That reminds me of President Lincoln when he pointed out the probable collusion between Buchanan (the White House), Douglass (the Senate opposition leader) and Taney (the Supreme Court Chief Justice).
Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination -- piece of machinery so to speak -- compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidence of design and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.
...
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different potions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen,- Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance-and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortieses exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few-not omitting even scaffolding-or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared to yet bring such piece in-in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was struck.
https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/housedivided.htmStephen Douglas: If any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object.
James Buchanan: Whether the people can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits is a question for the Supreme Court.
Roger Taney: African Americans "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
If there wasn't a corrupt bargain, there may as well have been.
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