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CALHOUN, John Caldwell,
statesman, born in Abbeville district, South Carolina, 18 March, 1782; died in
Washington, District of Columbia, 31 March, 1850. His grandfather, James
Calhoun, immigrated from Donegal, Ireland, to Pennsylvania in 1733, bringing
with him a family of children, of whom Patrick Calhoun was one, a boy six years
old. The family removed to western Virginia, again moved farther south, and in
1756 established the "Calhoun settlement" in the upper part of
South Carolina. This was near the frontier of the Cherokee Indians; conflicts
between them and the whites were frequent and bloody, and the Calhoun family
suffered severe loss. Patrick Calhoun was distinguished for his undaunted
courage and perseverance in these struggles, and was placed in command of
provincial rangers raised for the defense of the frontier. His resolute and
active character gave him credit among his people, and he was called to
important service during the revolutionary war, in support of American
independence. By profession he was a surveyor, and gained success by his
skill. He was a man of studious and thoughtful habits, and well versed in
English literature. His father was a Presbyterian, and he adhered to the
religion of his fathers. In 1770 he married Martha Caldwell, a native of
Virginia, daughter of an Irish Presbyterian immigrant, whose family was devoted
to the American cause, and some of whom were badly treated by the Tories.
By heredity, John Caldwell Calhoun was therefore entitled to
manhood from his race, to vigorous convictions in faith, and to patriotic
devotion to liberty and right. He was early taught to read the Bible, and
trained in Calvinistic doctrines; and it is said that he was also devoted to
history and metaphysics, but was compelled to desist from study because of
impaired health. His father was a member for many years, during and after the
revolution, of the legislature of his state, and his counsels made a deep
impression on his son, though he died when the latter was thirteen years of age.
The son remembered hearing the father say that "that government was best
which allowed the largest amount of individual liberty compatible with social
order," and that the improvements in political science would consist in
throwing off many restraints then deemed necessary to all organized society.
Until Mr. Calhoun was ready for College, he was under the instruction of his
brother-in-law, the Rev. Dr. Waddell, a Presbyterian clergyman, and went to Yale
in 1802. He evinced great originality of thought, devotion to study, and a lofty
ambition, which won him the honors of his class, and the prophetic approval of
President Dwight in the declaration, after an earnest dispute with him on the
rightful source of political power, that he would reach the greatest eminence in
life, and might attain the presidency. He studied law with H. W. Desaussure, of
South Carolina, for a time, but was graduated at Litchfield, Connecticut, and
was admitted to the bar in 1807. He took part in a meeting of the people
denouncing the British outrage on the frigate "Chesapeake," and
was soon elected to the legislature, and entered the house of representatives in
November, 1811, in his thirtieth year.
Few men were better trained for the career before him. Simple
and sincere in his tastes, habits, and manners, strict and pure in his morals,
and incorruptible in his integrity, severe and logical in his style, analytic in
his studies, and thorough in his investigations, with a genius to perceive and
comprehend the Massachusetts of elements that entered into the solution of the
problems of our political life, and with a capacity for philosophic
generalization of principles unequalled by any contemporary, he began,
continued, and ended his life, in the manifestation of the highest qualities for
debate, for disquisitions upon constitutional government and free institutions,
for discussions on foreign relations, for the investigation of political and
social economy, and for the conduct with ability of the general affairs and even
for the details of departmental administration. When Calhoun entered congress,
war with Great Britain was imminent. He was a member of the committee on foreign
affairs. He drew a report which placed before the country the issue of war, or
submission to wrong. He urged a declaration of war, and upheld the cause of his
country with an eloquence that inspired patriotic enthusiasm, and with a logical
force that gave fortitude and zeal to the army and navy as well as to the
people.
At the close of the war in 1815 the country was
confronted with questions of currency, finance, commercial policy, and internal
development, which offered to the genius of Calhoun fruitful subjects for his
original and patriotic study. He pressed upon congress the bank bill, the tariff
of 1816, and a system of roads and canals. On these questions he afterward
modified his views very greatly, but defended his real consistency of thought,
under the appearance of inconsistency, by saying that the remedies proper for
one condition of things were improper for others. A question arose in the
discussion of the act to carry into effect the treaty of peace, as to the
relation of the treaty-making authority to the powers of congress. He maintained
the supremacy of the treaty power: that it prevailed over a law of congress; and
that congress was bound to pass a law to carry a treaty into effect. The
celebrated William Pinckney, then in the zenith of his fame, declared that Mr.
Calhoun had brought into the debate "the strong power of genius from a
higher sphere than that of argument." Its power was undoubted, though
the truth of his theory may well be questioned.
