United States Postmaster General
John McLean took which position from Jun 1823 to Mar 1829?
John McLean John McLean ( March 11 , 1785 – April 4 , 1861 ) was an American jurist and politician who served in the United States Congress , as U.S . Postmaster General , and as a justice of the Ohio and U.S . Supreme Courts . He was often discussed for the Whig Party nominations for President . Born in New Jersey , McLean lived in several frontier towns before settling in Ridgeville , Ohio . He founded The Western Star , a weekly newspaper , and established a law practice . He won election to the United States House of Representatives , serving from 1813 until his election to the Ohio Supreme Court in 1816 . He resigned from that position to accept appointment to the administration of President James Monroe , becoming the United States Postmaster General in 1823 . Under Monroe and President John Quincy Adams , McLean presided over a major expansion of the United States Postal Service . In 1829 , President Andrew Jackson appointed McLean as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court . On the court , McLean became known as an opponent of slavery , and he was frequently mentioned as a presidential candidate for various parties . McLean received the support of delegates at the 1848 Whig National Convention , the 1856 Republican National Convention , and the 1860 Republican National Convention . He was one of two justices to dissent in the landmark case of Dred Scott v . Sandford . McLean served on the court until his death in 1861 . Early years . McLean was born in Morris County , New Jersey , the son of Fergus McLean and Sophia Blackford . After living in a succession of frontier towns , namely Morgantown , Virginia , Nicholasville , Kentucky , and Maysville , Kentucky , his family settled in Ridgeville , Warren County , Ohio in 1797 . There , McLean received his formal education and developed his interest in law , later graduating from Harvard in 1806 . It can be argued that his anti-slavery views also began to form at this time , given his upbringing as an evangelical Methodist with a focus on egalitarianism . His brother William was also a successful Ohio politician . McLean studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1807 . That same year , he founded The Western Star , a weekly newspaper at Lebanon , the Warren County seat . In 1810 Mclean , transferred ownership of the Star to his brother Nathaniel and hung up his shingle , beginning to practice law as an individual lawyer for the first time . He was elected to the U.S . House for the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Congresses , serving from March 4 , 1813 , until he resigned in 1816 to take a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court , to which he had been elected on February 17 , 1816 , replacing William W . Irvin . The State of Ohio v . Thomas D . Carneal . This case , which occurred during McLeans tenure on the Ohio Supreme Court , foreshadowed McLeans future dissent in an important fugitive slavery case , Dred Scott v . Sandford ( 1857 ) . In it , a black man named Richard Lunsford , a Kentucky slave , applied for a writ of habeas corpus to obtain freedom from his owner , Thomas D . Carneal . The Ohio Constitution of 1802 forbade slavery in the state , and at issue was whether slaves owned by a man traveling in Ohio became free once they traveled to Ohio and whether a slave who resided in Kentucky could be sent to work in Ohio without gaining his freedom . Lunsford , as a slave who was regularly sent to work in Ohio , sued on the grounds that , by having him travel to work in Cincinnati for periods of over a week , Thomas Carneal forfeited his right as Lunsfords master . The Court ruled , with McLean issuing its opinion , that since Carneal sold Lunsford to a Mr . James Riddle , the man who sent Lunsford to Cincinnati , he did in fact forfeit his right to be Lunsfords owner . The most notable portion of this case was McLeans opinion , which highlighted his personal distaste for the institution of slavery : Were it proper to consider it , the Court , as well as from the principles recognized by our Constitution and Laws , could not hesitate in declaring that SLAVERY ( emphasis in original ) , except for the punishment of crimes , is an infringement upon the sacred rights of man : Rights , which he derives from his Creator , and which are inalienable . Executive branch service . He resigned his judgeship in 1822 to take President James Monroes appointment to be Commissioner of the General Land Office , serving until 1823 , when Monroe appointed him United States Postmaster General . McLean served in that post from December 9 , 1823 , to March 7 , 1829 , under Monroe and John Quincy Adams , presiding over a massive expansion of the Post Office into the new western states and territories and the elevation of the Postmaster Generalship to a cabinet office . Supreme Court appointment and tenure . While Postmaster General , McLean supported Andrew Jackson , who offered him the posts of Secretary of War and Secretary of the Navy . McLean declined both and was instead appointed to the Supreme Court by Jackson on March 6 , 1829 , to a seat vacated by Robert Trimble . McLean was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 7 , 1829 , receiving his commission the same day . Known as The Politician on the Supreme Court , he associated himself with every party on the political spectrum , moving from a Jackson Democrat , to the Anti-Jackson Democrats , the Anti-Masonic Party , the Whigs , the Free Soilers , and finally the Republicans . McLean was touted as a potential Whig presidential candidate throughout the 1830s-40s . President John Tyler offered him the post of Secretary of War , but he declined . Because of his anti-slavery-extension positions , he was considered by the new Republican party as a presidential candidate in 1856 , but the nomination went to John C . Frémont . McLean sought the presidency again in 1860 despite turning 75 that March . He won twelve votes on the first ballot at the Republican convention ; Abraham Lincoln ultimately was nominated . Groves v . Slaughter . McLeans tendency toward economic nationalism can be seen in cases such as Groves v . Slaughter , 40 U.S . 