By Bob Whitaker:
In case you consider arguing this, the presidents referred to were Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln.
An old Confederate like me is no fan of Old Abe, but the point here is that nobody can say he didn’t fill the Presidential Chair to the point of bursting.
As for Andy Jackson, he remains the only American Chief Executive for whom historians named an age of history, the Jacksonian Era, and I have never seen any historian who disputed it.
The 1860 Republican platform was very short, and of that briefness the election held the issue that took up the least space.
For two generations, the introduction of new states had made the headlines. There had to be an equal number of free and slave states and it had to be kept that way.
The decision was book-length and I agree with Back Bay Grouch that it contained a more thorough analysis and loyalty to the actual thinking of the Founding Fathers than any other decision rendered by the Court.
Generally speaking it was decided that a citizen bringing his property into the territory from a state has a right to expect the territory to protect that property.
A state’s definition of property or other legal terms was legally superior to that of a territory.
That was one of the reasons territories wanted to become states.
In the Dred Scott Decision the Court decided that a territory could not change a piece of property.
Over ninty percent of the reason for the creation of the Republican Party’s existence was to prevent the admission of more slave territories and therefore more slave states into the Union.
So the 1860 Republician plan consisted of telling the United States Supreme Court to take its decision and stick it where the sun don’t shine.
A generation before the same Court had Andrew Jackson return most of the State of Georgia to the Indians because of treaties made earlier between the United States Government and tribes.
Andrew Jackson informed the Court that it could put its ruling in the same convenient place.
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