“It is maintained by the advocates of the bank that its constitutionality, in all its features, ought to be considered as settled by precedent, and by the decision of the Supreme Court.  To this conclusion I cannot assent.  Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority, and should not be regarded as deciding questions of constitutional power, except where the acquiescence of the people and the States can be considered as well settled.  So far from this being the case on this subject, an argument against the bank might be based on precedent.  One Congress, in 1791, decided in favor of a bank; another, in 1811, decided against it.  One Congress, in 1815, decided against a bank; another, in 1816, decided in its favor.  Prior to the present Congress, therefore, the precedents drawn from that course were equal.  If we resort to the States, the expressions of legislative, judicial, and executive opinions against the bank have been probably to those in its favor as four to one.  There is nothing in precedent, therefore, which, if its authority were admitted, ought to weigh in favor of the act before me.”

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.

I have said, in substance, that the Dred Scott decision was in part based on assumed historical facts which were not really true, and I ought not to leave the subject without giving some reasons for saying this; I therefore give an instance or two, which I think fully sustain me.  Chief Justice Taney, in delivering the opinion of the majority of the court, insists at great length that negroes were no part of the people who made, or for whom was made, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United States.

On the contrary, Judge Curtis, in his dissenting opinion, shows that in five of the then thirteen States—­to wit, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina—­free negroes were voters, and in proportion to their numbers had the same part in making the Constitution that the white people had.  He shows this with so much particularity as to leave no doubt of its truth; and as a sort of conclusion on that point, holds the following language: