"
I drop the quotations merely to remark that all there ever was in the way
of precedent up to the Dred Scott decision, on the points therein
decided, had been against that decision. But hear General Jackson
further:
"If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of this
act, it ought not to control the coordinate authorities of this
government. The Congress, the executive, and the courts must, each for
itself, be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public
officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will
support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others."
Again and again have I heard Judge Douglas denounce that bank decision
and applaud General Jackson for disregarding it. It would be interesting
for him to look over his recent speech, and see how exactly his fierce
philippics against us for resisting Supreme Court decisions fall upon his
own head. It will call to mind a long and fierce political war in this
country, upon an issue which, in his own language, and, of course, in his
own changeless estimation, "was a distinct issue between the friends and
the enemies of the Constitution," and in which war he fought in the ranks
of the enemies of the Constitution.
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