In 1817 Mr. Monroe called Mr.
Calhoun to the war department, which he filled until 1825. In this new field he
won real fame; to this day the department, by the testimony of recent
secretaries, feels the impress of his genius for organization and for the
methodical adjustment of the functions of its various branches to each other and
to its head. In his report to congress in 1823 he truly said that in a large
disbursement of public money through a great number of disbursing agents, there
had been no defalcation nor loss of a cent to the government" that he had
reduced the expenses of the army from $451 to $287 per man, with no loss of
efficiency or comfort. He organized the department by a bill that he drew for
the purpose ; and, under rules prescribed by him, introduced order and
accountability in every branch of service, and established a system that has
survived, in a large degree, to this day. Mr. Clay, in his eulogy on Mr.
Calhoun, said : "Such was the high estimate I formed of his transcendent
talents, that if, at the end of his service in the executive department under
Mr. Monroe's administration, the duties of which he performed with such signal
ability, he had been called to the highest office in the government, I should
have felt perfectly assured that, under his auspices, the honor, the prosperity,
and the glory of our country would have been safely placed." During his
service in the department, contention arose between him and General Jackson as
to the conduct of the latter in the Seminole war, which was the chief cause of
the breach between them during Jackson's administration.
In 1824 there were four candidates for the presidency, which
resulted in the election of John Q. Adams by the
house of representatives. A large majority elected Mr. Calhoun vice-president.
His vice-presidency marks the beginning of Mr. Calhoun's life as a
constitutional statesman. He said in 1837: "The station, from its
leisure, gave me a good opportunity to study the genius of the prominent measure
of the day, called then the American system, by which I profited." From
that time he by profound study mastered the principles of our constitutional
system, and may be said to have founded a school of political philosophy, of
which the doctrines are maintained in his speeches, reports, and public
writings. Mr. Clay's American system, to which Mr. Calhoun referred, was in full
success. The bank, the protective policy, the internal improvement system, and
the "general welfare" rule for constitutional construction,
composed this celebrated policy.
In 1828 General Jackson was
elected president and Mr. Calhoun re-elected vice-president. The Jackson
administration was the period during which the Democratic Party under Jackson
and the Whig party under Clay were organized for their great struggle for
ascendancy. Mr. Calhoun took from the beginning the most prominent part in the
attitude assumed by South Carolina against the protective system, which had
reached its climax in the tariff law of i828. In December, 1828, he drew up the "Exposition,"
which, with amendments, was adopted by the legislature of South Carolina; also
an address, 26 July, 1831, on the relations of the states to the general
government; also a report for the legislature in November, 1831; also an address
to the people of the state at the close of that session; also a letter to
Governor Hamilton oi1 state interposition, 28 August, 1832; also an address to
the people of the United States by the convention of South Carolina in November,
1832. In these papers he maintained the doctrine of state interposition, or "nullification."
During Jackson's first term the influence of Mr.
Van Buren became paramount with the president, and the alienation between
the latter and Mr. Calhoun became irreconcilable. Mr. Van Buren was elected
vice-president in 1832. The South Carolina convention in November, 1832, passed
the ordinance nullifying the tariff laws of 1828 and 1832, and Mr. Calhoun was
elected to the senate and took his seat in December. having resigned the
vice-presidency. He appeared as the champion of his state, and defender of its
ordinance of nullification, standing alone, but firm and undaunted. Both parties
were opposed to him, and the administration menacingly see a man of less
intellect or less courage would have shrunk from the conflict. But he was
courageous in conviction, and fearless of personal consequences. He gave up the
second and surrendered all hope of the first office in the country, to defend
his state in her solitary attitude of opposition to the protective policy.
The president's proclamation of November, 1832, was followed
by the proposed "force bill." Mr. Calhoun, in February, 1833,
made an elaborate speech against it. To this Mr.
Webster replied with great fullness upon certain resolutions proposed by Mr.
Calhoun on the general question, whereupon Mr. Calhoun called up his
resolutions, and made, 26 February, 1833, a speech of extraordinary force, to
which Mr. Webster never replied. The issue in this debate of the giants was on
the first resolution, as follows: "That the people of the several states
comprising these United States are united as parties to a constitutional
compact, to which the people of each state acceded, as a separate and sovereign
community, each binding itself by its own particular ratification; and that the
union, of which the said compact is the bond, is a union between the states
ratifying the same."