449 ( 1841 ) . In this case , McLean upheld the right of Mississippi to restrict the introduction of slaves from other states . Though it was not necessary to the decision , McLean restated his nationalism by holding that the power to regulate commerce rested exclusively with Congress . The necessity of a uniform commercial regulation , more than any other consideration , led to the adoption of the federal Constitution.. . and unless the power be not only paramount , but exclusive , the Constitution must fail to attain one of the principle objects of its formation , McLean wrote . Groves v . Slaughter concerned a Mississippi man who had bought some slaves but believed that he could escape without paying the slave-trader due to a clause in the Mississippi constitution that seemed to forbid the importation of slaves for in-state sale after a certain date . For the Court , the issue became whether Congress possessed an exclusive right to regulate interstate commerce . If so , did it follow that states could not constitutionally regulate the slave trade ? Moreover , should the Court answer in the affirmative , on what basis could a state abolish slavery ? McLean , seeking to limit national regulation in regards to slavery , paradoxically abandoned his aforementioned position as an economic nationalist when he claimed , The power over slavery belongs to the States respectively . It is local in its character and in its effects . This was of course done in accordance with the Free Soil fear that , if the states lost their power to regulate slavery , what was to stop its spread into the free North ? McLean held that the States should be given the right to protect themselves from the avarice and intrusion of the slave dealer . All of this he contended while holding the aforementioned view , which demonstrates his tortured reconciliation of two neo-Federalist political biases , which in this case contradict : one favoring an expansive national government , the other condemning slavery . Prigg v . Pennsylvania . In Prigg v . Pennsylvania ( 1842 ) , McLean dissented . By his reasoning , it was necessary for Prigg to take Morgan to court to demonstrate that she was , in fact , a slave . As such Prigg did not have the legal pretext to remove Morgan from the state of Pennsylvania , without first gaining judicial approval . A court had to decide that Morgan was technically a slave for Prigg to have the authority to transport her across state lines . McLean suggests that this process was the only way to be fair to the slave , the owner , the free state , and the slaveholding state from which the slave came , stating that [ his ] opinion , therefore , does not rest so much upon the particular law of Pennsylvania , as upon the inherent and sovereign power of a state , to protect its jurisdiction and the peace of its citizens , in any and every mode which its discretion shall dictate , which shall not conflict with a defined power of the federal government . Passenger Cases . McLeans sense of nationalism could be seen again in his concurring opinion on the Passenger Cases ( 1849 ) . The most senior member of the Court at the time , McLean began his opinion by weighing in on the debate concerning the nature of the Commerce Clause . McLean asserted the Commerce Clause is exclusively vested in Congress . Under this view , if the federal government does not regulate a particular area of foreign or interstate commerce , it means that federal policy maintains that such an area should remain unregulated , not that states should have the right to impose individual regulations . To McLean , only one authority could exercise any given power , and the judicial task was to determine whether a particular subject fell within a power delegated to the federal government or within a power reserved to the States . McLean denied that the States could exercise a power unless the federal government chose to exercise the same power , at which point state regulation would be trumped by federal action . Although McLean recognized that both Congress and the States could impose a tax on the same object , he insisted these respective taxes result from the exercise of distinct powers , and did not represent any concurrent exercise of the same power . Dred Scott v . Sandford . In Dred Scott v . Sandford ( 1857 ) , he was one of two dissenting Justices to the majority vote , the other being Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis . Justice McLean cited Marie Louise v . Marot , an 1835 freedom suit appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court in which Presiding Judge George Mathews , Jr . stated that [ b ] eing free for one moment...it was not in the power of [ the plaintiffs ] former owner to reduce her again to slavery . In opposition to the majority ruling that African-Americans cannot and were not intended to be citizens under the US Constitution , McLean argued that they had already the right to vote in five states . His strong dissenting views are believed to have forced the hand of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney into a harsher and more polarizing opinion than he originally planned . To the argument that a colored citizen would not be an agreeable member of society , McLean responded , This is more a matter of taste than of law . He also wrote the Courts opinion denying there was a common-law copyright in American law in Wheaton v . Peters . Societies . During the 1820s , McLean was a member of the prestigious society , Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences , who counted among their members former presidents Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams and many prominent men of the day , including well-known representatives of the military , government service , medical and other professions . Death and legacy . McLean became the last surviving member of the Monroe and Adams Cabinets . He died in Cincinnati , Ohio , and was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery there . Also interred there is Stanley Matthews , another Associate Justice . During the American Civil War , Camp John McLean , a Union Army training camp in Cincinnati , was named in his honor . His son ( and Cincinnati native ) , Nathaniel C . McLean ( b . 1815 ) , was a Union general in the American Civil War . His daughter Evelyn McLean married Joseph Pannell Taylor , brother of U.S . President Zachary Taylor .