By 1830, Martin Van Buren was serving as vice president under Andrew Jackson. The country was changing fast: canals and railroads were challenging the old stage lines, and the Post Office was at the heart of it all. Stage contractors like Stockton & Stokes of Maryland had long dominated mail transport, even racing Peter Cooper’s experimental Tom Thumb locomotive in a famous contest to show that horses and coaches still held their own. But for Van Buren, their name meant more than just stage lines. By the late 1830s, as president, Stockton & Stokes became part of a constitutional question that he felt compelled to raise before Congress.
The issue arose through his own Postmaster General, Amos Kendall. Stockton & Stokes had secured credits and allowances under earlier contracts to carry the mails. Kendall, determined to rein in what he saw as excess, refused to honor them in full. Congress passed a special law directing the Solicitor of the Treasury to decide the matter, and the Solicitor ruled in Stockton & Stokes’ favor. Still, Kendall balked. He argued that as head of the Post Office, he retained discretion. The contractors disagreed, and the case went to court.
The courts sided with Stockton & Stokes. They said Kendall’s task was not an executive judgment but a ministerial act—a duty plainly set by law and not open to his interpretation. On that basis, the D.C. Circuit Court issued a writ of mandamus compelling him to comply, and the Supreme Court affirmed in Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes (37 U.S. 524 [1838]). For the first time, money had been drawn from the Treasury by judicial command.
Van Buren placed the matter before Congress in his 1838 State of the Union, quoting at length from the message:
“Your attention is again earnestly invited to the suggestions and recommendations submitted at the last session in respect to the District of Columbia. I feel it my duty also to bring to your notice certain proceedings at law which have recently been prosecuted in this District in the name of the United States, on the relation of Messrs. Stockton & Stokes, of the State of Maryland, against the Postmaster-General, and which have resulted in the payment of money out of the National Treasury, for the first time since the establishment of the Government, by judicial compulsion exercised by the common-law writ of mandamus issued by the circuit court of this District. The facts of the case and the grounds of the proceedings will be found fully stated in the report of the decision, and any additional information which you may desire will be supplied by the proper Department. No interference in the particular case is contemplated. The money has been paid, the claims of the prosecutors have been satisfied, and the whole subject, so far as they are concerned, is finally disposed of; but it is on the supposition that the case may be regarded as an authoritative exposition of the law as it now stands that I have thought it necessary to present it to your consideration. The object of the application to the circuit court was to compel the Postmaster-General to carry into effect an award made by the Solicitor of the Treasury, under a special act of Congress for the settlement of certain claims of the relators on the Post-Office Department, which award the Postmaster-General declined to execute in full until he should receive further legislative direction on the subject. If the duty imposed on the Postmaster-General by that law was to be regarded as one of an official nature, belonging to his office as a branch of the executive, then it is obvious that the constitutional competency of the judiciary to direct and control him in its discharge was necessarily drawn in question; and if the duty so imposed on the Postmaster-General was to be considered as merely ministerial, and not executive, it yet remained to be shown that the circuit court of this District had authority to interfere by mandamus, such a power having never before been asserted or claimed by that court. With a view to the settlement of these important questions, the judgment of the circuit court was carried by a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the United States.
In the opinion of that tribunal the duty imposed on the Postmaster-General was not an official executive duty, but one of a merely ministerial nature. The grave constitutional questions which had been discussed were therefore excluded from the decision of the case, the court, indeed, expressly admitting that with powers and duties properly belonging to the executive no other department can interfere by the writ of mandamus; and the question therefore resolved itself into this: Has Congress conferred upon the circuit court of this District the power to issue such a writ to an officer of the General Government commanding him to perform a ministerial act? A majority of the court have decided that it has, but have rounded their decision upon a process of reasoning which in my judgment renders further legislative provision indispensable to the public interests and the equal administration of justice.”
Van Buren admitted the contractors had been paid and the case was finished, but he underlined the precedent it set. His concern was not mainly over whether the Postmaster General’s task was ministerial or executive, but that the courts had claimed the power to compel a federal officer at all, and had done so on the assumption that Congress’s silence implied consent. For Van Buren, that was dangerous ground.
In the aftermath, courts did not make a habit of using mandamus to drain the Treasury. Later decisions narrowed its use, and Congress created the Court of Claims in 1855 to give contractors and citizens a proper channel to press their claims. But the lesson Van Buren wanted Congress to hear still resonates: constitutional boundaries should not be left to judicial inference. If Congress intends for courts to command executive officers, it must say so plainly. If not, it must draw the line.
