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[9], part one Beneath Dred Scott Jacksonian Jurisprudence and the Dimensions of Self-Rule in 1837, president andrew jackson delivered his final address to the American people. “In your hands is rightfully placed the sovereignty of the country, and to you everyone placed in authority is ultimately responsible.” “The great body of the people” held the power to ensure that its “wishes . . . are carried into faithful execution,” and its will “must sooner or later be obeyed.” Jackson did not engage in mere flattery; he gave his address at a time of considerable popular involvement in politics. For decades, state after state had lowered or abolished restrictions on white male suffrage. Although three-quarters of the states had imposed property requirements for voting in 1790, only one in three states continued to do so in 1830, and by 1855 the ratio was less than one in ten. Voter participation— stimulated by rapid social and economic change as well as by the organizational efforts of Jackson’s allies and enemies—increased from around 25 percent in 1824 to 78 percent in 1840, remaining at that level for decades. Jackson claimed to speak for this burgeoning electorate and portrayed himself as the representative of all the people. By exploiting this stance, Jackson expanded the power of the presidency, removing federal officers appointed by previous administrations and vetoing laws simply because he disliked them. He also used his immense popularity to pursue several controversial policies, notably the removal of Native Americans from the Old Southwest, the authorization of military force against South Carolina’s opposition to the federal tariff, and the destruction of the Second Bank of the United States. When he retired in 1837, Jackson left a legacy that dominated American political life until the 1850s, and his judicial appointments ensured that his legacy dominated the Supreme Court as well.1 Jackson’s presidency divided American political culture into two highly 9 10 part one 1 competitive and increasingly well-organized parties that offered distinctly different visions for the future development of the United States. By 1840, Jackson’s opponents, disturbed by what they considered irresponsible and abusive governance, had established the Whig Party. Whigs sought a disciplined , orderly plan of national development that emphasized social progress through the market’s civilizing influence and individual betterment through self-improvement. They advocated protective tariffs, a national banking system, and federally sponsored internal improvements as a way to harmonize the Union’s diverse interests and to provide opportunities for advancement to people at all levels of society. Members of the Democratic Party considered such proposals little more than, in Jackson’s words, “an engine to undermine . . . free institutions, and . . . to engross all powers in the hands of the few and to govern by corruption or force.” Jackson’s supporters lowered tariffs, stifled federal support for internal improvements, and destroyed the Second Bank of the United States because they believed these programs placed special privileges in the hands of a small elite who would benefit at the community’s expense. Democrats countered with calls for equal rights so that no citizen could claim rights not held by others and demanded limited government because active governments generally created artificial divisions in society by rewarding some and punishing many others.2 On the Supreme Court, Jackson’s legacy lived through his appointees, who dominated the institution by 1837. Many of his justices spent the rest of their lives standing against persons Jackson identified as “those amongst us who wish to enlarge the powers of the general government.” Over the years, they articulated Jackson’s vision of constitutional governance, which maintained “unimpaired and in full vigor the rights and sovereignty of the states and [confined] the action of the general government strictly to the sphere of its appropriate duties.”3 Arguments calling for the limitation of federal power were old as the republic itself, but under Roger B. Taney, whom Jackson elevated to chief justice in 1836, they received a new vigor. Although Taney and his colleagues fiercely upheld federal authority when they believed its exercise to be appropriate, they aggressively rolled back, as much as institutional constraints permitted, limitations on state authority they considered to be illegitimate. Support for popular sovereignty drove this agenda. Most if not all members of the Taney Court believed that their predecessors under John Marshall had unjustly used their authority to limit legislatures to prevent the people from truly ruling themselves and to estab- [18.223.43.142] Project MUSE (2024...

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