Mr. Webster denied the "compact" theory, and
is said to have made use of much of the materials gathered by Judge Story in the
preparation of the first volume of his commentaries on the constitution,
published in 1833. Almost all of the Democratic Party, and many of the Whigs,
held that the constitution was a compact, but denied the right of nullification
by a state; and some of these denied the right of secession to a state, holding
the indissolubility of the union of these states because bound by a perpetual
compact. They admitted Mr. Calhoun's premise of "compact," but
denied his conclusions. Mr. Webster denied his premise, and therefore his
conclusion. Many, also, who believed in the right of secession, denied the right
of nullification. Mr. Calhoun stood, therefore, alone in the senate,
main-raining the premise of a "constitutional compact." and his
conclusion of the right of a state to nullify a law while remaining in the
union, or to secede from the union entirely.
The true nature of the doctrine of nullification was this :
1. It was claimed as a remedy within the union, reserved to the state according
to the constitution ; a remedy for evils in the union; and to save, but not to
dissolve, it. 2. It was claimed for the state, as a party to the compact, to
declare when it was violated, and to pronounce void an unconstitutional law ;
not to annul a valid law, but to declare void an unconstitutional law. 3. Its
effect was (as claimed) to make wholly inoperative the law so declared void,
because unconstitutional, within the state, and it seems that the United States
should, according to the doctrine, thereupon suspend its operation elsewhere,
and appeal to the states to amend the constitution by a new grant of power to
make valid the law so de-dared void by the state. 4. This declaration of nullity
of a law could not be made by the government of a state, but only by a
convention of its people; that is, that the people of a state in convention,
which had ratified in convention the constitution originally, should have
power-to declare unconstitutional an act done by the government created by that
constitution.
The genius Of Mr. Calhoun was equal to the plausible and
powerful support of this theory, which, however inconclusive from his premise of
the constitutional compact, can not impair the truth of that premise, which,
with transcendent ability and accurate historic research, he established on an
impregnable foundation. The discussion had valuable results. Mr. Clay introduced
his "compromise tariff" of 1833, which was passed before the
session closed, with the support of Mr. Calhoun. It provided for a gradual
reduction of duties during ten years, after which duties should be laid on a
revenue basis. This issue ended, the re-charter of the bank of the United
States, and the removal of the deposits there from by President Jackson, and the
general question of currency, became prominent. Executive patronage also came
into the debates of the last term of President Jackson: On all these questions
Mr. Calhoun acted with the Whig party. He preferred the bank of the United
States to what was called the "pet bank system" of the
executive. He condemned what he deemed executive usurpation, and denounced the
influence of patronage as tending to the organization of parties upon the
principle "of the cohesive power of public plunder." He claimed
to belong to neither party, but to lead the band of "state-rights"
men, whose course was directed by principle, and not by the motives of party
triumph or personal ambition.
He took no part in the presidential election of 1836; but on
the accession of Mr. Van Buren to the presidency, and in the extra session
called by him in 1837, to consider the financial panic of that year, he took
ground for a total separation of the government from a bank or banks, favored
the constitutional treasury plan, and acted generally with the Democratic Party.
General Harrison was elected president in 1840, but died 4 April, 1841, and was
succeeded by Vice-President John Tyler. An extra session of congress was called
in the summer of 1841, when the struggle of Mr. Clay for the restoration of his
American system--including a bank, protective tariff, internal improvements, and
a distribution of the proceeds of the public lands--brought on a memorable
discussion, in which Mr. Calhoun was a leader, and facile precepts, of the
Democratic Party.
If the student of our history will consult the speeches of
Mr. Calhoun in the senate, on the bank question generally, and on currency, from
1837 till 1842, he will find how thorough his analysis of these abstruse
questions was, and how broad were his generalizations of principles. When the
tariff question came up again in 1842, the compromise of 1833 was rudely
overthrown, and the protective system placed in the ascendant. Mr. Calhoun
discussed the question in several able speeches, but delivered one 5 August,
1842. of comprehensive force, in which he discriminated with analytic precision
between a revenue and a protective duty, holding a tariff for revenue only to be
constitutional and right. He discussed the question of wages, and closed his
speech with an animation not to be forgotten by one, who heard him utter these
sentences: "The great popular party is already rallied almost en masse
around the banner which is leading the party to its final triumph. The few that
still lag will soon be rallied under its ample folds. On that banner is
inscribed: Free trade ; low duties; no debt separation from banks ;
economy ; retrenchment, and strict adherence to the constitution. Victory in
such a cause will be great and glorious ; and long will it perpetuate the
liberty and prosperity of the country."
The hostility of President Tyler
to the American system made its restoration during his administration only
partial; but questions of deeper import came before the country, from which
results of great consequence have followed. Mr. Tyler had frequently resorted to
the veto power to defeat Mr. Clay's measures. Mr.
Clay proposed an amendment of the constitution for the abrogation of the veto
power, and on 28 February, 1842, Mr. Calhoun delivered a speech against this
proposition, he vindicated and sustained the veto as an essential part of "the
beautiful and profound system established by the constitution." The
proposition never came to a vote.
In February, 1844, the unfortunate explosion of a gun on the
deck of the "Princeton," near Washington, robbed the country of
two members of President Tyler's cabinet. Mr. Calhoun, who had ceased to be
senator, in March, 1843, filled the vacancy in the state department occasioned
by the death of Judge Upshur. The new secretary considered two questions of
great importance. At that time the union had no Pacific population, California
had not been acquired, and Oregon was not yet within our grasp. Great Britain
had an adverse claim to Oregon. Our title rested on discovery and the French
treaty of 1803. Access to it there was none but by sea around Cape Horn or
across the isthmus. Mr. Calhoun vindicated our rights in a diplomatic
correspondence upon grounds on which it was finally adjusted by treaty in 1846.
In his speech on the Oregon question, 16 March, 1846, he spoke of the physical
elements of civilization--steam and electricity. As to the latter (when the
telegraph was in its infancy) with wonderful prevision he said: "Magic
wires are stretching themselves in all directions over the earth, and, when
their mystic meshes shall have been united and perfected, our globe itself will
become endowed with sensitiveness, so that whatever touches on any one point
will be instantly felt on every other." Again -- "Peace is
pre-eminently our policy. Providence has given us an inheritance stretching
across the entire continent from ocean to ocean. Our great mission, as a people,
is to occupy this vast domain; to replenish it with an intelligent, virtuous,
and industrious population to convert the forests into cultivated fields to
drain the swamps and morasses, and cover them with rich harvests; to build up
cities, towns, and villages in every direction, and to unite the whole by the
most rapid intercourse between all the parts. Secure peace, and time, under the
guidance of a sagacious and cautious policy, 'a wise and masterly inactivity,'
will speedily accomplish the whole. War can make us great; but let it never be
forgotten that peace only can make us both great and free."
Another question, the annexation of Texas, occupied his mind,
and gave full scope to his fertile genius. To our internal concerns it was as
important as to our foreign relations. It can only be fully comprehended by
considering the slavery question, with which it became involved in the act of
annexation and in its consequences. In the federal convention of 1787 the
diversity of industries growing up in states where slavery did and did not exist
was clearly foreseen. This difference was marked by the terms northern and
southern, slaveholding and non-slaveholding, commercial and agricultural states.
The well-known antipathy of people, among whom slavery does not exist, to that
form of labor gave rise to strong feelings in the northern states for its
abolition. Among southern people there was much of regret that it had ever been
established; but how to deal with it was to them a practical question for their
most serious consideration. As has been well said, "We had the wolf by
the ears--to hold on, was a great evil. to let go, who could estimate the
consequences?"
It was important as a question of property, but
of far greater moment as a social and political problem. What relations, social
and political, should exist between these diverse races, when both were free and
equal in citizenship? One thing the south felt most strongly. The solution of
this difficult problem should be left to those who were personally interested in
the continuance of slavery~ and involved in the consequences of its abolition.
Accordingly, the federal constitution left it, for the states to deal with,
threw around it interstate guarantees, and put it beyond the reach of the
federal government. Without these guarantees, the union could not have been
formed. The two sections watched their respective growth in population, and
their settlement of our territories, as bearing on their related powers in the
federal government. The north had a large majority in the house of
representatives, and in the Electoral College.
In the senate, by a species of common law, an equilibrium was maintained between
the sections, one free state being admitted with one slave state for nearly
fifty years of our history.
In 1820-'1 the Missouri agitation arose, which was quieted
for the moment by an agreement that no state should be admitted north of lat. 36°
30' which allowed slavery, while south of that line they might be admitted with
or without slavery, as the people of the state should decide. Many
constitutional lawyers always denied the constitutionality of this Missouri
compromise, though it is said Mr. Calhoun admitted its constitutionality,
when applied to the territories, but not as to a state. With a senate equally
divided between the sections, the southern states felt secure against action
hostile to slavery by the government. But the equilibrium of the sections in
that body being overthrown, they would be subject to the will of a northern
majority in both houses, limited only by its interpretation of its
constitutional power over slavery. In 1835, Texas, peopled by emigrants from the
union, but chiefly from the southern states, carrying their slaves with them,
won its independence at San Jacinto, which was acknowledged by the United States
in 1836. The territory had once been ours; its people were of our own flesh and
blood; emigration pressed into its fields from the south; the government of
Great Britain was threatening to keep Texas independent, and, by procuring the
abolition of slavery there, to operate to stop slavery extension toward the
southwest, and place an abolition frontier upon the borders of Louisiana and
Arkansas.
