An abolitionist minister from Pennsylvania had gone to Maryland and made a ferocious attack on slavery in a public meeting attended by some slaves. The excitement and feeling against him were intense. To the sensitive slave-owners the speech seemed a deliberate incitation of the slaves to insurrection. The minister’s life was in danger. It required supreme courage for a Maryland lawyer in that slave-holding community to stand between the abolitionist and the popular clamor against him, and Taney stepped from the professional ranks to plead his cause, not perfunctorily, but with a passionate defiance worthy of the highest traditions of his profession. He made his defense on no less grounds than “the rights of conscience and the freedom of speech.” And he spoke on slavery even as Garrison or Lincoln might have spoken. In a courtroom crowded with slave-owners who were his neighbors, he touched boldly on the pathos and the tragedy of the institution. After this daring defense before a slave-holding jury, the hated abolitionist was acquitted--and the records of the American courts record no nobler triumph. The death of Pinkney and the disqualification of Martin soon advanced Taney to the head of the Maryland bar. It was one year after he had established himself in Baltimore that he first allied himself with the supporters of Andrew Jackson. During the campaign of 1824 was published a letter written by Jackson to Madison seven years before, urging the recognition of those Federalists who had broken with their party to support the War of 1812, and suggesting the name of Colonel Drayton of South Carolina.[332] Discriminating between the anti-war Federalists and the pro-war Federalists, Jackson here declared that had he been commander of the military department in which the Hartford Convention was held, he would have court-martialed the three leaders of the Convention. This announcement of his views had attracted to his standard many pro-war Federalists of Maryland, and the most notable acquisition was Roger B. Taney. He was impelled to his course with no thought of political reward. His whole mind and heart were in his profession. Jackson knew nothing of Taney’s partiality at the time, and only learned of it about the time he was seeking a successor for Berrien. At no time in his life had the Maryland lawyer been so thoroughly satisfied with his lot. He had been made Attorney-General of the State on the unanimous recommendation of the bar, and this was the only office to which he ever aspired. It was in line with his work and left him at home with his family and his books. Such was his situation, when, through a non-political suggestion, he was offered the position in the Cabinet of Jackson.