(Oneida, NY- May 2015) When today’s U.S. Supreme Court is making big decisions that will change the nation, historian and teacher Tom Henry makes a timely visit to Oneida Public Library to discuss “Old Buck and Old Dred: President Buchanan, Dred Scott and the Crisis of Union” on Thursday evening June 11 at 7 p.m.
In several classes at Oasis Senior Living in Syracuse, Henry has addressed the constitutional impact that many “forgotten” presidents have had. In his Oneida lecture, he focuses on the 15th president, James Buchanan, who has been thoroughly eclipsed in the people’s estimation by his successor, Abraham Lincoln.
“President Buchanan literally let the Union slip away,” Henry said recently, “first over the Dred Scott case and later by failing to respond to secession. In the presentation, we’ll look at Buchanan’s character and his thinking, and we’ll find out why his presidency was vitally critical to the nation.”
“Great cases like hard cases make bad laws,” said Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857 is the supreme example of this. In deciding the fate of a free black man under the Fugitive Slave Law, the Court, dominated by Southerners and supported by Buchanan, decreed that African-Americans, whether slave or free, were not American citizens and thus could not sue in court for redress in any state or U.S. territory. Dred Scott was then remanded to Missouri and back into slavery.
Instead of putting the slavery issue to rest, as Buchanan hoped, the Dred Scott decision ignited it. The North became radicalized, the Republican Party emerged as a viable party and the South was emboldened never to compromise.
Henry’s lecture June 11 is free and open to the public.
For more information, stop by the Oneida Library, 220 Broad St., or call 363-3050.