Mr. Calhoun was too sagacious not to see the hostile policy
of England. In a series of papers he exposed the scheme, and negotiated a treaty
with Texas for her incorporation into the union. The treaty failed, but the
annexation of Texas became a pivotal question in the presidential election of
1844, and Mr. Polk was elected chiefly upon that
issue. Many people looked upon it as an increase of the slave power in the
union, but the admission of Texas was made subject, as to any new states to be
formed out of it, to the provisions of the Missouri compromise. Mr. Calhoun was
elected to the senate on retiring from the state department, and did all he
could for the peaceable adjustment of the Oregon question, and also to prevent
war with Mexico. He deprecated the war with Mexico, and in strong terms
de-elated it was unnecessary. When it was finally determined on, he was greatly
disturbed, and pre-dieted evils, which even he could not see.
He said : "It has dropped a curtain between the
present and the future, which to me is impenetrable; and, for the first time
since I have been in public life, I am unable to see the future. It has closed
the first volume of our political history under the constitution, and opened the
second, and no mortal can tell what will be written in it." In his
speech on the "three-million bill "(9 February, 1847) he
explained that what constituted this "impenetrable curtain" was
the acquisition of territory as the result of the war, and the slavery question,
which would be involved in the legislation respecting it. The slavery question,
during the administrations of Jackson and Van
Buren, had been agitated in many forms. Abolition petitions had poured in
upon congress, and the power of congress had been invoked to prevent the
transmission through the mails of abolition documents. On this point Mr. Calhoun
differed with President Jackson ; the former maintaining in an able report
(February, 1836) that the mail could not be the instrument for incendiary
purposes against the laws of the states, but that congress had no power to
decide what should be transmitted and what not, without state action.
Soon after the Mexican war began, the acquisition of
territory from Mexico was strongly insisted on; and at once the anti-slavery
party proposed what was known as the Wihnot proviso, by which it was declared
that slavery should never be allowed in any Mexican territory acquired by
treaty. The agitation convulsed the country. On 19 February, 1847, Mr. Calhoun
set forth his views in certain resolutions, of which the substance is in the
first two: "That the territories of the United States belong to the
several states composing the union, and are held by them as their joint and
common property; that congress, as the joint agent and representative of the
states of the union, has no right to make any law or do any act whatever that
shall, directly or by its effects, make any discrimination between the states of
this union by which any of them shall be deprived of its full and equal right in
any territory of the United States acquired or to be acquired."
Chief-Justice Taney, delivering the opinion of the court,
held the same doctrine in the Dred Scott
decision in 1857, in which six of the nine judges concurred. The agitation
continued until the session of 1849-'50, when the compromise measures were
proposed and passed. Mr. Calhoun made his last speech (read for him by Senator
Mason, of Virginia) upon this subject, March, 1850. With the exception of a few
remarks made afterward in reply to Mr. Foote and to Mr. Webster, he never again
addressed the senate.
In the last years of his life he prepared two works, the one
"A Disquisition on Government," and the other "A Discourse on the
Constitution and Government of the United States," both comprehended in a
volume of 400 pages. These methodical treatises on the science of government and
the federal constitution place him in the highest position among original
thinkers upon political philosophy. In estimating Mr. Calhoun's position
absolutely and relatively, he is liable to a less favorable verdict than his
merits demand. He represented a southern state, defended her slave institutions,
belonged to a minority section, and his views have been condemned by the
majority section of the country. The newspaper and periodical press, therefore,
will deny him the pre-eminence which we claim for him as a broad and philosophic
statesman, as a constitutional lawyer, and as a leader of thought in the field
of political philosophy. His fame results from the possession of an ardent,
sincere, and intense soul which gave impulse and motive to a mind endowed with
extraordinary analytic force, acute and subtle in its insight, fertile in
suggestion, full of resources, careful, laborious, and profound in research and
comprehensive in its deduction of general principles. He had a large
imagination, though he displayed little fancy. His vigorous, compact, and
clean-cleaving logic put the objects of his creative power into sharply defined
shapes, arranged in perspicuous order, with a severe, trenchant, and condensed
rhetoric.
