Jackson, Andrew | President Jackson recommends an office seeker

Jackson, Andrew

Manuscript letter signed ("Andrew Jackson") as seventh President, to Attorney General Roger B. Taney, regarding a vacancy in the comptroller's office

One page (152 x 182, sight), [Washington], 28 October 1833, accompanied by the manuscript address panel (72 x 120, sight), directed to "Honble R. B. Taney Secy of the Treasury," address panel docketed; both pieces with some edge browning, address panel spotted, Jackson's signature slightly obscured by matting. Framed and glazed with an engraved portrait of Jackson.

Although Taney was at the time the Attorney General of the United States, Jackson sent him the present letter in his capacity as Secretary of the Treasury: "Alfred Hume is the very gentleman of who I spoke to you this morning for the situation in the comptrollers office."

Taney had been given the Treasury portfolio by a recess appointment, but the Senate refused to confirm the appointment and Taney served in that position for less than a year. Jackson appointed Taney Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1836, a seat he held until well into Lincoln's first term. In 1857 he wrote the notorious majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford; far from removing the question of slavery from the national debate, as Taney and President Buchanan anticipated, the decision reinvigorated Republican opposition to the dreadful institution and helped put Lincoln in the White House.