? amencau EDITED BY JOHN T. MORSE, JR. .Statesmen JOHN C. CALHOUN DR. H. VON HOLST BOSTON HOUGHTON, MIFFLTN AND COMPANY NEW YORK : 11 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET s& THE MEXICAN WAB 281 JOHN 0. OALHOTJN. CHAPTER L YOUTH. LIFE is not only " stranger than fiction," but frequently also more tragical than any tragedy ever conceived by the most fervid imagination. Often in these tragedies of life there is not one drop of blood to make us shudder, nor a single event to compel the tears into the eye. A man endowed with an intellect far above the average, impelled by a high-soaring ambition, untainted by any petty or ignoble passion, and guided by a character of sterling firmness and more than common purity, yet, with fatal illusion, devoting all his mental powers, all his moral energy and the whole force of his iron will to the service of a doomed and unholy cause, and at last sinking into the grave in the very moment when, under the weight of the top-stone, the towering pillars of the temple of his impure idol are rent to their very base, can anything more tragical be conceived ? i 2 JOHN C. CALBOUN. That is, in a few lines, the story of the life of John C. Calhoun. In spite of his grand ca- reer, South Carolina's greatest son has had a more hapless fate than any other of the illus- trious men in the history of the United States. With few exceptions it is probable that the read- ers of these pages will consider this a strange or even an absurd assertion, and thereby them- selves will furnish another proof of its truth. Alexander Hamilton, America's greatest polit- ical genius, has been obliged to wait three quar- ters of a centuiy to have a statue erected to his memory, and then it had to be done by his own offspring. Calhoun has not had to complain of the same neglect, though nobody could have been justly accused of ingratitude if this honor had not been vouchsafed to him ; for he has no claims upon the gratitude of his country, al- though his name will forever remain one of the foremost in its records. But, in common with Alexander Hamilton, he is still waiting for the only monument worthy of his memory, a biog- raphy which does him full justice ; and he will probably have to wait much longer for such a memorial, cere perennius, which indeed, it is not unlikely, may never be erected. As yet it is hardly possible to pass an unbiassed judg- ment upon him, because the wounds of the ter rible conflict, in which he was during the life- YOUTH. 3 time of a whole generation the acknowledged leader, have not fully healed, and therefore those passions have not completely died away which were engendered by the catastrophe in which that conflict ended. Meanwhile, it becomes every day more difficult really to understand that struggle. Even the present generation, which has grown into manhood since the civil war, hardly realizes that it is not a soul-stirring romance, but sober history. The next genera- tion will find it easier to form an adequate con- ception of the life of the ancient Indians and Egyptians than of that of their own grandfa- thers ; for there is no other instance in all the history of the world, where the civilizations of two different ages, with their antagonistic prin- ciples and modes of thinking and feeling, have been so intricately interwoven as in the United States during the times of the slavery conflict. It is only the part played by Calhoun in this conflict which puts him into the very first rank of the men who have acted on the political stage of the United States, though he has done enough else to secure for his name a permanent place in the annals of his country. As the years roll on, the fame of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay is gradually growing dimmer, while the name of Calhoun has yet lost hardly anything of the lurid intensity witk I JOHN C. CALHOUN. which it glowed on the political firmament of the United States towards the end of the first half of this century. Nor will it ever lose much of this. The fact is easily explained, though it may seem strange to the superficial student. The number of Calhoun's admirers in his later years was insignificant in compari- son with the enthusiastic hosts who knew no more powerful charm than the captivating voice of the eloquent Kentuckian, and to-day it will not be seriously questioned that Webster was intellectually more than the peer of Calhoun. Neither of the three can lay claim to the name of a statesman in the highest acceptation of the term without more than one qualifying restric- tion, but Calhoun is certainly less entitled to it than either of his great rivals. Moreover, these had so many peculiar traits of character, habits, and fancies, that their lives are a rich source of pleasant anecdotes ; and from the background of the general historical development, their fig- ures spring forth in bold relief with a vividness equalling that of Washington, Jefferson, and John Adams. Of Calhoun the man, on the contrary, but very little is to be told. Even nis contemporaries, with perhaps the exception of his nearest neighbors, did not know much of his doings as a private individual, or at least do not seem to have thought them of suffi- YOUTH. 5 cient interest to be handed down to posterity. Whether his private correspondence, which is still withheld from the public, will throw much light on this side of his life, cannot be told. I have to state with regret that, according to my information, not very much is to be ex- pected. I was assured in Charleston, by an intimate younger friend of Calhoun, that he had not been in the habit of carefully preserv- ing his private letters, and that many of his papers, which are at present intrusted to Mr. Hunter of Virginia, were lost during the civil war. However that may be, the newspapers of the times and the published private correspond- ences of his co-actors tell hardly anything of the personal relations and the home-life of the man, whose slightest public act was watched with interest by the whole nation. We hear that he was a just and kind master to Ms slaves, that he was possessed of an uncommon conver- sational talent, and that he exercised an especial fascination upon young men. This is about all. From the historical standpoint it is, of course, deeply to be regretted that we are so little in- formed about the every-day life of so remark- able a man ; and yet one cannot help feeling at the same time a sertain satisfaction that we learn no more about it. There is no better proof of the personal purity of a public mat 6 JOHN C. CALHOUN. than the complete stillness of all gossipping tongues, among friends as well as foes. The consequence of this silence is, however, that so soon as the grave closes over such a public per- sonage, the figure begins to assume a shadowy appearance. A well-read student of the history of the United States may often easily imagine himself seated next to Webster and Clay at the social board, or walking with them in the lanes of their farms, though he may have been born after their eyes had been closed forever. But no one who has not actually grasped Calhoun's hand and looked into the depth of those steady and keen eyes, will ever be tempted to indulge for a single moment in such an illusion with regard to him. Twenty or thirty years hence there will not be a single person left to whom he is or ever has been fully a man of flesh and bone. The Representative, the Secretary of War, the Vice-President, the " great Nulli- fier," the Senator, our posterity like ourselves may be perfectly acquainted with ; but the Cal- houn off the political stage, the Calhoun who ate and drank like other mortals, who laughed, chatted, and sorrowed, who enjoyed life and bat- tled with its small and great cares, is long ago dead, and no pen will ever be able to recall him to life in the same sense in which Webster and Olay still are and will remain alive so long ;it YOUTH. 7 the American people cherish the memory of their great men. Yet it is unquestionably true, as it was as- serted before, that the name of Calhoun already conveys a much more definite idea to the Amer- ican people than that of either Webster or Clay, and that this difference will be steadily increased in his favor. The simple explana- tion of this remarkable fact is, that Calhoun is in an infinitely higher degree the represen- tative of an idea, and this idea is the pivotal point on which the history of the United States has turned from 1819 to nearly the end of the first century of their existence as an indepen- dent republic. From about 1830 to the day of his death, Calhoun may be called the very im- personation of the slavery question. From the moment when he assumes this character, his fig- ure towers far above all his contemporaries, even Jackson not excepted ; while up to that time he is, in spite of his uncommonly brilliant career, only an able politician of the higher and nobler order, having many peers and even a considera- ble number of superiors among the statesmen of the United States. These introductory re- marks seem necessary in order to justify the brevity with which we are compelled to treat '.he youth of Calhoun and the first period of hi* {.ublic life, 8 JOHN C. CALBOUN. In 1733 James Calhoun is said to have emi- grated from Donegal in Ireland to the United States. He first went to Pennsylvania, then settled on the Kanawha, in Virginia, and at last, in 1756, removed to South Carolina. In 1770 his son Patrick married Martha Caldwell, the daughter of a Presbyterian emigrant from Ireland. John Caldwell Calhoun, the third son of Patrick and Martha, was born March 18, 1782, in the Abbeville District, South Carolina. Though his father died while he was still a boy, the ardent temper of the zealous revolutionary patriot seems to have exercised a marked influ- ence on the formation of the character of the eon. John remained with his mother on the farm. There he led a quiet and simple life, for his father had left the family in very modest circumstances. No opportunity was offered him to attend regularly a good school, and his sol- itary rambles in the woods had to serve in lien of systematic instruction. Being from his eaily childhood of a meditative turn of mind, the youth learned to think before his memory had become burdened with the thoughts of other people. This defective education in his boy- hood made itself felt through his whole life. In spite of the diligence with which he applied nimself later, for some years, to his books, the stock of positive knowledge which he had to TOUTS. 9 fall back upon was never large, and the peculiar kind of narrowness which is inseparable from onesidedness was among the most prominent traits in his mental and moral structure. But what he lacked in breadth of view he fully made up by penetrating intensity, bold inde- pendence of thinking, and a keen instinct for the true nature of the things which fell within the limited circle in which his mind moved. Calhoun had completed his eighteenth year, when he began an uninterrupted course of sys- tematic study in order to fit himself for the higher walks of life. Under the direction of his brother-in-law, Dr. Waddel, a Presbyterian clergyman, he prepared himself for college, and after two short years he was able to enter the junior class at Yale. In 1804 he was graduated with high honors, and then devoted himself for three years to the study of law, spending eight- een months of the time at the law school at Litchfield, Connecticut. Of much more im- portance than the often-repeated story, that while at Yale he had been declared fit and likely to become some day President of the United States, is the unmistakable fact that liis prolonged sojourn in New England exer- cised a marked influence upon the formation of the political opinions which he held in the bo ginning of his political career. 10 JOHN C. CALHOUN. Having returned to Abbeville, he began to practise law; but it does not appear that the public were especially eager to avail themselves of his services as an attorney and counsellor, nor that he distinguished himself in any case of importance. A man of his general ability and uncommon logical acuteness could not have failed to acquire a prominent standing in this calling if he had devoted himself to it with his whole energy. Yet he would undoubtedly never have become a great lawyer, because he was not objective enough to examine his prem- ises with sufficient care, while he built his argu- ment upon them with undeviating and most incisive logic, thereby frequently arriving at most shocking conclusions with nothing to stand upon except a basis of false postulates. More- over, such natures never attain greatness, unless they pursue an aim which fills the whole head and heart with the force of a burning passion, a frame of mind into which but few men can be put by the common law ; and of these few Calhoun certainly was not one. He was a born leader of men, and nature had destined him for a political career. While at college the ex- citing questions of the day had engrossed his whole attention, and the intelligence and ear neatness with which he discussed them proved khat he would try to have a hand in shaping TOUTH. 11 the events of the future. Sooner and in a higher degree than he himself had probably dared to anticipate, this wish was to be ful- filled. He had barely had time to get again familiar with the surroundings of his youth, when he was sent by his district to the state Legislature. The stage was too small to draw the eyes of the nation upon the young man, but it was the right place to prove his fitness for a larger one. In 1811 he was elected a member of Congress, and in the same year he married his cousin, Floride Calhoun. She was possessed of a mod- est fortune, which enabled him to steer with all sails set into the open sea of politics. On No- vember 4 he took his seat in the House of Rep. resentatives, having previously removed to Bath on the Savannah. CHAPTER n. HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES. THE times were most favorable for a clevei and ambitious young statesman to make a bril- liant dSbut. The policy of commercial restric- tions, with which Jefferson and Madison had tried to force England and France to respect the rights of neutrals, had signally failed. The party in power had not the candor and moral courage to acknowledge that it had stumbled into grave mistakes, but it was apparent that it could no more, for any length of time, pur- sue its old course. If the great European war should last much longer and there was no prospect of its speedy termination the United States would evidently be forced to abandon all half-hearted and two-edged measures, and to adopt a clear and decisive policy. It was per- haps impossible to satisfy the commercial States; but thus much was certain, that their dissatis- faction was too great and too well-founded to permit an expectation that they would jog on with impunity in the old ruts. Nor would either fche honor or the vital interests of the Union HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 13 allow that it should bow its head in meekness, and receive with folded arms the stripes which the belligerent powers were pleased to lay on its back. Whatever might be resolved upon and done, it was sure to raise a great clamor among a considerable portion of the people ; yet something must be done, and in such circum- stances the race generally is to the swift and the battle to the strong. It was a coincidence of the utmost impor- tance that the ranks of the revolutionary pa- triots had, by this time, become so thinned that the representatives of a new generation could grasp the helm without having to en- counter the opposition of long acknowledged authority. It so happened, also, that among these new-comers on the political stage there were some exceptionally young men, possessed of a much higher order of talent than most of their seniors. So the leadership of the nation in this great crisis fell into the hands of untried and inexperienced men, who had hardly reached maturity, yet were fully conscious of their own power and worth, and who were impelled by a high-toned pride and ardent patriotism, and urged on by the glowing visions of an un- bounded ambition. It was therefore to be expected that, true to the nature of hot-blooded, daring, and self -relying youth, they would ad- 14 JOHN C. CALHOUN. vise the cutting of the Gordian knot which the silver-haired sages of the Revolution had vainly tried to disentangle. At which side of it, in their opinion, the stroke of the sword should be dealt, could not be doubtful from the first. In spite of Napoleon, the majority of the peo- ple had not yet entirely lost the enthusiastic sympathy awakened by the French Revolution, and the services rendered by France to the United States in the war of independence were still unforgotten. On the other hand, the old wounds which had been inflicted by the blows exchanged with England had not quite ceased to rankle ; the emancipated daughter smarted under the overbearing haughtiness of the moth- er, whom she had once forced to submit to her just claims. Then, too, above all else, Na- poleon's violent decrees against the rights of neutrals were to a considerable extent mere stage lightnings, while the English Orders in Council told with terrible effect upon the com- merce and the general prosperity of the United States, and the pretended right of visitation, which was frequently exercised with studied insolence, cut the American pride to the quick. Prudential reasons of great weight might be urged against resenting all these injuries at this time with powder and lead, and personal inter eat as well as party spirit would surely put these HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 15 reasons into the strongest light. But it was no less certain that the passionate and indignant appeals to the counter-reasons would awaken a !oud echo in numberless bosoms, since every patriot had to confess to himself that they too had great weight. The general elections for the Twelfth Con- gress had resulted in favor of the war party. It was principally due to his position towards this overshadowing question that Henry Clay owed his election to the speakership ; and for the same reason the Speaker awarded the sec- ond place on the Committee on Foreign Rela- tions to the new member from South Carolina. Mr. Gralle", the editor of Calhoun's works, as- Bures us that at the first meeting of the mem- bers CalhoiKi was on motion of Mr. Porter of Pennsylvania, to whom the Speaker had as- signed the chairmanship unanimously chosen to preside over their deliberations. So he held fiom the first the place which, next to the s | eakership, was the most important in the House of Representatives. On November 29, 1811, the committee, to which that part of the President's message re- lating to foreign affairs had been referred, sub- mitted its report. Although the report was presented by Mr. Porter, it seems likely that it was mainly written by Calhoun. The essence of it was contained in the following sentences : 16 JOHN C. CALBOUN. " To wrongs so daring in their character, and so disgraceful in their execution, it is impossible that the people of the United States should remain indiffer- ent. We must now tamely and quietly submit, or we must resist by those means which God has placed within our reach. "Your committee will not cast a shade on the American name by the expression of a doubt which branch of this alternative will be embraced ; . . . the period has arrived when, in the opinion of your com- mittee, it is the sacred duty of Congress to call forth the patriotism and the resources of the country." The report concluded with six resolutions, which were designed to give effect to this opin- ion. So the first act of Calhoun on the national stage was to sound the war-trumpet. Hence- forth incessant war, war to the bitter end, was to be his destiny to the last day of his life ; though it was in later years to be waged not against a foreign aggressor, but against inter- nal adversaries, against the peace of the Union, against the true welfare of his own section of the country. On December 12 Calhoun delivered his first set speech in Congress, defending the resolu- tions and refuting the arguments of John Ran- dolph, who was himself a member of the Com- mittee on Foreign Relations. On a formet HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 17 occasion Calhoun had addressed to the Honse a few remarks on a question of little impor- tance, which he had concluded with an allusion to the diffidence and embarrassment which a young man necessarily felt in speaking to the assembled representatives of the nation. Now, however, there was in his whole tone and man- ner no more the slightest trace of such a feel- ing. He did not speak with arrogance, and still less was there anything personally offen- sive in what he said, or in the manner with which he said it. From the beginning of his public career he observed the parliamentary proprieties with the rigor and naturalness of the born gentleman. Often did he prove that he could wield with equal force and dexterity the trenchant sword and the massive club, but he always attacked the argument of his adver- sary and not his person, and he was never guilty of the hectoring and bullying tone in which so many of the Southern politicians in- dulged with keen relish. From the first he entered the lists with the proud conviction of being fully the equal of any man, and he al vays spoke in the weighty tone of authority. Upon him the shaking of Randolph's long fin- ger made no impression. With open visor he met the mucn-dreaded antagonist, and though he did not throw him to the ground^ yet the 18 JOHN C. CALHOUfT. Virginian came out af the fight only second best. They exchanged many a tilt, and the ill-humor with which Randolph spoke of Cal- houn in his private correspondence, shows how much he felt the wounds received from the lance of that adversary. Calhoun began his speech with the open avowal " that the committee recommended the measures now before the House, as a prepara- tion for war;" and he added, "such, in fact, was its express resolve, agreed to, 1 believe by every member, except that gentleman [Randolph]. . . . Indeed, the report could mean nothing but war or empty menace.'" With lofty indigna- tion he repelled the insinuation that, though there was adequate cause for war, the people would not deem their violated interests and outraged rights of sufficient moment willingly to defray the costs of fighting for their vindica- tion. " But it may be, and I believe it was said, that the people will not pay taxes, because the rights violated are not worth defending ; or that the defence will cost more than the gain. Sir, I here enter my sol- emn protest against this low and ' calculating ava- rice ' entering this hall of legislation. It is only fit for shops and counting-houses ; and ought not to disgrace the seat of power by its squalid aspect. Whenever it touches sovereign power, the nation ii HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 19 rained. It is too short-sighted to defend itself. It is a compromising spirit, always ready to yield a part to save the residue. It is too timid to have in itself the laws of self-preservation. It is never safe but under the shield of honor. . . . Sir, I am not versed in this calculating policy ; and will not, therefore, pretend to estimate in dollars and cents the value of national independence. I cannot measure in shillings and pence the misery, the stripes, and the slavery of our impressed seamen ; nor even the value of our shipping, commercial, and agricultural losses under the Orders in Council and the British system of block- ade." With equal candor he answered Randolph's question, why then, if all this was so, war was not declared immediately: " Because," he said, "we are not yet prepared." That there was any danger in avowing this and, at the same time, using the threatening language employed by himself and those who shared his views, he ienied ; because, he said, England would never be provoked into beginning hostilities from a fear of uniting u all parties here." After this speech the passing of the resolu- tions by the House could not be understood otherwise than as a formal announcement that war would be declared so soon as, in the opin- ion of the war party, the country should be efficiently prepared. So far as it depended 20 JOHN C. CALHOUN. upon the House, the great question was virtu- ally decided, and the war party pushed vigor- ously on towards the bloody goal. They needed half a year more to reach it. President Mad- ison was about the last man to long for the laurels of "the conquering hero." His whole character as well as his political convictions made him exceedingly loath to gratify the wishes of the young Hotspurs, who neverthe- less dragged him along by a strong rope. As Jefferson's Secretary of State and as President he had advocated and pursued a policy, the legitimate consequence of which was war. He could not now take a decided stand against the war party without acknowledging that this pol- icy had been, from beginning to end, a mis- taken one, an avowal which no statesman will easily make, and which, on the part of Madison, would have been a formal renuncia- tion of his aspirations for a second term. That was the vise in which he was held by the war party, and mercilessly they screwed it tightei and tighter. In vain he tried to conciliate them by consenting to follow their lead ; they .nsisted that he should assume the full respon- sibility, and they would be satisfied with noth- ing less. On April 1 the President sent a message to Congress, recommending an embargo. Mr HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 21 Grundy said that he understood it " as a war measure, and it was meant that it should di- rectly lead to war," and Calhoun afterwards declared " its manifest propriety as a prelude to war." Without granting to the opposition the necessary time to develop their views, Con- gress, on April 4, passed the bill laying an em- bargo on all vessels. It was limited to sixty days solely because those who held the destiny of the country in their hands were fully re- solved that it should not " be permitted to ex- pire without any hostile measure being taken against Great Britain." It was not due to the President that this an- nouncement, indirectly made by Calhoun on May 6, was not fulfilled to the letter. Another message laid before Congress at length all the wrongs which the United States had suffered for so many years. " We behold," it said, " in fine, on the side of Great Britain a state of war igainst the United States, and on the side of the United States a state of peace towards Great Britain." Therefore it was now incumbent on Congress to decide whether force should be op- posed to force. This was virtually a recommen- dation of war. In the name of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Calhoun presented a report to the House, advising " an immediate appeal w> arms," and, at the same time, he moved that 22 JOHN C. CALBOUff. A formal declaration of war should be issued against Great Britain. On the following day the House passed this to the third reading, after Randolph's motion, renewed by Milnor, to open the doors, and Stow's request to postpone the final action to the next day, had both been re- jected. Thus the majority crowned the high- handed recklessness with which, ever since the beginning of the session, they had bent the just claims of the minority under their imperious will. In later years Calhoun learned well enough to clamor for the rights of the minority, while he was but too apt to forget that the ma- jority also had rights, and, above all others, the right to rule. Perhaps the time was not far distant when he and his associates would have reason to rue their present abuse of power, for the declaration of war received a majority of only thirty votes, although the Democratic ma- jority in the full House was seventy. In the Senate, the defection from the party even threatened to become fatal to the wishes of the war party. On motion of Mr. Gregg, of Pennsylvania, the bill providing for the decla- ration of war was recommitted by a majority of four. Not until June 17 did a sufficient number of reluctant Democrats yield to allow l ,he amended bill to be passed to a third read ing. The House agreed to the amendments or "/he following day. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 23 A few days after the declaration of war, the House took up the question, whether and how far the restrictive policy concerning commerce should be abandoned. The Committee on Ways and Means reported a bill for the partial sus- pension of the Non-Importation Act. This was not deemed sufficient relief in the States on which the mistaken policy hitherto pursued had weighed most heavily. Mr. Richardson, of Massachusetts, moved the total repeal of the whole restrictive system. The motion was not agreed to ; but when it was renewed the fol- lowing day in a modified form, rendering the proposition somewhat less sweeping, the casting vote of the Speaker was required to carry the day against the opposition. For two years more the pernicious policy was persisted in. Calhoun had separated himself on this im- portant question from the majority. He ear- nestly advocated the repeal of the Non-Im- portation Act. His obligations as a party man he satisfied by denying that Jefferson's and Madison's policy could be justly charged with pusillanimity, a compliment the more empty, because the closing remarks of his speech proved that he himself was not convinced of the truth of the asserticn. It was a question uot of motives, but of policy, and as to that he laid : " The restrictive system, as a mode 01 24 JOHN C. CALHOUN. resistance, and a means of obtaining redress of our wrongs, has never been a favorite one with me." The reasons on which he supported his opinion were sound, and the whole manner in which he treated the subject was that of a statesman standing on sufficiently elevated ground to take in the whole view, and not to be misled by petty details. On the past he be- stowed but a slight glance, very properly confin- ing himself to the effect which the maintenance of the old policy would have under the altered circumstances. From this point of view, he condemned it without qualification in measured but severe terms. " With no small mortifica- tion," he asked those who had supported the war, and now thought its success dependent upon the continuation of the Non-Importation Act, whether the war was to be " an appendage only " of this act ? " If so, I disclaim it. It is an alarming idea to be in a state of war, and not to rely on our courage or energy, but on a measure of peace." The assertion that, if the Non-Importation Act should be continued, a ipeedy restoration of peace might be relied ;ipon, he declared to be delusive and a cause of alarm, for " it will debilitate the springs of war. . . . We have had a peace like a war. In the name of Heaven, let us not have the only thing that is worse, a war like a peace." Thii HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 26 lolemn warning was certainly not out of place , but if it was necessary to utter it within a week after the declaration of war, he ought to have pondered well ere he did his best to push tho country into a conflict which, whatever it might become in the course of time, was originally not a national but a party war, or rather a war of the party leaders. This all-important point had not been soon enough taken into due consideration, either by him or his associates. This is the one great blame resting upon the war party, which even those cannot gainsay who otherwise fully ap- prove of their course. The whole war was one uninterrupted struggle against the evil conse- quences of this fact. There was much truth in what Calhoun had asserted in his speech on May 6. It was, indeed, to a great extent, the sec- ond war for the liberty and independence of the United States, but it was irretrievably vitiated by its party origin. How the ambitious plans of the young leaders were dashed to pieces ! In- stead of Canada being conquered, the time same when Calhoun, with tears in his eyes, had to ask the assistance of Webster to pull the government out of its financial difficulties, which had come to such a climax that the worst night be apprehended. It was a deep humil- ation. Yet where is the American patriot 26 JOHN C. CALHOUN. who would wish to erase these pages from the tablets of the history of the Union? Much less could any one wish to miss them in the career of Calhoun, for in one respect, and that the most important one, they are the most at- tractive and satisfactory in the record of his life. There is at this time nothing of sectional prejudice and narrowness in him. He stands on the broadest national ground, and his polit- ical sins are mainly due to the impatient ardor and buoyancy of his patriotism. Undoubtedly he pursues the aims of his personal ambition with full consciousness ; he does not, however, seek its satisfaction at the expense of the Union, but by promoting what he is fully convinced that the interests and the honor of his country demand. The word " nation," which Calhoun in later years struck from the political and con- stitutional dictionary of the United States as having no basis whatever to rest upon, either in fact or in law, is at this time frequently in his mouth. How could it be otherwise, as the idea of it was deeply imbedded in his heart and constantly occupying his mind? His solicitude for the national interests did not cease with .he war, nor was it confined to objects imme^ diately connected with the war or referring exclusively to the relations of the Union to for- eign powers. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 27 In a speech delivered January 31, 1816, on a motion to repeal the direct tax, he drew a sketch of his views concerning the lessons to be derived from the experiences of the war as to the policy which the United States ought to pursue in future. The starting-point of his argument was the assertion that " future wars with England are not only possible, but . . . highly probable, nay, that they will certainly take place," because the United States would " have to encounter British jealousy and hos- tility in every shape ; not immediately mani- fested by open force or violence, perhaps, but by indirect attempts to check your growth and prosperity." He therefore deemed it necessary gradually to prepare for this emergency, not only by increasing the military forces of the Union, but also by systematically developing those germs of giant strength which Providence .iad bestowed upon and intrusted to the Amer- ican people. " As to the species of prepara- tion, . . . the navy most certainly, in any point >f view, occupies the first place. It is the most afe, most effectual, and cheapest mode of de- fence." The internal strife during the war would have lost much of its bitterness, if the majority had from the first understood this ob- vious truth, and acted accordingly. The viola- tion of the rights and interests of the citizens 28 JOHN C. CALHOUN. D the States, as a seafaring people, had given rise to the war, and yet the demand of the New England States to wage it principally by sea had remained unheeded, until experience forced the majority to acknowledge, if not in words, at least by deeds, that for once the opposition was not prompted exclusively by local interests and a factional spirit. If the party had listened to the advice of Calhoun with regard to the wishes and complaints of the opposition, the animosity of the Northeastern Federalists would never have reached the pitch to which it finally came. In the light of later events, it is one of the most interesting facts in the life of Calhoun that, in the course of the war, the question was for a while seriously discussed in New England whether the people of that section should not try to form an alliance with South Carolina against the narrow anti-commercial policy of Virginia and her followers. The above-mentioned speech also contains the first declaration in favor of internal im- provements. " Let us make great permanent roads ; not, like the Romans, with views of sub jecting and ruling provinces, but for the more honorable purposes of defence, and of connect ing more closely the interests of various sections of this great country." It is true that Cal- bouu's immediate object in this is also th BOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 29 afety of the country in future wars ; but he is not only gratified that the building of roads will incidentally tend towards nationalizing the Union ; he urges upon Congress the measure because it will have this effect. Always start- ing from the same point, he furthermore cornea to the conclusion that the national government should bestow its protecting care upon the in- dustrial interests of the country ; and here, too, he expressly states that other reasons also should induce Congress to adopt this policy. " In regard to the question how far manufactures ought to be fostered, it is the duty of this country, as a means of defence, to encourage its domestic in- dustry, more especially that part of it which provides the necessary materials for clothing and defence. . . . The question relating to manufactures must not de- pend on the abstract principle that industry, left to pursue its o\vn course, will find in its own interests all the encouragement that is necessary. Laying the claims of manufacturers entirely out of view, on general principles, without regard to their interests, 9, certain encouragement should be extended at least to our woolen and cotton manufactures." It is remarkable that in the whole speech tiiere is no mention whatever made of the Con- stitution. The thought does not enter his lead that constitutional objections could pos- tibly be raised. The reason of this is simply 30 JOHN C. CALHOUN. that the statesman has not yet been trans- formed into the attorney of a special cause. He proceeds, as a matter of course, from the assumption that the first question a statesman has to ask himself is not what is constitutional, but what is wise and politic, unless it mani- festly contravenes a provision of the Constitu- tion, and to take it for granted that the consti- tutional power exists, until the contrary is proved. As the people have not been created for the sake of the Constitution, but the Con- stitution lias been established by the people to secure and further the welfare of the people, this is the only rational course ; and it is per- fectly safe, since, as every measure is sure to meet with some opposition, any constitutional flaw with regard to the proposition will cer- tainly be pointed out, if it can be discovered without the aid of a microscope and hair-split- ting sophistries of pettifogging lawyers. Only when, instead of the national interests, the in- terests of the slave-holders had become the glasses through which Calhoun viewed every- thing, he began to search the Constitution for the power to do what he had once recommended as prudent and even necessary, and then he discovered things in it which he had never dreamed of before ; nay, its general spirit un ierwent a radical change in his eyes. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 81 On January 8, 1816, Calhoun, as chairman D the Committee on National Currency, re- ported a bill " to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States." In a speech which he delivered on February 26, in support of the bill, he referred to the constitu- tional question, but merely in order to state that it "had been already so freely and fre- quently discussed, that all had made up their minds on it." So, according to his own state- ment, he had most deliberately come to the conclusion that Congress had the constitutional power to establish a national bank. Though this has necessarily to be inferred from the fact of his reporting the bill, it had to be expressly stated on account of his subsequent attempts to make himself and others believe that he had been compelled by the financial embarrassments of the government to waive the constitutional question. That these embarrassments exercised a powerful influence upon the formation of his opinions cannot be doubted, but even in regard to the expediency of the measure he was not Bolely controlled by them. "As to the question vhether a national bank would be favorable to ue administration of the finances of the gov- ernment, it was one on which there was so little doubt, that gentlemen would excuse him f he did not enter into it.'' He does not say 52 JOHN C. CALHOUN. " now," or, " under the present circumstances," but makes a general statement without any re- striction whatever. There is nothing astonish ing in this, for the additional strength which it was supposed that the national government would derive from the bank was at this time no cause of alarm to him ; and as to the other political and economical considerations involved in the problem, he moved as yet in as thick a fog as the whole people. The fact is, that with regard to all the great economical problems, which were soon to agitate the country so deeply, Calhoun held exactly the opposite ground to that which he afterwards occupied, on the constitutional question as well as on that of expediency. He and his partisans have done their very best to invalidate the charge of in- consistency, but they have not been able to succeed ; for although an edition of his speeches was published in which those earlier efforts were omitted, the speeches themselves could not be wiped from the records of Congress, and, as was his wont, he had expressed him- self too plainly and explicitly to render the art of subsequent interpretation of any avail. One would greatly wrong him by doubting whether he was afterwards as sincere as now, but his lincerity does not alter the fact that he com- pletely reversed his position. His partisan* HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 33 have paid