Taney had no great love of the institution for its own sake, having freed his own slaves. But he did have a passionate commitment “to southern life and values, which seemed organically linked to the peculiar institution and unpreservable without it.”5 In private letters Taney expressed growing anger toward “northern aggression.” “Our own southern countrymen” were in great danger, he wrote; “the knife of the assassin is at their [Page 174] throats.”
