The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to remove statues of historical figures who had racist attitudes toward black people, which manifested in their political careers. Here are the figures who will no longer be honored in the United States Capitol, as well as two who were removed last year.
HOUSE VOTES TO SWEEP OUT CAPITOL STATUES DEEMED OFFENSIVE
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
Roger B. Taney served as the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1836 until his death in 1864. His most notorious ruling was in the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, in which the court ruled that slavery was constitutional.
“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit,” Taney wrote in delivering the opinion of the court.
An enemy of President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, Taney ruled Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, which guarantees the right to trial by jury, unconstitutional. Lincoln ignored the decision.
Before serving as chief justice, Taney took on multiple roles in the Cabinet of President Andrew Jackson, serving primarily as attorney general, while also being given the duties of secretary of war and secretary of the treasury for a brief time. He married the sister of his longtime friend, “Star-Spangled Banner” author Francis Scott Key.
Vice President John C. Calhoun
John C. Calhoun was a powerful South Carolina politician in the early 19th century. He served in multiple political offices, running for president in 1824, but his highest position was that of John Quincy Adams’s and Andrew Jackson’s vice president from 1825 until 1832. Calhoun was a strong proponent of states’ rights to nullify federal laws, especially those regarding slavery.
“I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good — a positive good,” Calhoun said in 1837.
Calhoun originally saw nullification as a peaceful way for states to redress their grievances with the federal government. Later in his life, however, he saw secession as a justifiable option for states to respond to anti-slavery laws, as well as tariffs, laying the philosophical groundwork for the Confederacy in the Civil War.
The Clemson University Honors College bore the name of Calhoun, who died in 1850, until June 2020, when it was renamed after a vote by the Board of Trustees.
Gov. Charles Brantley Aycock
Charles Brantley Aycock was a lawyer, teacher, and governor in North Carolina during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was an ardent proponent of the Democratic Party’s efforts to stop black people from voting, referring to black voting rights as “the negro problem.”
“I am proud of my State … because there we have solved the negro problem. … We have taken him out of politics … I am inclined to give to you our solution of this problem. It is, first, as far as possible under the Fifteenth Amendment to disfranchise him; after that let him alone, quit writing about him; quit talking about him, quit making him ‘the white man’s burden,’” he said in a 1903 speech.
During his governorship, Aycock was a massive proponent of education, building almost 3,000 schools while raising teachers’ salaries while ensuring that they had the necessary resources in the classroom. In the same 1903 speech in which he called for disenfranchisement and segregation, he also encouraged black education.
Aycock ran for a Senate seat in 1912, but he died while campaigning.
Sen. James Paul Clarke
James Paul Clarke was a senator and governor from Arkansas who was active at the turn of the 20th century. During his time in office, Clarke was a proponent of keeping white supremacy in the Democratic Party platform.
“The people of the South looked to the Democratic Party to preserve the white standards of civilization,” he said in the closing speech of his 1894 gubernatorial election, which he won easily.
Seven years after his terms as governor ended in 1896, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate, where he often disagreed with his party. Most notably, he broke with the majority of Democrats by supporting President Theodore Roosevelt’s building of the Panama Canal. He was largely responsible for the bill’s passage, Roosevelt later said.
He was elected president pro tempore of the Senate in 1913, an office he served until his death in 1916.
Speaker Robert M.T. Hunter
The states have the authority to determine who they want to be honored with a statue in the Capitol, so removing them requires an act of Congress. Nancy Pelosi, however, has unilateral authority to control the display of portraits of speakers of the House. Robert M.T. Hunter was one of multiple speakers who served the Confederacy whose portraits Pelosi removed in June 2020.
Hunter served Virginia in the House for 11 terms, serving as speaker in the 26th Congress from 1839 until 1841. In 1861, he was elected to the Senate, but he was expelled early in his term for encouraging the South to revolt. During the Civil War, he served in the Confederate Senate.
Hunter was one of three Confederate delegates who met with Lincoln at Hampton Roads in Virginia to negotiate peace terms for the Civil War with Lincoln. During the meeting, Hunter tried and failed to convince Lincoln to negotiate issues such as the end of slavery while the South was in open rebellion with the Union. He also helped to shut down a proposal from Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, another delegate at the meeting, for the Union and Confederacy to team up and engage in military operations in Mexico.
Hunter served in various state roles after the war until his death in 1887.
Speaker Howell Cobb
Georgia politician Howell Cobb, whose portrait was also taken down by Pelosi last year, served as speaker of the House from 1849-1851 and the governor of Georgia from 1851-1853, returning to the House after completing the term.
In 1856, he was appointed to the committee that adjudicated the case of Rep. Preston Brooks, a South Carolina Democrat who beat with a cane Sen. Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts abolitionist Republican, while he was giving a speech on the Senate floor. Cobb was one of the committee members who believed Brooks acted justly.
“We hold that there has been no violation, in this case, of the privileges of either House of Congress, or any member thereof, over which this House has any jurisdiction,” Cobb wrote, delivering the opinion of a minority of committee members.
After serving as the treasury secretary for President James Buchanan, he resigned upon Lincoln’s election. He led the convention that declared the South’s secession to begin the Civil War, in which he served as a Confederate colonel.
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Cobb received a pardon from President Andrew Johnson a few months before his death in 1868.