him a bad compliment by asserting that his earlier utterances cannot with fairness be called upon to bear witness against his later doctrines, because they were but his first im- pressions, put before the public without due deliberation, in an unguarded manner, on the Bpur of some particular occasion. Had the House of Representatives sunk to such a bot- tomless depth that it followed the leadership of a young zealot who did not know how to bridle his tongue, but on the gravest questions of the day babbled out the first thoughts that happened to flit through his giddy brain ? What, then, were the subjects which this chairman of most important committees seri- ously reflected upon, if not these, almost the only ones on which he deemed it worth his while to make long speeches? Moreover, this unpardonable levity and thoughtlessness must have lasted a long while, for he clung to these opinions for years, frequently repeating them and urging them upon Congress with increased energy. His speech on the New Tariff Bill (April 6, 1816) was a long and carefully prepared argu- ment in favor of the whole economical platform on which the Whig party stood to the last day of its existence. He started with the bold prop- osition that it was a matter of "vital impor i 84 JOHN C. CALHOUN. fcance, touching . . . the security and permanent prosperity of our country," to afford adequate protection to the cotton and woollen manufact- ures. Even Henry Clay and Horace Greeley have not been able to put their favorite doc- trine into stronger language. Nor was he satis- fied to have the fostering care of the govern- ment confined to these goods. His final aim was the industrial independence of the United States from Europe, and this, he thought, could be attained by protective duties. He bitterly complained of the unexpected "apathy and aver- sion" which manifested themselves on this sub- ject. In his opinion the country was "prepared, even to maturity, for the introduction of manu- factures." If he deemed it nevertheless neces- sary to assist them with protective duties, it was in order " to put them beyond the reach of con- tingency." There is not one word in the whole speech warranting the interpretation that he demands only momentary aid for the manufact- ures, which had been stimulated into existence by the war, and would now inevitably have to succumb to English competition, if they should not be propped up by artificial means. He advocated a " system," to which the only well- founded but not "decisive objection" was, "that capital employed in manufacturing produced a greater dependence on the part of the employed HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 85 than in commerce, navigation, or agriculture." Though this was to be regretted, it was " more than counterpoised " by other " incidental po- litical advantages." " It produced an interest strictly American, as much so as agriculture, in which it had the decided advantage of commerce or navigation. . . . Again, it is calculated to biud together more closely our widely- spread republic. It will greatly increase our mutual dependence and intercourse ; and will, as a necessary consequence, excite an increased attention to in- ternal improvements, a subject every way so inti- mately connected with the ultimate attainment of national strength and the perfection of our political institutions." He regarded the fact that it would " make the parts adhere more closely ; that it would form a new and most powerful cement, and out- weigh any political objections that might be urged against the system." In a speech on February 4, 1817, on a bill to Bet aside the bank dividends and bonus as a permanent fund for the construction of roads and canals, Calhoun, for the first time, entered upon an extended argument on the constitu- tional question with regard to internal improve- ments. The objection that it is necessary to secure the previous assent of the States, within he limits of which the internal improvements 86 JOHN C. CALHOUN. re to be made, he declared to be not " worth the discussion, because the good sense of the States may be relied on. They will, in all cases, readily yield their assent." Also as to the power of Congress he is so explicit that, when he afterwards positively denied it, his opponents need not have troubled themselves about an argument of their own ; so far as he was concerned it would have sufficed to read Borne extracts from this speech : " It is mainly urged that the Congress can only ap- ply the public money in execution of the enumerated powers. I am no advocate for refined arguments on the Constitution. The instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his ingenuity on. [If he had but followed the example of the Persian king, and charged his body servant to repeat to him these two sentences every morning !] It ought to be construed with plain good sense ; and what can be more express than the Constitution on this point ? ... If the framers had intended to limit the use of the money to the powers afterwards enumerated and defined, nothing could have been more easy than to have expressed it plainly. . . . But suppose the Con- stitution to be silent, why should we be confined in the application of moneys to the enumerated powers ? There is nothing in the reason of the thing, that I can perceive, why it should be so restricted ; and the habitual and uniform practice of the government soiucides with my opinion. . . In reply to this uui HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 87 form course of legislation, I expect it will be said that our Constitution is founded on positive and writ- ten principles, and not on precedents. I do not deny the position ; but I have introduced these instances to prove the uniform sense of Congress and the coun- try (for they have not been objected to) as to our powers ; and surely they furnish better evidence of the true interpretation of the Constitution than the most refined and subtle arguments. Let it not be argued that the construction for which I contend gives a dangerous extent to the powers of Congress. In this point of view I conceive it to be more safe than the opposite. . By giving a reasonable extent to the money power, it exempts us from the necessity of giving a strained and forced construction to the other enumerated powers." Thus he was not only the champion of the constitutionality of internal improvements, but he boldly avowed latitudinarian principles with regard to the general construction of the Con- stitution. It was a rather remarkable coinci- dence that this was the last great speech which he delivered as a member of the House of Rep- resentatives. He was called to act on another stage, where less, or no, opportunity was offe-red to develop his views on these subjects before the whole people, but there is no proof lacking that he adhered to them for some time longer. CHAPTER III. SECRETARY OF WAR. ALTHOUGH Calhoun, in a speech delivered on January 17, 1817, had deprecated the feel- ing which made " the very best talents of the House, men of the most aspiring character, anxious to fill the departments or foreign mis- sions," he himself, less than two months after- wards, readily accepted a place in Mr. Monroe's cabinet as Stcretary of War. The duties of his office stood in no direct relation to the eco- nomical policy of the federal government, but, as he was anxious to see his views adopted, he had no difficulty in laying them again before Congress. A resolution of the House of Rep- resentatives, of April 4, 1818, had called on him for " a plan for the application of such means as are within the power of Congress, for the purpose of opening and constructing such roads and canals as may deserve and require the aid of government, with a view to military operations in time of war." His report o' January 14, 1819, began by laying down th aound and broad principle that, SECRETARY OF WAR. 39 "a judicious system of roads and canals, con- tructed for the convenience of commerce and the transportation of the mail only, without any refer- ence to military operations, is itself among the most efficient means for ' the more complete defence of the United States.' Without adverting to the fact that the roads and canals which such a system would re- quire are, with few exceptions, precisely those which would be required for the operation of war, such a system, by consolidating our Union [!], and increas- ing our wealth and fiscal capacity, would add greatly to our resources in war." He then traced in general outlines a vast plan of roads and canals, concluding his argu- ment with the following significant remarks : " Many of the roads and canals which have been suggested are no doubt of the first importance tc the commerce, the manufactures, the agriculture, and po- litical prosperity of the country, but are not, for thai reason, less useful or necessary for military purposes. It is, in fact, one of the great advantages of our country, enjoying so many others, that whether we regard its internal improvements in relation to mili- tary, civil, or political purposes, very nearly the same system, in all its parts, is required. ... If those roads or canals had been pointed out which are neces- sary for military purposes, the list would have been imall indeed." In a report of December 3, 1824, " on the audition of the military establishment," etc.. 4U JOHN C. CALBOUN. he recurred once more to the subject with the same explicitness and emphasis. There is therefore no reason to suppose Mr. Nathan Sargent guilty of exaggeration, when he writes that in June, 1824, " Mr. Calhoun spoke of his projected improvements and the great benefits that the country would derive from them with a warmth, earnestness, and enthusiasm which indicated that his whole soul was in ' the sys- tem ' he had projected." After he had ex- changed the Secretaryship of War for the Vice- Presidency, at a public dinner given in his honor in the Pendleton District on April 26, 1825, the following toast was received with great enthusiasm : " Internal improvement : guided by the wisdom and energy of its able advocates, it cannot fail to strengthen and per- petuate our bond of union." Again, on May 27, 1825, at Abbeville, on a similar occasion, he himself said, " I gave my zealous efforts to all such measures : . . . a due protection of those manufactures of the country which had taken loot during the period of war and restrictions ; and finally, a system of connecting the various portions of the country by a judicious system of internal improvement." With the approval of South Carolina, he still pointed with satis- faction and pride to his agency in promoting what she and he were soon so decisively to con SECRETARY OF WAR. 41 3emn as impolitic, unjust, dangerous to the in- dependence of the States, and unconstitutional. In later years, Calhoun would have given much if he could have torn these leaves from his book of record as a Representative and aa Secretary of War." Else these were the bright- est and happiest years of his public life, though the first premonitory gusts of the storms which were to rage through all the rest of it began while he held the latter office. Many of hia friends and admirers had with regret seen him abandon his seat in the legislative hall for a place in the President's council. They appre- hended that he would, to a great extent, lose the renown which he had gained as a member of Congress, for they thought that the dialectic turn of his mind rendered him unfit to become a successful administrator. He undeceived them in a manner which astonished even those who had not shared these apprehensions. The Department of War was in a state of really astounding confusion when he assumed the charge of it. Into this chaos he soon brought order, and the whole service of the department received an organization so simple and at the same time so efficient that it has, in the main, been adhered to by all nis successors, and proved itself capable of standing even the test of the civil war. Niles's " Register " said on Marcb 27, 1824 : - 42 JOHN C. CALHOUlf. u Judging from the various reports that all of us have seen from the War Department, the order and harmony, regularity and promptitude, punctuality and responsibility, introduced by Mr. Calhoun in every branch of the service, have never been rivalled, and perhaps cannot be excelled ; and it must be recol- lected that he brought this system out of chaos. Never was the business of any department in such a state of perfect conf>won as that now under his charge at the time when he was placed at the head of it. The open or unsettled accounts, of all sorts, must have amounted to nearly fifty millions of dol- lars. How great was the labor to cleanse this Au- gean stable ! But, mightily supported by the acute and indefatigable Mr. Hagner, the old and filthy ac- counts are nearly disposed of." Calboun himself said, with just pride, in a report to the President, " The result has been that, of the entire amount of money drawn from the Treasury in the year 1822 for the military service, including the pensions, amounting to $4,571,961.94, although it passed through the hands of no less than two hundred and ninety- one disbursing agents, there has not been a single defalcation, nor the loss of a cent to the government." And the principal employees of the department, in taking leave of him in a short address (February 28, 1825), bore the following testimony to his administration SECRETARY OF WAR. 43 " The degree of perfection to which you have carried the several branches of this department is believed to be without parallel. . . . From these (your personal character and private vir- tues) have proceeded the harmonious inter- changes which have made the burden of de- tails with which the undersigned are charged comparatively light." Neither, on the other hand, were severe criti- cisms lacking. John Quincy Adams writes in his Diary : " The truth is that of the reforms in the War De- partment while he [Calhoun] was at its head, the most important was the reduction of