Pennsylvania, for example, created a presumption of freedom for black residents that could not be surmounted unless a slaveholder had registered his slave with state authorities within a certain time frame. According to the standard version of history, states’ rights was a doctrine invented by Southern politicians to perpetuate slavery. There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper us softly, that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is, with which to effect that object. “‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,'” Lincoln famously said, in the speech that would come to be known by that title. Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Lincoln acknowledges this divide in voter sentiment by posing the question of how the Republican cause can best be advanced. Combining allusion and metaphor, Lincoln suggests that even if Douglas were a mighty “lion” of a politician, his attachment to popular sovereignty and the Democratic party would make him an unlikely ally to the anti-slavery cause. In 1826, Taney and Daniel Webster represented merchant Solomon Etting in a case that appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States. Opponents of Taney ensured that his nomination was not voted on before the end of the Senate session, thereby defeating the nomination. Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday—that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind – the principle for which he declares he has suffered much, and is ready to suffer to the end. [60] After Lincoln was re-elected, he appointed Salmon P. Chase, a strongly anti-slavery Republican from Ohio, to succeed Taney.[61]. Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. [16] Taney redistributed federal deposits from the national bank to favored state-chartered banks, which became known as "pet banks. In the District of Columbia—over which the federal Congress had total authority—slavery remained legal until 1850, when it was finally abolished, but only in return for an expansion of slavery elsewhere. The bill, in any event, was defeated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. Instead, it focused on the necessity of popular sovereignty and state’s rights. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made. However, Lincoln also subtly indicates that the nation, much like the horse, has the ability to “give the rider[s] a fall” by voting Republican. In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the United States Constitution is left an open question, precisely as the same question as to the restraint on the power of the Territories was left open in the Nebraska act. However, many of his political detractors also targeted his height as a means of discrediting or belittling him, as Lincoln seems to do here. By this time he had aligned himself with Andrew Jackson, the leader of the Democratic Party, and when Jackson, elected president in 1828, reorganized his Cabinet in 1831, he appointed Taney attorney general of the United States. Copyright © His broad ruling deeply angered many Northerners and strengthened the anti-slavery Republican Party, and Republican Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election. The following paragraph proceeds to advocate against Douglas by portraying him as pro-slavery—or at least not strongly enough opposed to it. [32] Taney wrote the majority opinion in the 1851 case of Strader v. Graham, in which the Court held that slaves from Kentucky who had conducted a musical performance in the free state of Ohio remained slaves because they had voluntarily returned to Kentucky. In 1835, after Democrats took control of the Senate, Jackson appointed Taney to succeed John Marshall on the Supreme Court as Chief Justice. [45], Running on an anti-slavery platform, Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, defeating Taney's preferred candidate, John C. [citation needed], The United States increasingly polarized along sectional lines during the 1850s, with slavery acting as the central source of sectional tension. Lincoln asks his audience to consider how Douglas could possibly be a advocate for the anti-slavery cause when he has made it clear that he has no personal investment in it. Such laws were proliferating in the North. According to them, the north was attempting to destroy their traditional values and way of life. In 1835, President Andrew Jackson obliged by proposing to Congress legislation to prohibit the postal service from delivering “incendiary” literature that could provoke slave insurrection. This was the third point gained. The federal judiciary’s campaign against state emancipation laws reached its zenith in Chief Justice Taney’s infamous opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). . The noun “felicitation” refers to well-wishes or praise given to someone for an achievement. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. The election was a source of major controversy, with nearly half of the votes thought to be fraudulent. Now, as ever, I wish to not misrepresent Judge Douglas’ position, question his motives, or do ought that can be personally offensive to him. However, Lincoln will not compromise on the Republican’s “great cause” of resisting slavery. Lincoln lost his Senate bid to Stephen Douglas, after which he launched a national speaking tour. [76] A statue of Taney formerly stood on the grounds of the Maryland State House, but the state of Maryland removed the statue in August 2017,[77] two days after Baltimore mayor, Catherine Pugh, ordered the removal of its replica in Baltimore City. Taney supported Andrew Jackson's presidential campaigns in 1824 and 1828, and he became a member of Jackson's Democratic Party. Possibly, this was a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a state to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Macy sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a territory, into the Nebraska bill – I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case, as it had been in the other. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of “care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up,” shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 called for the appointment of federal commissioners in every state with authority to issue and execute warrants for the capture of runaway slaves.

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