In his reply on 10 March, 1838, to Mr. Clay's personal attack
he seems to have defined his own characteristics while he denied them to his
great opponent. He said: " I cannot retort on the senator the charge of
being metaphysical. I cannot accuse him of possessing the powers of analysis and
generalization, those higher faculties of the mind (called metaphysical by those
who do not possess them) which decompose and resolve into their elements the
complex masses of ideas that exist in the world of mind, as chemistry does the
bodies that surround us in the material world, and without which these deep and
hidden causes which are in constant action and producing such mighty changes in
the condition of society would operate unseen and undetected .... Throughout the
whole of my service I have never followed events, but have taken my stand in
advance, openly and freely avowing my opinions on all questions, and leaving it
to time and experience to condemn or approve my course." He believed the
constitution to be a "beautiful and profound system," and the
union under it an inestimable blessing.
His " Disquisition " and "Discourse"
were devoted to showing how the true philosophy of government was realized
in that constitution. An epitome of his philosophy may be attempted, though it
will fail to do it justice. He believed in the rights of the individual man, for
whose benefit society and government exist--" society being primary, to
preserve and perfect our race; and government secondary and subordinate, to
preserve and perfect society. Both are, however, necessary to the existence and
well-being of our race and equally of divine ordination." But
government ordained to protect. may, if not guarded, be made a means of
oppression. " That by which this is prevented, by whatever name called,
is what is meant by constitution .... Constitution
stands to government as government stands to society .... Constitution is the
contrivance of man, while government is of divine ordination. Man is left to
perfect what the wisdom of the Infinite ordained as necessary to preserve the
race."
He then takes up the question, How shall government be
constituted so as by its own organism to resist the tendency to abuse of power ?
The first device is the responsibility of rulers through suffrage to the ruled
under proper guards and with sufficient enlightenment of the voters to
understand their rights and their duty. This secures those who elect against
abuse by those who are elected. But this is far from all that is needed. When
society is homogeneous in interests this may suffice, for it insures a control
of no man's right by any other than himself and those who have common interest
with him. But where, as is generally the case, society has diverse and inimical
interests, then suffrage is no security, for each representative speaks the will
of each constituency, and constituencies, through representation, may war on
each other, and the majority interests may devour those of the minority through
their representatives. Suffrage thus only transfers the propensity to abuse
power from constituencies to representatives, and despotism is secured through
that suffrage which was devised to prevent it. The remedy for this evil is to be
found in such an organism as will give to each of the diverse interests a
separate voice and permit the majority of each to speak in a separate branch of
the organism, and not take the voice of the majority of the whole community as
the only expression of the people's will. To do the last bases government on the
numerical or absolute majority" to do the first is to base it on the "concurrent
constitutional majority." The latter is a government of the whole
people; the former only of a majority of them.
This principle is illustrated by all the so-called checks and
balances in all constitutional governments, and by the concurrent majority of
numbers in the house of representatives and of states in the senate in our own
federal system. This principle, established with scientific precision, is the
fruitful source of all of Mr. Calhoun's doctrines. His vindication of the veto
power was against the claim for the numerical majority. His nullification was
the requirement of the concurrent majority of the several states to a law of
doubtful constitutionality. His proposed amendment of the constitution by a dual
executive, through which each section would have a distinct representation, was
an application of the same principle ; and his intense opposition to the
admission of California, by which the senate was to be controlled by a northern
majority, was his protest against the overthrow of the concurrent consent of the
south, through an equipoised senate, to the legislative action of congress. Mr.
Calhoun saw the south in a minority in all branches of the government, and he
desired, by giving to the south a concurrent and distinct voice in the organism
of our system to secure her against invasion of her rights by a hostile
majority, and thus to make her safe in the union.
When the abolition party was small in numbers and weak in
organization, and public men treated its menaces with contempt, Mr. Calhoun saw
the cloud like a man's hand which was to overspread our political heavens. His
prophetic eye saw the danger and his voice proclaimed it. In looking at the
growth of the abolition feeling in 1836, he predicted that Mr.
Webster"would, however reluctant, be compelled to yield to that
doctrine or be driven into obscurity." He said, further: "Be
assured that emancipation itself would not satisfy these fanatics. That gained,
the next step would be to raise the Negroes to a social and political equality
with the whites."