the army from ten thousand men to six thousand men, utterly against his will, against all the influence that he could exer- cise, and to his entire disapprobation ; and all the other changes of organization were upon plans fur- nished by Generals Brown and Scott, and carried through Congress chiefly by the agency of John Williams, of Tennessee. Mr. Calhoun had no more share of mind in them than I have in the acts of Con- gress to which I affix my signature of approbation." Even the most thorough examination of the records of the War Department would probably not clearly show whether and how far the lat- ter assertion is true. For argument's sake, however, it may be granted that it is true to the letter. Would that really deprive Calhoun of *4 JOHN C. CALHOUN. all merit in the reforms ? Is it not one of the most indispensable qualities of a statesman to know where to go for advice, and to follow wise counsels ? Others were not satisfied with denying that the reforms were due to the initiative of the Secretary. We read in the same Diary, under date of June 2, 1822, that General D. Parker said to the writer, "The management of the War Department had been inefficient and ex- travagant, which was very susceptible of dem- onstration." The reproach of extravagance was not wholly without apparent foundation. Cal- houn very properly considered himself in duty bound to advocate and promote the interests of the army in every way not incompatible with the true interests of the United States, and as to these he, with equal propriety, refused to accept the amount of money to be spent as constituting the principal consideration. The best is the cheapest, though the first outlay is larger. In private life this maxim is nowhere better and more commonly understood than by the people generally in the United States. The An erican politicians, however, partly for dema- gogical purposes and partly from honest stupid- ity, up to this day but too frequently consider it an absurdity, though they are in other re- spects lavish to the verge of criminality with SECRETARY OF WAR. 45 the public money. Calhoun fully understood that with regard to great public interests the miser's policy is the worst extravagance. It was, perhaps, not quite so certain as Adams thought, that the reduction of the army was really a " reform," and the Secretary undoubt- edly deserved much praise for taking a decided stand against those who wanted to screw down the rations and the wages of the privates, and to some extent even those of the officers, to the lowest possible point. As to " abuses " in other respects, it is too much to say that Calhoun is absolutely blame- less. In one important instance he has laid himself open to the charge of unfair dealing in the negotiation and conclusion of a treaty with an Indian tribe. Upon the whole, how- ever, he advocated a policy towards these wards of the nation, which it would have been well for all the parties concerned to adopt and pur- sue with undeviating honesty. Even in our days his Indian reports might be profitably studied with regard as well to the cardinal mistakes committed in the Indian policy as to what ought to be done. To those who try to lift the responsibility for the hapless fate of the Indians from the shoulders of the American people, and allege a decree of Providence, the following testimony of Calhoun wiH be uiisa- *ory reading : 16 JOHH C. CALHOUN. "As far, however, as civilization may depend on education only, without taking into consideration the force of circumstances, it would seem that there is no insuperable difficulty in effecting the benevolent in tendon of the government. It may be affirmed, al- most without qualification, that all the tribes within our settlements and near our borders are even solic- itous for the education of their children. With the exception of the Creeks, they have everywhere freely and cheerfully assented to the establishment of schools, to which, in some instances, they have contributed. The Choctaws, in this respect, have evinced the most liberal spirit, having set aside $6,000 of their amnesty in aid of the schools established among them. The reports of the teachers are almost uniformly favor- able, both as to the capacity and docility of their youths. Their progress appears to be quite equal to that of white children of the same age, and they ap- pear to be equally susceptible of acquiring habits of industry. At some of the establishments a consider- able portion of the supplies are raised by the labor of the scholars and the teachers. With these indica- tions, it would seem that there is little hazard in pro- nouncing that, with proper and vigorous efforts, they may receive an education equal to that of the labor- mg portion of our community." Whether his theorizing propensities had any- thing to do with his taking such a favorable view of the capability and the desire of the In- dians to raise themselves out of the darkneai SECRETARY Uf WAR. 47 nd sloth of their savage state need not here be inquired into. In judging this question Cal- houn was, at all events, a sufficiently matter-of- fact man to see that, in spite of this supposed natural capability for becoming civilized, their actual civilization was impossible so long as the leading principle of the Indian policy hitherto pursued was not abandoned: " The political relation which they bear to us is by itself of sufficient magnitude, if not removed, to pre- sent so desirable a state from being attained. We have always treated them as an independent people ; and however insignificant a tribe may become, and however surrounded by a dense white population, so long as there are any remains it continues indepen- dent of our laws and authority. To tribes thus sur- rounded, nothing can be conceived more opposed to their happiness and civilization than this state of nominal independence. It has not one of the ad- vantages of real independence, while it has nearly all the disadvantages of a state of complete subjugation. The consequence is inevitable. They lose the lofty spirit and heroic courage of the savage state, without acquiring the virtues which belong to the civilized. Depressed in spirit and debauched in morals, they dwindle away through a wretched existence, a nui- sance to the surrounding country. Unless some sys- em can be devised gradually to change this relation, And with the progress of education to extend ovei them our laws and authority, it ia feared that all e 48 JOHN C. CALHOUN. forts to civilize them, whatever flattering appearance* they may for a time exhibit, must ultimately fail. Tribe after tribe will sink, with the progress of our settlements and the pressure of our population, into wretchedness and oblivion. Such has been their past history, and such, without this change of political re- lation, it must probably continue to be." Who would to-day venture to deny that the main error of the Americans in dealing with the Indian problem is here pointed out with the utmost clearness, and that subsequent his- tory has fully borne out these assertions ? With the same keen-sightedness with which CalhouH discerned the causes of the evil, he also found the means for its gradual cure : " Preparatory to so radical a change in our relation towards them, the system of education which has been adopted ought to be put into extensive and active operation. This is the foundation of all other im- provements [?]. It ought gradually to be followed ?rith a plain and simple system of laws and govern- dent, such as has been adopted by the Cherokees, a proper compression of their settlements, and a division of landed property. By introducing gradually and Hidiciously these improvements, they will ultimately fcttain such a state of intelligence, industry, and civil- ization as to prepare the. way for a complete exten- lion of our laws and authority over them." It is not probable that Mr. Schurz has eve SECRETARY OF WAR. 49 read this long-forgotten report, but whoever has been acquainted with it, and has also paid some attention to the Indian policy of Mr. Hayes's Secretary of the Interior, must have been struck by the coincidence of the views of South Car- olina's great doctrinarian and of the modern "theorist," who, sixty years later, has dealt more successfully with the Indian problem than perhaps any other man. Of the other charges brought against the management of the War Department, but one more need be mentioned, and this one because it had a long history and made considerable noise at the time. We allude to the so-called Rip-Rap contract. A government contract for the delivery of a large quantity of stones at Old Point Comfort had been awarded to a cer- tain Elijah Mix, a man of ruined commercial reputation. Calhoun was not aware of this fact concerning Mix, and he was satisfied that the -ionditions agreed upon were as favorable for the government as any that could be obtained at the time ; but he had awarded the contract mthout publicly advertising it, as the law re- quired. This fact became known when Mix bailed to fulfil his obligations, and the House of Representatives prohibited any further dis- bursements from the appropriation made for this purpose. This untoward occurrence was 60 JOHN C. CALHOUN. khe more annoying because the chief clerk oi the department, a brother-in-law of Mix, had, with the knowledge of the Secretary, afterwards bought a part of the contract. Calhoun had not approved of his doing so, warning him that he would expose himself to disagreeable insinua- tions ; but neither, on the other hand, had he forbidden it, since it was not " illegal." After Calhoun had become Vice-President, this story was revived by an application from Mix for an- other government contract. Although his bid was the lowest, it was refused, because the his- tory of the Rip-Rap contract proved him to be an irresponsible person. In the course of these transactions a private letter from Mix, in which he charged Calhoun with having received a share of the profits of the Rip-Rap job, found its way into the press. Calhoun thereupon (September 29, 1826) addressed a letter to the House of Representatives, " claiming investiga- tion by the House " " in its high character of grand inquest of the nation," at the same time announcing to the Senate that he would not pre- side over its deliberations until the vile calumny had been duly disposed of, two steps of doubt- ful propriety, and if not unconstitutional, at ah events extra-constitutional. The House of Rep- resentatives might easily find itself left with n* time at all for transacting its legitimate busi SECRETARY OF WAR. 51 ness, if it could be required to grant the claim of every government official of a certain rank for an investigation of charges privately 1 pre- ferred by any private individual ; and it would be strange indeed if a United States official had the right to refuse to attend to his con- stitutional duties, because somebody had been pleased to calumniate him. If the Vice-Presi- dent might do so why not the President, the Justices of the Supreme Court, the President pro tempore of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, nay, any member of Congress? Nei- ther of these objections was entirely overlooked at the time, but the House nevertheless ap- pointed a committee of investigation. Calhoun was far from being satisfied with its proceed- ings, although -the report declared, "They are unanimously of the opinion that there are no facts which will authorize the belief, or even sus- picion, that the Vice-President was ever inter- ested, or that he participated, directly or indi- rectly, in the profits of any contract formed with the government through the Department of War." No decent person had ever doubted that such iras the case. The whole scandal was an empty 1 Calhoun 'a assertion that the accusation had been accorded place in the official records of the Department of War was *ovd to be wholly unfounded. 52 JOHN C. CALHOU*. bubble, but, like every scandal, it was filled with mal-odorous gases. Calhoun would have done well to treat it with silent contempt, instead of pricking it, for neither in Congress nor out of it was there a lack of persons who willingly used against him everything which they could lay their hands on, and the old truth semper ali- quid hceret applied to him as well as to any other person. In spite of the praise bestowed upon his administration of the War Depart- ment by all impartial men, many members of Congress selected just this department as the principal butt of their ill-humor. John Quincy Adams writes on June 2, 1822, " The Presi- dent had enough to do to support the Secretary of War. He had already brought himself into collision with both Houses of Congress by sup- porting him." Though these animadversions were, in the opinion of Adams, not wholly un- founded, yet he was far from thinking them quite justified. This latter fact is the more to be noticed, because Adams cannot be considered an entirely unprejudiced witness, though the stern old man was certainly most honestly con- vinced that he judged his colleague with the itrictest impartiality and justice. Adams leaves us in no doubt about the true muse of these attacks upon Calhoun : " There was a time during the last session of Con SECRETARY OF WAR. 53 gress when so large a proportion of members was en- listed for Calhoun that they had it in contemplation to hold a caucus formally to declare him a candidate [for the presidency]. But this prospect of success roused all Crawford's and Clay's partisans against him. The administration of his department was scru- tinized with severity, sharpened by personal animos- ity and factious malice. Some abuses were discovered, and exposed with aggravations. Cavils were made against measures of that department in the execution of the laws, and brought the President in collision with both Houses of Congress. Crawford's news- papers commenced and have kept up a course of the most violent abuse and ribaldry against him." The presidency was at the bottom of these acrimonious bickerings, and though Adams would