Mr.Seward made an explicit statement to that effect, and affirmed that President Buchanan was admitted into the secret, alleging as proof a few words in his inaugural address referring to the decision soon to be delivered.Nothing of the sort, however, was ever proven.The historian Von Holst presents the view that there had been a most elaborate and comprehensive program on the part of the slavocracy to control the judiciary of the federal Government.The actual facts, however, admit of a simpler and more satisfactory explanation.
Judges are affected by their environment, as are other men.The transition from the view that slavery was an evil to the view that it is right and just did not come in ways open to general observation, and probably few individuals were conscious of having altered their views.Leading churches throughout the South began to preach the doctrine that slavery is a divinely ordained institution, and by the time of the decision in the Dred Scott case a whole generation had grown up under such teaching.
A large proportion of Southern leaders had become thoroughly convinced of the righteousness of their peculiar system.Not otherwise could they have been so successful in persuading others to accept their views.Even before the Dred Scott decision had crystallized opinion, Franklin Pierce, although a New Hampshire Democrat of anti-slavery traditions, came, as a result of his intimate personal and political association with Southern leaders, to accept their guidance and strove to give effect to their policies.President Buchanan was a man of similar antecedents, and, contrary to the expectation of his Northern supporters, did precisely as Pierce had done.It is a matter of record that the arguments of the Chief Justice had captivated his mind before he began to show his changed attitude towards Kansas.
In August, 1857, the President wrote that, at the time of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, slavery already existed and that it still existed in Kansas under the Constitution of the United States."This point," said he, "has at last been settled by the highest tribunal known in our laws.How it could ever have been seriously doubted is a mystery." Granted that slavery is recognized as a permanent institution in itself--just and of divine ordinance and especially united to one section of the country--how could any one question the equal rights of the people of that section to occupy with their slaves lands acquired by common sacrifice? Such was undoubtedly the view of both Pierce and Buchanan.It seemed to them "wicked" that Northern abolitionists should seek to infringe this sacred right.
By a similar process a majority of the Supreme Court justices had become converts to Calhoun's newly announced theory of 1847.It undoubtedly seemed strange to them, as it did later to President Buchanan, that any one should ever have held a different view.If the Court with the force of its prestige should give legal sanction to the new doctrine, it would allay popular agitation, ensure the preservation of the Union, and secure to each section its legitimate rights.Such apparently was the expectation of the majority of the Court in rendering the decision.But the decision was not unanimous.Each judge presented an individual opinion.