In 1849 he wrote the "Address to the People of the
South," and, with a precision that is startling, drew the following
picture of the results of abolition: " If it [emancipation] ever should
be effected, it will be through the agency of the federal government, controlled
by the dominant power of the northern states of the confederacy against the
resistance and struggle of the southern. It can then only be effected by the
prostration of the white race, and that would necessarily engender the bitterest
feelings of hostility between them and the north; but the reverse would be the
case between the blacks of the south and the people of the north. Owing their
emancipation to them, they would regard them as friends, guardians, and patrons,
and centre accordingly all their sympathy in them. The people of the north would
not fail to reciprocate, and to favor them instead of the whites. Under the
influence of such feelings, and impelled by fanaticism and love of power, they
would not; stop at emancipation. Another step would be taken, to raise them to a
political and social equality with their former owners by giving them the right
of voting and holding public offices under the federal government .... But when
once raised to an equality they would become the fast political associates of
the north, acting and voting with them on all questions, and by thispolitical
union between them holding the south in complete subjection. The blacks and the
profligate whites that might unite with them would become the principal
recipients of federal offices and patronage, and would in consequence be raised
above the whites in the south in the political and social scale. We would, in a
word, change conditions with them--a degradation greater than has ever yet
fallen to the lot of a free and enlightened people, and one from which we could
not escape but by fleeing the homes of ourselves and ancestors, and by
abandoning our country to our former slaves, to become the permanent abode of
disorder, anarchy, poverty, misery, and wretchedness."
The estimate we have placed upon the genius of this
remarkable man is confirmed by the touching tributes of his great rivals at the
time of his death. Henry Clay, after paying a tribute to his private character
and to his patriotism and public honor, said: "He possessed an elevated
genius of the highest order. In felicity of generalization of the subjects of
which his mind treated I have seen him surpassed by no one, and the charm and
captivating influence of his colloquial powers have been felt by all who have
conversed with him."
Daniel Webster, his chief competitor in constitutional
debate, said: " He was a man of undoubted genius and of commanding
talent. All the country and all the world admit that .... I think there is not
one of us but felt, when he last addressed us from his seat in the senate, his
form still erect, with clear tones, and an impressive and, I may say, an
imposing manner, who did not feel that he might imagine that we saw before us a
senator of Rome when Rome survived .... He had the basis, the indispensable
basis of all high character, and that was unspotted integrity, unimpeached
honor, and character. If he had aspirations, they were high and honorable and
noble Firm in his purpose, perfectly patriotic and honest, aside from that large
regard for that species of distinction that conducted him to eminent stations
for the benefit of the republic, I do not believe he had a selfish motive or
selfish feeling."
Mr. Everett once said: " Calhoun, Clay, Webster! I
name them in alphabetical order. What other precedence can be assigned them?
Clay the great leader, Webster the great orator, Calhoun the great thinker."
John Stuart Mill speaks of the great ability of his posthumous work, and of its
author as "a man who has displayed powers as a speculative political
thinker superior to any who has appeared in American polities since the authors
of ' The Federalist.'"
It has been said that Calhoun labored to destroy the Union,
that he might be the chief of a southern confederacy because he could not be
president of the Union. The writer remembers an interview that he witnessed
between Calhoun and a friend within a month of his death, when the hopes and strife's
of his ambition were soon, as he knew, to be laid in the grave. The friend asked
him if nothing could be done to save the Union. "Will not the Missouri
compromise do it?" He replied, the light in his great eyes expressing
an intense solemnity of feeling that can never be forgotten, "With my
constitutional objections I could not vote for it, but I would acquiesce in it
to save this Union!"
Mr. Calhoun in his private life as husband, father, friend,
neighbor, and citizen, was pure, upright, sincere, honest, and beyond reproach.
He was simple and unpretending in manners, rigid and strict in his morals,
temperate and discreet in his habits; genial, earnest, and fascinating in
conversation, and magnanimous in his public and private relations. He was
beloved by his family and friends, honored and almost idolized by his state, and
died as he had lived, respected and revered for his genius and his honorable
life by his contemporaries of all parties. He was stainless in private and
public life, as a man. a patriot, and a philosopher, and his fame is a noble
heritage to his country and to mankind. The view on page 500 represents the
summer residence and office of Mr. Calhoun at Fort Hill, to which during his
career many men of distinction repaired to enjoy his society and his liberal
hospitality. Calhoun's works were collected and edited by Richard K. Cralle (6
vols., New York, 1853-'4).
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MATHEW BRADY GALLERY, NY - John C. Calhoun
... John C. Calhoun 1782 - 1850, Mathew Brady photographed John C. Calhoun
around the
winter of 1849 and used the image as the basis for the production of many ...
ALGenWeb : Biography :
John C. Calhoun
John Caldwell Calhoun, 1782-1850. John C. Calhoun is best remembered as an
American
statesman and political philosopher. From 1811 until his death, Calhoun ...
Calhoun
and Popular Rule -- The Political Theory of the Disquisition and Discourse
by H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
John
C. Calhoun
... near Abbeville, South Carolina, on March 18, 1782. The son of a
slave-holding ... Calhoun,
John C., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, 15 vols., ed. by Robert L ...
John
C. Calhoun Was Born
... Revolutionary Period (1764-1789). Calhoun Monument, Charleston, S.C.