never have committed the slightest con- scious wrong in order to secure this prize, yet he coveted it too ardently to be favorably dis- posed toward a prominent rival. The estrangement between Adams and Cal- houn cannot be ascribed solely to this reason, but nobody who has the least knowledge of hu- man nature will doubt that this must have had a great deal to do with it. When the two itatesmen came into such close official relation by becoming members of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, Adams must be considered, if we take his usual austerity and chilliness into due consideration, 54 JOHN C. CALHOUN. to have spoken almost enthusiastically of his younger colleague. On January 6, 1818, he says, " Calhoun thinks for himself, indepen- dently of all the rest [namely, the other mem- bers of the cabinet], with sound judgment, quick discrimination, and keen observation. He supports his opinions, too, with powerful elo- quence." For several years this good opinion grows ever stronger: " Mr. Calhoun is a man of fair and candid mind, of honorable principles, of clear and quick under- standing, of cool self-possession, of enlarged philo- sophical views, and of ardent patriotism. He is above all sectional and factious prejudices more than any other ptatesman of this Union with whom I have ever acted. He is more sensitive to the transient manifes- tations of momentary public opinion, more afraid of the first impressions of the public opinion, than I am." Thus Adams wrote on October 15, 1821 ; and again, only twenty-five months later, he says, " Calhoun, who in all his movements of every kind has an eye to himself ; " and on the 2d of April, 1824, " Precedent and popularity, this is the bent of his mind. The primary principles involved in any public question are the last to occur to him. What has been done and what will be said are the Jachin and Boaz of his argument." As Adami SECRETARY OF WAR. 56 did not accuse Calhoun of any special dishon- orable act, this change of opinion is certainly BO great that the explanation for it must be partly sought in the last sentence of the follow- ing entry in his Diary (September 5, 1831) : "Mr. Calhoun was a member of Mr. Monroe's administration, and during its early part pursued a course from which I anticipated that he would prove an ornament and a blessing to his country. I have been deeply disappointed in him, and now expect nothing from him but evil. His personal relations with me have been marked, on his part, with selfish and cold-blooded heartlessness." It is well known how much inclined Adams was to charge with ingratitude and base in- trigues those with whom his political life had brought him into close personal contact; and furthermore, that the real experiences which he actually encountered in this respect were bad enough to sour a less distrustful and sweeter temper than his. Calhoun, too, he did not blame without reason, and, so far as our pres- ent sources allow us to judge, by far the larger part of the responsibility for the unkind feeling between the two rested upon the Carolinian. Adams's well-founded complaints against Cal- houn, however, chiefly arose after the presiden- tial contest had been decided for this time. Calhoun professed to think that Monroe should 56 JOHN C. CALHOUN. be succeeded by a Northern man, and declared that, if such should be the case, his first choice would be Adams. If he, nevertheless, vigor- ously pushed his own candidacy, it was, as he asserted, because he thought that of all the prominent candidates Mr. Crawford, of Georgia, had the best chance, and him he would oppose to the utmost extent of his power, because he not only had no high opinion of his talents, but could not respect him as a man. So far as Calhoun was concerned, the war was, indeed, principally waged between his partisans and those of Crawford. "As Calhoun stands most in his [Crawford's] way," says Adams's Di- ary on May 2, 1822, " the great burden of his exertions this session and the last has been against the War Department ; while Calhoun, by his haste to get at the presidency, has made a cabal in his favor in Congress to counteract Crawford's cabal, and the session has been little more than a violent struggle between them ; both, however, countenancing the insidious at- tacks upon the Secretary of State." Calhoun was thrown in this tussle with his crafty colleague of the Treasury. The same authority, which is unimpeachable on this ques- tion, says, Calhoun's '' projected nomination for the presidency has met with hardly an> countenance throughout the Union. The prin SECRETARY OF WAR. 57 cipal effect of it has been to bring out Craw- ford's strength, and thus to promote the interest of the very man whom alone he professes to op- pose. Calhoun now feels his weakness, but is not cured of his ambition." Crawford, how- ever, was to be still more disappointed than Calhoun, and so far as the struggle between these two is concerned it was the former infi- nitely more than the latter who could, with jus- tice, be accused of double-dealing and an unfair underground warfare. Yet no sincere friend of Calhoun can look quite undismayed upon this chapter of his public life. The presidential fever, that typical disease which has proved fatal to the true glory of so many statesmen of the United States, permeated the very marrow of his bones. His ambition did not betray him into any dishonorable act, but his eye be- came dimmed with regard to the public weal, because, consciously or unconsciously, the fatal consideration, what effect his course would have upon his standing as a candidate, entered more or less into every question. His blind admirers, if there still be any left, will, of course, not admit the truth of this assertion, and will claim that to him, too, the celebrated saying of Henry Clay applies, that he would rather be right than be President. The cool, tnbiassed student will) indeed, probably come to 68 JOHN C, CALHOUN. the conclusion that there was not much differ- ence between the two in this respect ; but if there were nothing else to sustain the charge against Calhoun, it would be sufficiently proved by the influence which he allowed his presiden- tial aspirations to exercise upon his personal re- lations. The lofty independence of mind and truly chivalric spirit, which were his real nat- ure, appear blunted. He stoops to cover with an approving and admiring smile a resentment which is lurking in a corner of his heart, and on the other side to break off all social intercourse with old and highly respected associates, merely because others, whose good services he wishes to secure, might not like these connections. The champion of slavery, who, with head erect, flashing eye, and the deep-toned voice of solemn conviction and apostolic infallibility, dares the whole civilized world, is every inch a man, though a sadly mistaken one ; but the politi- cian, who is craving with thirst for the presi- dency, is like Ulysses before the suitors, still a hero, but with the beggar's rags of human frailty and weakness covering the " divine " shoulders. Calhoun's hopes rested mainly on his popu larity in Pennsylvania, the grateful affection of the army, and the admiration of the young Hen. With them his comparative youth waa SECRETARY OF WAR. 59 an additional claim on their support ; for it was OP account of his age that his career seemed to shine with uncommon lustre. With his elders, however, this was one of the principal objec- tions against his being already put at the head of the nation. Joseph Story wrote, on Septem- ber 21, 1823, to the Hon. Ezekiel Bacon, " I have great admiration for Mr. Calhoun, and think few men have more enlarged and liberal views of the true policy of the national govern- ment. But his age, or rather his youth, at the present moment, is a formidable objection to his elevation to the chair." But even if he had stood in the beginning of the sixth instead of the fifth decade of his life, his wishes would probably not have been gratified. The whole movement in his favor was premature, and had, at this time, something artificial in it. There was, after all, nothing in his career to stir up a general enthusiasm, by means of which he might have ridden on the crest of a great pop- ular wave over the heads of all his competitors into the White House. The mass of the peo- ple were in a sober mood, verging upon indif- ference. The election, therefore, turned much 'ess upon principles or great questions of policy lhan upon personal predilections ; and thia being the case, it soon became evident tha* C%lhoun had no chance whatever. Even in 60 JOHN C. CALHOUN. Pennsylvania, where he owed his popularity partly to the vigor with which, in 1816, he had advocated a protective tariff, he was dropped. The Harrisburg convention nominated Jack- son, but gave to Calhoun the second place on the ticket as candidate for the vice-presidency. This was a solution of the question with which he could be well satisfied. If he had been from the first the weakest candidate for the presidency, he was undoubtedly the strongest for the vice-presidency ; and as he had already been spoken of for the first place, his election to the second would, in the eyes of many peo- ple, give him a kind of equitable claim to be, in due time, elevated " to the chair." Niles's "Register" of November 6, 1824, said, "He is the only candidate in whose favor the people have moved, and the voice of the people should always be respected." Adams had already, in the preceding February, spoken of the " court- ship of the New England Federalists by Mr. Calhoun," and of " the newspapers set up in Massachusetts to support Mr. Calhoun." Web- ster wrote to his brother Ezekiel, on March 14 of the same year, " I hope all New England will support Mr. Calhoun for the vice-presi- dency. If so, he will probably be chosen, and that will be a great thing. He is a true man* tnd will do good to the country in that situa SECRETARY OF WAR. 61 tion." Webster's hopes were not disappointed. The Jackson and the Adams parties united on Calhoun. He received 182 of the 261 electoral votes, and among these were all the New Eng- land votes, witL the exception of those from Connecticut and one from New Hampshire. CHAPTER IV. VICE-PBESIDENT. As the presidential election turned out, th combination vote by which he had been chosen put Calhoun into an annoying and very embar- rassing position with a view to his own presi- dential aspirations. Although Jackson had re- ceived a plurality of the electoral votes, Adams was elected by the House of Representatives. That the House was perfectly justified in doing this, not only by the letter, but also by the spirit of the Constitution, no person can deny who is possessed of common sense and is willing to use it. Article XII., section 1, of the Constitution would be an absurdity if the House were morally obliged to choose the person upon whom a plu- rality of the votes had been bestowed. Besides, to whom would the preference have to be ac- corded, if the person receiving the plurality of the electoral votes had not also received a plural- ity of the popular votes? The Jackson parti- sans, however, were determined to seal their ears and eyes hermeti cully against every sug. gestion of reason. They declared Adams's eleo VICE-PRESIDENT. 63 tion to be an outrage, a rebellion of the ser- ^ants against the masters, for no matter what the Constitution said and required, the "demos krateo principle," as Senator Benton expressed it, with a somewhat sorry display of his knowl- edge of Greek, had been trampled under foot. The nomination of Henry Clay, whose influ- ence had given the decision in favor of Adams, for Secretary of State filled the cup of their wrath to overflowing. The cry of " bargain " was raised, and though it was proved over and over again to be a base calumny, it did not com- pletely die out until long after Adams and Clay were resting in their graves. So the two camps, to whose union in his be- half Calhoun owed his elevation, stood arrayed in deadly conflict against each other. To re- main neutral between them was to put himself between anvil and hammer. But with which party was he to side ? Justice pleaded for Adams, ambition spoke eloquently for Jackson. Can there be any doubt that this keenest logi- cian, who had never been and never became a fanatic of the " demos krateo principle " as it was now understood by the Jackson party, took i correct view of the constitutional question ? In 1837, in the debate on the bill for the admis- lion of Michigan as a State into the Union, he ery emphatically reproved his adversaries for 64 JOHN C. CALHOUN. an argument, according to which " the author- ity of numbers sets aside the authority of the law and the Constitution." And he added, " Need I show that such a principle goes to the entire overthrow of our constitutional govern- ment, and would subvert all social order?" But from the beginning it was evident that the majority of the people would declare for Jack- son. To support Adams was therefore to post- pone to a remote future, if not to renounce al- together, the realization of his wishes. The temptation proved too strong for Cal- houn. It is possible, and perhaps not unlikely, that Adams judged him too harshly in attrib- uting everything he did and left undone to the wish of undermining the administration. Thus, for instance, it seems hardly probable that the reason for Calhoun's celebrated deci- sion, which denied the right of the Vice-Pres- 'dent to call a Senator to order, was really, as A.dams believed, only unwillingness to check Randolph's violent abuse of the administra- tion. There was more than enough of the doc- trinarian in him to render it likely that he honestly thought this power would be, or at least could lead to, an abridgment of the liberty f speech. This much, however, is certain, that the Vice-President was far from anxiouj to sustain the political credit of the President VICE-PRESIDENT. 