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