Dred Scott Decision (1 janv. 1835 – 1 janv. 1837)

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Jackson also nominated his supporter Roger Taney to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Senate rejected the initial nomination in 1835, but when Chief Justice John Marshall died, Jackson re-nominated Taney, who was subsequently approved the following year. Justice Taney went on to be best known for the infamous Dred Scott decision , which declared African Americans were not citizens of the United States and as such lacked legal standing to file a suit. He also stated that the federal government could not forbid slavery in U.S. territories. In his career as Supreme Court Justice, Taney would go on to swear in Abraham Lincoln as president.

While Jackson’s supporters formed the Democratic Party, his opponents also coalesced in a new political party, united in their antipathy of the president and his policies. Adopting the same name as anti-monarchists in England, the Whig Party formed during Jackson’s second term to protest what it saw as the autocratic policies of “King Andrew I.”

The Whig party failed to win the 1836 presidential election, which was captured by Martin Van Buren. Jackson, however, left his successor with an economy ready to crater. “Old Hickory” believed that paper money did not benefit the common man and that it allowed speculators to buy huge swaths of land and drive prices artificially high. Having taken a financial loss from devalued paper notes himself, Jackson issued the Specie Circular in July 1836, which required payment in gold or silver for public lands. Banks, however, could not meet the demand. They began to fail, and the ensuing Panic of 1837 devastated the economy during the course of Van Buren’s one-term presidency.

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