66 nay, though he knew how to maintain the de- oorum of his office, he was in fact one of the leaders of the opposition. Mr. Nathan Sargent relates that Calhoun had said to him in De- cember, 1825, or January, 1826, " Such was the manner in which it [Adams's administration] came into power that it must be defeated at all hazards, regardless of its measures" Charity bids us assume that he deceived himself at the time ; but when, instead of ardent desire, bitter disappointment became his constant companion, whispering its suggestions into his ear, the man and the statesman would have been ashamed to have this sentiment recalled to his memory. For a while it seemed as if Calhoun had not been betrayed by his ambition into a miscal- culation. In the presidential election of 1828, Jackson carried everything before him, and Calhoun was reflected Vice-President by 171 electoral votes. As it was understood that Jackson did not intend to be a candidate for reelection, Calhoun was apparently more likely than ever to reach the goal of the White House But in fact, so far as this wish was concerned, his star had already passed its zenith. The personal relation between Jackson and Cal houn was no longer what it was supposed to be. On the surface the waters were still per- fectly smooth, but .in the hidden deep they 66 JOHN C. CALHOU1T. were agitated to a degree boding no good to either Calhoun or the country. In the forma- tion of his cabinet Jackson had recognized the claims of Calhoun to his consideration by in- viting Mr. Branch, of North Carolina, Mr. Ber- rien, of Georgia, and Mr. Ingham, of Pennsylva- nia, to seats in it. Calhoun, however, thought himself not well treated, because with the exception, perhaps, of Ingham these were not the men he had wished to see in the council of the President, though they were reputed to be his fast friends. Yet this was not a cause of the breach which was soon to occur between the two men, but merely a symptom of a cer- tain coolness and an incipient mutual distrust, antedating the inauguration of Jackson, and originating in the leading political question of the day. In 1824 the tariff question had deeply agi- tated the whole country. The protectionists had carried the day, but only by a slender majority, and the opposition, especially in the plantation States, had assumed a threatening aspect. Not only the expediency and justice of a protective tariff was violently contested, but also its con- stitutionality was most strenuously denied. The excitement reached such a height that the "Southron" and the Columbia "Telescope* advised the calling of a congress of the opposi Lior States. VICE-PRESIDENT. 67 Calhoun did not approve of the passionate way in which the question was treated. Yet in the summer of 1825 he declared at a dinner given in his honor at Augusta, Georgia, that " No one would reprobate more pointedly than myself any concerted union between States for interested or sectional objects. I would con- sider all such concert as against the spirit of our Constitution." The national tendencies still prevailed with him, and, as has been proved before, he had not yet forsworn the econom- ical tenets which he had so zealously defended for years. His faith in them had, however, begun to be strongly shaken, and after he had once entered upon their reexamination he felt compelled to become their most irreconcilable enemy. It was no whim or " gray theory " which caused the steadily progressing consolidation of the Southern States with regard to the econom- ical questions. Slavery, in consequence of the enormous development of the cotton culture, had become the determining principle of the whole political, economical, and social life of the Southern States, and a protective tariff was ab- solutely incompatible with the interests of the slave-holders. Indolence and a certain slovenli- ness pervaded the whole life of the South, be- cause some kinds of nonest labor all that th 68 JOHN C. CALHOUN. South was pleased to call " menial services " were dishonored by slavery ; and thereby all work, except the " living by one's wits," had come to be looked upon more or less as a dire necessity, instead of the blissful destiny of man. No white man could ever lose " caste." No matter how lazy, poor, ignorant, and depraved he might be, yet, by virtue of the color of hia skin, he was a born member of the aristocracy, and absolutely nothing could deprive him of his place in it ; for the gulf which separated the whites from the negroes could no more be bridged over than that between heaven and hell. As the human mind is constituted, no more powerful incentive could be offered to the mass of the population to sink deeper into nerveless Bhiftlessness. The middle classes are the back- bone of every civilized community, and slavery prevented the formation of a well-to-do, intel- lectual, and progressive middle class more effect- ually than any express law could have done. To work one's way up from the lower strata of society into the real aristocracy of the great land-owners, that is the great slave-holders, was an enterprise beset with almost insuperable difficulties, and the spirit of the community did not encourage the undertaking of the ardu- ous task. The greater the difference between this real aristocracy and the bulk of the white VICE-PRESIDENT. 69 population actually was in every resect, the more the former was forced to affect absolute equality with the lowliest of their fellow-citi- zens. These had to be persuaded that their interests were identical with those of the rich planters ; and, as they had in fact more to suffer from the effects of slavery than the slaves them- selves, this could only be accomplished by sys- tematically instilling into them a dull self-con- ceit and suicidal arrogance, which mistook shreds and tatters for purple and ermine. They looked down upon every other form of civiliza- tion with an air of contemptuous superiority, which would have been exceedingly ludicrous, if it had not been infinitely sad. That was an education rendering those who were cursed with it eminently fit to listen to political dis- cussions, and to retail the pretentious and vain political wisdom that had been showered upon them from the stump, in their idle neighborly chats, but making them bad farmers, while un- fitting them for everything but farming. The population could never become dense, for the slave, who had to work without the spur of self-interest, tilled the soil, in spite of all over- beers and whips, in a manner which, instead of improving it, exhausted it in the shortest pos- sible time. Those who did the work could Afford utterly to dispense with thinking, and TO JOHN C. CALHOUN. the one head of the master could not supply this want, nor did he, in most cases, even try to do so. More and more it became the rule that the planter lived on credit, eating up his crop before it had been harvested ; and if he was rich enough to grow richer, the surplus was almost invariably invested in more land and slaves. What did it matter if the rich soil was speedily turned into a barren waste ! There were boundless tracts of land of still richer soil left for him to go to, with his " hands." In a community thus constituted there is lit- tle need of artisans, and still less of efficient and skilful ones. " The upper ten thousand " had the means to supply their wants from any dis- tance ; with the mass of the people neither the means nor the wishes extended much beyond the necessaries of life ; and, finally, the claims of the slaves upon life were confined to a hut, coarse raiment, coarse food, and the coarsest ag- ricultural implements. The artisan, however, is the necessary precursor of the manufacturer. Where the standard of civilization is too low to require a numerous class of laborers skilled in all sorts of handiwork, manufacturing on a large scale is as impossible as the putting up of the roof before the building of the walls which are to support it. Moreover, the landed aristocracy which, under democratic forms, wielded the VICE-PRESIDENT. 71 (fhole political and social power, could not but be averse to the development of a middle class luch as the North and all Europe with the exception of the southeastern parts and Russia bad to boast of. There was, in later years, much talking and passing of resolutions upon the duty and necessity of bringing about the in- dustrial and commercial development to which the bounties of nature had evidently destined the South. At the same time, however, the spirit which animated those middle classes in the North and in Europe, and which alone made them what they were, was denounced and abused as a deadly poison, the introduction of which into the South was more to be feared than the plague. And these denunciations, dic- tated by the instinct of self-preservation, were but too well founded. With the building up of commerce and the industrial pursuits, that is, with the spreading of culture and prosperity, the delusion would inevitably vanish that the interests of the small slave-holders and the rest of the white population coincided with those of the great planters. These last would have planted abolitionism at the very doors of their mansions, and would have invited it to the seat D honor at their hearth-stones. Slavery doomed jhe South to be and to remain an almost ex- clusively agricultural country, and, at the same 72 JOHN C. CALHOUN. time, to use up at a steadily advancing rate the capital which Providence had bestowed upon her in the shape of a fertile soil and a genial cli- mate. So long as slavery remained the dominant interest in the Southern States, they, for that very reason, had to be hostile to a home indus- try, if it needed to be artificially nursed into ex- istence by high protective tariffs. Everything they needed of industrial products they were obliged to buy from elsewhere, and they of course wanted to buy where they could get the articles best and cheapest. But the pro- tective tariffs forced them to buy inferior Amer- ican goods at a higher price, or to pay for the European wares much more than their real value. We need not here inquire into the wis- lom of this " American system " from a na- tional point of view. Thus much was incon- testable, that it ran counter to the immediate interest of the South, or, to speak more cor- rectly, of the great slave-holders. Therefore, as the nature of things cannot be changed, this had to remain a "fixed fact" so long as the interests of the slave-holders held undisputed sway over the slave States. If, however, a gov- ernment pursues an economical policy, which is permanently opposed to the immediate inter- ests of a geographical section of the country, this section will never acknowledge that the VICE-PRESIDENT. 73 policy is or can be compatible with the true national interests. Thus far no statesman, either south or north of Mason and Dixon's line, had fully grasped the question. The plantation States felt the ef- fect of the American system, but they did not un- derstand the original cause of the irreconcilable conflict of interests between the two sections of the Union, nor was any one aware that the COE- flict was irreconcilable to the fullest extent of the word. This fact was the more obscured because some special interests, as those of the sugar and indigo planters, caused an alliance be- tween a part of the extreme South and the pro- tectionists ; and furthermore, because the bor- der States, in consequence of their geographical situation and the contest between the slave-hold- ing interest and the free-labor system, limped on both sides. Yet it was as certain as a proposi- tion of Euclid that the conflict was irreconcila- ble, and therefore " irrepressible," because free dom and slavery are antagonistic ideas, acting with equal energy upon the intellectual, politi- cal, economical, social, and moral life of a peo- ple. It has been truly said that " compromise is the essence of politics ; '' genuine compromises, however, can only be concluded with regard to measures, never between principles, that is, be- intellectual and moral conceptions which. 74 JOHN C. CALHOUN. in their very essence, are the opposite poles ot an idea. In relation to the concrete question, these plain truths were, at the time, as little under- stood by Calhoun as by any other statesman of the country. As he was not a member of Con- gress during the contest which terminated in the Missouri compromise, we know but little of his position towards the slavery question at this memorable period. Enough, however, is known of it to prove that he had not as yet deeply re- flected upon it. Like all the other members of Mr. Monroe's cabinet, he admitted the constitu- tional right of Congress to prohibit slavery in the Territories. If he had perceived that this was the pivotal point on which the whole slav- ery question was ultimately to turn, and that upon its decision the existence of slavery de- pended, he certainly would not have done so. Not that he would have wittingly misinter- preted the Constitution, but he would have seen the whole instrument in a totally different light. Already the maintenance of slavery was, in his view, an incontestable right under the funda- mental law of the land, and also it was an ab- solute necessity. Already it was a matter of course with him that everything else must y'eld to this consideration. Adams writes on Fe ru wry 24, 1820, in his Diary : V 'J 'CE-P 'RESIDENT. 