide, not a small thing. Over the following years the joint efforts of Lennon/McCartney clearly demonstrated genius in both songwriting and brilliant recordings. After their breakup the four musicians pursued other projects: The Plastic Ono Band, Wings, Wilburys, and Ringo’s All Star Band. Each married, had children, remarried, then John was tragically murdered, and George died of cancer.

Now Paul and Ringo attend public commemorations of Beatle music, while their children pop up frequently on social media, each pursuing some latest venture or other. But those facts are details, and rather unimportant details compared to that singular moment on February 9, 1964.

For years I called my brother on our birthday, blasting “Birthday” from the White Album because “it’s my birthday too, yeah.” 

Now a lifetime has passed, and my birthday twin and partner in Beatlemania sadly died. But I remember, I’ll always remember. The gift of that moment survives, when we were both very much alive breathing in the unbounded optimism, energy, and magic when Dale and I first met the Beatles.

Oh, by the way, I’ve never seen “Davy Crockett at the Alamo.”

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Chumbley has also authored the stage play, “Clay” and “Wolf By The Ears.” In addition, Gail co-authored the screenplay, “Dancing on Air” based on her books.