Roger Taney Statue Taken Down Overnight At Maryland State House

(Updated 10:40 a.m. Friday) ANNAPOLIS, MD — Hours after members of a state panel voted to remove the Justice Roger B. Taney statue on the grounds of the Maryland State House in Annapolis, workers took the statue down and placed it in storage. Taney, a native of Calvert County, wrote the U.S Supreme Court's controversial majority opinion in the 1857 Dred Scott case, which upheld slavery and denied citizenship to African-Americans. His opinion helped escalate the Civil War, some historians argue.

Following the fatal Nazi-flavored white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left three people dead last weekend, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said it was time to act on the statue's location. Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh took action on Tuesday night to have Confederate statues removed in the city, a day after the city council voted to take down the statues.

"While we cannot hide from our history – nor should we – the time has come to make clear the difference between properly acknowledging our past and glorifying the darkest chapters of our history," Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said in a statement Tuesday. "With that in mind, I believe removing the Justice Roger B. Taney statue from the State House grounds is the right thing to do, and we will ask the State House Trust to take that action immediately."

A majority of the State House Trust voted Thursday to remove the Taney statue from the State House grounds, reports WBAL. How soon the statue could be relocated wasn't announced, but overnight workers took down the statue and moved it to a Maryland State Archives secure storage facility, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Hogan praised Pugh's overnight actions to have Baltimore's statues removed, and denounced President Trump's comments made Tuesday in the aftermath of Charlottesville, which equated counter-protestors with the white supremacists, KKK members and neo-Nazis who marched on the city with torches and weapons.

"I think he made a terrible mistake," Hogan said of the president's comments.

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The violent clashes in Charlottesville grew out of the city's decision to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, an issue that cities and states across former slave-holding areas continue to grapple with more than 150 years after the end of the Civil War.

“It’s my intention to move forward with the removal of the statues,” Mayor Pugh said in a statement Monday.
Maryland House Speaker Michael E. Busch said Monday he believes the state should remove the statue of Taney, The Baltimore Sun reports. Busch said if the monument was left standing at the statehouse, it would "send a message that we condone what took place, that slavery is alright.”

The four Confederate-era monuments removed in Baltimore are: The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on W. Mount Royal Avenue; the Confederate Women's Monument in Bishop Square Park, N.; the Roger B. Taney Monument on Mount Vernon Place and the Robert E. Lee and Thomas. J. “Stonewall” Jackson Monument in Wyman Park.

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Pugh has identified cemeteries where confederate soldiers have been buried in Maryland and is researching the option of moving the monuments to these sites.

“Among the identified cemeteries are the Washington Confederate Cemetery in Hagerstown, Maryland and the Point Lookout Confederate Commentary in Scotland, Maryland," Pugh said in a statement. "We will inquire as to their willingness to accept the monuments and prepare agreements for the transfer.”

A Confederate soldier statue in Rockville was relocated from its box in the front of the Red Brick Courthouse to a private property at White’s Ferry in Dickerson in northwestern Montgomery County in July. After over a year of trying to find a spot, the statue was relocated recently to White's Ferry, which transports vehicles from Montgomery County across the Potomac River to the Leesburg, Virginia area.

Photo Credit: "Roger B. Taney" Art Inventory Files: Smithsonian American Art Museum Inventory