I run Aquamacs locally and this is not an issue. However when running remotely through ssh and xterm - when I try "emacs &" - nothing happens. The call to emacs as called by the system is always "emacs -nw" . How do I get rid of this default?

I run Aquamacs locally and this is not an issue. However when running remotely through ssh and xterm - when I try "emacs &" - nothing happens. The call to emacs as called by the system is always "emacs -nw" . How do i get rid of this default?
Try vi.

You might have an alias for emacs. Run alias to list the aliases set for your environment. Is the remote system OS X?