In the next few paragraphs of Van Buren's speech, he dug deeper into his opinion that the court’s reasoning created two sets of rules, one for federal officers in the states, and another for those stationed in the District of Columbia. In the states, officers were beyond the reach of mandamus; in the District, they could be compelled by it. This, he argued, violated the principle of equal justice under the law. To illustrate his concern, Van Buren pointed to the English Court of King’s Bench, which claimed its power to issue writs of mandamus from the monarch’s personal authority. Such a royal prerogative, Van Buren believed, had no place in a republic. His intent, was not to condemn the courts, but to call on Congress to clarify the law and remove these “disparaging discrepancies”, ensuring ensure that all executive officers of the United States stood under one consistent rule.
"It has long since been decided by the Supreme Court that neither that tribunal nor the circuit courts of the United States, held within the respective States, possess the power in question; but it is now held that this power, denied to both of these high tribunals (to the former by the Constitution and to the latter by Congress), has been by its legislation vested in the circuit court of this District. No such direct grant of power to the circuit court of this District is claimed, but it has been held to result by necessary implication from several sections of the law establishing the court. One of these sections declares that the laws of Maryland, as they existed at the time of the cession, should be in force in that part of the District ceded by that State, and by this provision the common law in civil and criminal cases, as it prevailed in Maryland in 1801, was established in that part of the District.
In England the court of king's bench--because the Sovereign, who, according to the theory of the constitution, is the fountain of justice originally sat there in person, and is still deemed to be present in construction of law--alone possesses the high power of issuing the writ of mandamus, not only to inferior jurisdictions and corporations, but also to magistrates and others, commanding them in the King' s name to do what their duty requires in cases where there is a vested right and no other specific remedy. It has been held in the case referred to that as the Supreme Court of the United States is by the Constitution rendered incompetent to exercise this power, and as the circuit court of this District is a court of general jurisdiction in cases at common law, and the highest court of original jurisdiction in the District, the right to issue the writ of mandamus is incident to its common-law powers. Another ground relied upon to maintain the power in question is that it was included by fair construction in the powers granted to the circuit courts of the United States by the act "to provide for the more convenient organization of the courts of the United States," passed 13th February, 1801; that the act establishing the circuit court of this District, passed the 27th day of February, 1801, conferred upon that court and the judges thereof the same powers as were by law vested in the circuit courts of the United States and in the judges of the said courts; that the repeal of the first-mentioned act, which took place in the next year, did not divest the circuit court of this District of the authority in dispute, but left it still clothed with the powers over the subject which, it is conceded, were taken away from the circuit courts of the United States by the repeal of the act of 13th February, 1801.
Admitting that the adoption of the laws of Maryland for a portion of this District confers on the circuit court thereof, in that portion, the transcendent extrajudicial prerogative powers of the court of king's bench in England, or that either of the acts of Congress by necessary implication authorizes the former court to issue a writ of mandamus to an officer of the United States to compel him to perform a ministerial duty, the consequences are in one respect the same. The result in either case is that the officers of the United States stationed in different parts of the United States are, in respect to the performance of their official duties, subject to different laws and a different supervision--those in the States to one rule, and those in the District of Columbia to another and a very different one. In the District their official conduct is subject to a judicial control from which in the States they are exempt.
Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the expediency of vesting such a power in the judiciary in a system of government constituted like that of the United States, all must agree that these disparaging discrepancies in the law and in the administration of justice ought not to he permitted to continue; and as Congress alone can provide the remedy, the subject is unavoidably presented to your consideration."
References
Van Buren, Martin. “Second Annual Message.” 3 Dec. 1838. The American Presidency Project, edited by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, University of California, Santa Barbara, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/second-annual-message-4 Accessed 24 Sept. 2025.
“Peter Cooper’s Tom Thumb Locomotive and the Great Race with a Horse.” B&O Railroad Museum / Smithsonian Institution. Accessed 24 Sept. 2025.
Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes, 37 U.S. (12 Pet.) 524. Supreme Court of the United States. 1838.
“The Balance of Power.” AI-generated image. Created with OpenAI’s DALL·E, 24 Sept. 2025.
Note: Drafting assistance provided by AI (OpenAI’s ChatGPT), with all sources verified and cited by the author.
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