Calhoun: A man
of stone in stone Enlarge this image, John C. Calhoun Was Born March 18, 1782,
...
USA: John C.
Calhoun
... March 18, 1782 in South Carolina, Calhoun was born ... only industrial North
and hurt
slaveholding South, John C. Calhoun became the only vice president to ...
John C. Calhoun
... John C. Calhoun was born on March 18, 1782 in Abbeville District, South
Carolina.
His father was a southerner who worked on a small farm. John C. Calhoun's ...
Grave of John C.
Calhoun
... John C. Calhoun. b. March 13, 1782. d. March 31, 1850. US Vice-President.
John
C. Calhoun had a long running very violent feud with President Andrew Jackson
...
John C. Calhoun:
Policital Writings
John C. Calhoun. 1782-1850. Calhoun served as US senator from Sourth Carolina,
secretary of war, secretary of state, and twice as vice-president, and was a ...
Centre College Debate
2000 -|- JOHN C. CALHOUN
... John C. Calhoun, Born: 1782 in Abbeville, SC Home State: South Carolina
Political
Party: Democrat-Republican Inauguration: 1825 Died: 1850 (age 68) in Washington
...
Calhoun,
John C(aldwell) - Britannica.com
... ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA. Calhoun, John C(aldwell). Calhoun, detail of a
daguerreotype
by Mathew Brady, c. 1849. b. March 18, 1782, Abbeville district, SC, US d ...
John C. Calhoun.
1782-1850.
John C. Calhoun. 1782-1850. Return 1 The very essence
of a free government consists in ...
Calhoun,
John C.
... CALHOUN, John C. (1782 1850). Born in the same year as Daniel Webster, John
C. Calhoun
died two years before that statesman, who had been one of his political ...
John Caldwell
Calhoun--NSH Statue
... in east central hall. On a small plantation in Abbeville County, South
Carolina,
John Caldwell Calhoun was born on March 18, 1782. He studied at Waddel's ...
Grolier
Multimedia Encyclopedia: John C. Calhoun
... The Presidents | GME Contents | JOHN C. CALHOUN Biography. John Caldwell
Calhoun,
statesman and political philosopher ... SC, on Mar. 18, 1782. The son of a ...
John
C. Calhoun
... John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850), of South Carolina, was a major American
political
figure before the Civil War. Calhoun played an important part in national ...
Encyclopedia
Britannica Intermediate - CALHOUN, John C
Encyclopedia Britannica Intermediate. CALHOUN, John C. (1782-1850). Born in the
same
year as Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun died two years before that statesman ...
South Carolina
Legal History Collection p3
... John C. Calhoun 1782-1850. Hailed by some as the last true political
philosopher
to hold national office, condemned by others as the "Marx of the Master
Class ...
Today in History:
March 18
... On March 18, 1782, John C. Calhoun was born near Abbeville, South Carolina.
Calhoun
became a congressman, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, and ...
John C. Calhoun
Portrait-www.scstatehouse.net - LPITR
... See the John C. Calhoun Statue at the ... the US Senate archives John
Caldwell Calhoun
was born in the ... District on March 18, 1782. Throughout his life he ...
I1766: John
C. CALHOUN ( - )
... BIRTH: 18 MAR 1782, Abbeville District, SC; DEATH: 31 MAR 1850, SC; BURIAL:
26 APR 1850, St. Phillip's Episcopal Church. ... INDEX. John C. CALHOUN. ...
John
C. Calhoun
... John C. Calhoun. John Caldwell Calhoun was the most noted pre-Civil War ...
Calhoun, born
in 1782 in South Carolina, became a lawyer, and entered politics in 1808 ...
RHS
201
... Mass. Calhoun was born in 1782 into a Scotch-Irish family that had ... would
be interesting
to know what Mrs. John C. Calhoun thought of him. That he was. ...
Calhoun, John
Caldwell
... Calhoun, John Caldwell , 1782 1850 , American statesman and political
philosopher,
b. near Abbeville, SC, grad. Yale, 1804. He was an intellectual giant of ...
Directory
for Calhoun, John C.
... John C. Calhoun on the Clay Compromise ... Johnc. Calhoun's Speech Against
the Compromise
The famous South Carolinian (1782-1850) made his last Senate speech ...
Irving H.
Bartlett
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... LAMB:
How many children did John C. Calhoun have? BARTLETT: Well, I have ...
John
Caldwell Calhoun
... John C. Calhoun was born on March 18, 1782, near Abbeville, South Carolina,
and
educated at Yale College. After serving in the South Carolina legislature, he
...
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