75 "I had some conversation with Calhoun on the ilave question, pending in Congress. He said he did not think it would produce a dissolution of the Union, but if it should the South would be from necessity compelled to form an alliance, offensive and defen- sive, with Great Britain. "I said that would be returning to the colonial state. " He said, Yes, pretty much, but it would be forced upon them." Ten years after Calhoun's death, the South tried the realization of this programme. Long before he had begun to concentrate the whole power of his intellect upon the examination of this problem, his unerring instinct unveiled the remote future. While the thinker and the practical statesman but just enter upon the task which was to constitute the dark glory of his life, the seer points to the end, which is to jome after his own bones have been turned into dust. It was not the territorial but the economical question which opened the eyes of Calhoun and pusbed him with irresistible force into a new path, so that Adams said rather too little than too much when he declared that " his career as a statesman has been marked with a series of the most flagrant inconsistencies." But he wronged him grievously in assorting that " hif T6 JOHN C. CALHOUN. opinions are the sport of every popular blast,' and that he " veers round in his politics, to be always before the wind, and makes his intellect the pander of his will." If these reproaches ever had any foundation, he mastered this weak- ness just while and because he abjured his for- mer political faith. Mr. Curtis most justly says, in his " Life of Daniel Webster," " Mr. Calhoun was a man of deep convictions." His veering round was gradual, because it was not done to serve some impure personal end, but was the result of an honest change in his opin- ions. After it had once begun, it went steadily on without pausing for a single moment, be- cause he had taken his stand on a principle, and followed up the consequences of it with masterly logic and fatalistic sternness of purpose. The tariff of 1828 gave birth to his first great political manifesto, the so-called South Carolina Exposition. The document issued by the legis lature of that State does not concern us heve ; we have only to deal with Calhoun's original draft of it. Nor is it now of any interest whether his economical reasoning was correct or fallacious; only the political conclusions which he drew from his economical premises are of historical importance. The essential point of these economical premises is that, ac- cording to him, there is a permanent conflict o* VICE-PRESIDENT. 77 Interest with regard to the tariff policy between the " staple States " and the rest of the Union. The reason of this is simply that the staple States are exclusively devoted to agriculture, and will forever remain purely agricultural com- munities, because " our soil, climate, habits, and peculiar labor are adapted " to this " our ancient and favorite pursuit." This was the wizard's wand which worked such an astonish- ing metamorphosis in the mind of Calhoun that one is tempted to believe that a new man, whom we have never met before, has stepped upon the stage. In the beginning of his career we have heard him praised as absolutely free from sec- tional prejudices ; and we have seen that he, in- deed, judged everything from a national point of view, hardly deigning to answer the objec- tions which legal quibbles, party passion, and local interests raised against what the welfare and the honor of the " nation " demanded. But now he speaks of " our political system resting on the great principle involved in the recognized diversity of geographical interests in the com- munity," and adopts this for the rest of his life as the basis of all his political reasoning and his whole political activity. The " Exposition " fills fifty-six printed pages, but it does not con- tain a single sentence bearing directly on the national interest. This point is only incidentally f8 JOHN C. CALHOUN. mentioned, with the assertion that the pretended unconstitutional usurpation of the federal gov- ernment, which has called forth the " Exposi- tion," seriously endangers the political morality and the liberty of the republic. The national statesman is transformed into the champion of the interests and the rights of the minority, and the reason of the change is that the minority is a geographical section with a " peculiar labor " system, which creates a " recognized diversity " of interests. His first question is no more, What ought the federal government to do, and what has it the right to do ? but, What effect has the policy of the federal government on the staple States in their peculiar situation, and what con- stitutional means have they for counteracting the pernicious effects of the federal policy ? The corner-stone of the political edifice of the United States is henceforth to him no more the princi- ple that the majority is to rule, but that the minority has the right and the power to check- mate the majority, whenever it considers the federal laws unconstitutional ; in other words, whenever different views are entertained about the powers conferred by the Constitution upon the federal government, those of the minority were to prevail, provided it was deemed worth while to have recourse to the last "constitu tional " resort. VICE-PRESIDENT. 79 The Articles of Confederation had been sup- planted by the Constitution in order to render the Union "more perfect." If this purpose was to be fulfilled, the Union must continue to grow more perfect, for where life is there is also development. Either it was an illusion thiit the historical destiny of the North Amer- ican continent could be fulfilled by welding it into one Union composed of many republican commonwealths, and then the Union would, sooner or later, fall to pieces, no matter what the Constitution said ; or the authors of the Con- stitution had correctly understood the genius of the American people, and had skilfully adapted their work to the peculiar natural conditions of the country, and in that event the States would steadily go on growing together as the parts of an organic whole, no matter what this or that man, or even this or that section, might be pleased to proclaim as the correct interpre- tation of the Constitution. Calhoun had been so well aware of this fact that a favorite argu- ment of his in support of the policy advocated by him had been the favorable effect it would have upon the "consolidation of the Union." Now there was in the whole political dictionary no term more abhorred by him than this. The icvereignty of the States, in the fullest sense f the term, is declared to be the essential prin- 80 JOHN C. CALHOUN. ciple of the Union ; and it is not only asserted as an incontestable right, but also claimed as an absolute political necessity in order to protect the minority against the majority. The author- ity quoted for this opinion is not any section of the Constitution, but the Virginia and Ken- tucky resolutions, with their doctrine, that the States have the right " to interpose " when the federal government is guilty of a usurpation, because, as there is no common judge over them, they, as the parties to the compact, have to determine for themselves whether it has been violated. This theory is brought by Calhoun into the more precise formula that each State has the right to " veto " a federal law which it deems unconstitutional. Whether such a veto is to be an injunction against the execution of the law throughout the Union, or only in the individual State, and, in the latter case, what is to become of the principle that different federal laws cannot prevail in different parts of the Union, we do not learn from the " Exposition." We are only told that the veto ought to be pro- nounced by a convention as representing the sovereignty of the State, but it is left undecided whether it might not also be done by the legis. lature. Calhoun was very far from having completely killed the old national Adam in his bosom. H VICE-PRESIDENT 81 therefore could not entirely suppress the feel- ing that, if this theory were to be put into prac- tice, it might lead after all to very strange con- sequences with regard to the legislative activity of the federal government ; nay, with regard to the life of the Union itself. So he hastened to show that the veto was by no means so ter- rible a thing as it might appear at the first glance. In adopting the Constitution the States had so far abandoned their sovereignty that three fourths of them could change the com- pact as they pleased. If, therefore, it was de- sired that the federal government should have the contested power, it was only necessary that three fourths of the States should say so, and all the damage done would be that the exercis- ing of the power had been postponed for a while. How was it that these penetrating eyes failed to see that the federal legislation might thereby be turned into a bulky machine, more fatal to healthy political life than Juggernaut's car to the fanatical worshippers? But leaving this practical objection aside, how was it that he failed to see that thereby one fourth of the States would get the power to change the Con- stitution at will ? Suppose and the case might certainly very easily happen that the federal government exercises a power which has been wctually granted to it by the Constitution, and 82 JOHN C. CALHOUN. that a State sees fit to veto the law, that the question, as must be the case, is submitted to all the States, and the objecting State is sup- ported by one fourth of the whole number. Is any dialectician sharp enough to disprove the fact that, in such a case, the Constitution, though not a single letter is either added or erased, has been actually changed by one fourth of the States, though that instrument expressly requires the consent of at least three fourths to effect the slightest change? Working in de- fence of the peculiar interests of the slave-hold- ers with the lever of the state sovereignty, Cal- houn thus begins to subvert the foundation of the whole fabric of the Constitution. The practical conclusion to which Calhoun came was, " that there exists a case which would justify the interposition of this State, in order to compel the general government to abandon an unconstitutional power, or to ap- peal to this high authority [the States] to con- fer it by express grant." He, however, deemed it "advisable " "to allow time for further con- sideration and reflection, in the hope that a re- turning sense of justice on the part of the ma- jority, when they come to reflect on the wrongs which this and the other staple States have suf- fered, and are suffering, may repeal the obnox (HUB and unconstitutional acts, and thereby pro VICE-PRESIDENT. 83 tent the necessity of interposing the veto of the State." Daniel Webster wrote on April 10, 1833, to Mr. Perry, " In December, 1828, I became thoroughly convinced that the plan of a South- ern confederacy had been received with favor by a great many of the political men of the South." If this suspicion was well founded the above-quoted sentence of the Exposition proves that Calhoun, at all events, was not privy to such a plot. He not only had no de- sire to force a crisis upon the country, but he had strong hopes that it would be avoided, and he plainly stated his reasons for these hopes. He was " further induced, at this time, to rec- ommend this course, under the hope that the great political revolution, which will displace from power on the 4th of March next those who have acquired authority by setting the will of the people at defiance, and which will bring in an eminent citizen, distinguished for his ser- vices to the country and his justice and pa- triotism, may be followed up, under his influ- ence, with a complete restoration of the pure principles of our government." But it is to be noted that he. meant exactly what he said, nei- ther more nor less. He hoped that by the in- fluence of Andrew Jackson the protectionists would be defeated, but ne did not feel quit* 84 JOHN C. CALHOUN. sure of it ; and if his hopes should not be real- ized, he had explicitly stated what, in his opin ion, ought to be done. In order to leave no doubt whatever on this point, he followed up the last-mentioned sentence with the declara- tion that, in thus recommending delay, he wished it " to be distinctly understood that neither doubts of the rightful power of the State nor apprehension of consequences " con- stituted the smallest part of his motives. Calhoun's reason for not trusting too implic- itly in Jackson's influence to bring about a rev- olution in the economical policy of the fed- eral government was the double programme on which the general had been elected. In the South he had been sustained as a friend of ' Southern interests," i. e., as an anti-protec- tionist ; while in New York, Pennsylvania, and the West he had been supported as the firm friend of the tariff and of internal improve- ments. The inaugural address touched this leading question of the day but very slightly, and with such cautious vagueness that neither party was satisfied, because neither knew what it had to expect from the new President. The first annual message, which had been looked for with keen expectation, gave no more satisfac- tion to either. All that could be safely inferred from it was that the President would gladly see VICE-PRESIDENT. 86 lome duties reduced, but it contained nothing to justify the hope of the South that he would, on principle, throw his whole weight into thf scales against the entire protective system. Calhoun even saw a direct bid for the favor of the protectionists in the proposal to divide the expected yearly surplus among the States for the execution of internal improvements. He began to look upon the President with a certain distrust, and this feeling was fully reciprocated by Jackson. Those who had no opportunity to observe the actors closely, while the curtain was down, did not, however, become aware of the fact that an ominous disturbance in the friendly relations between the two first officers of the government had occurred, until the society of the capital had begun to become convulsed by the tragi-comical intermezzo of the Mrs. Eaton affair. No serious historian will be expected to enter npon the details of this once celebrated case of the American chronique scandaleuse. It is the less necessary, to do so because it in fact only helped on and accelerated the important polit- ical events, of which it has frequently been said to have been the main cause. It suffices to re- sail to the memory of the reader that Mrs. Baton was reported to have had before her see- ind marriage illicit intercourse with her present 86 JOHN C. CAL1WDN. husband, the Secretary of War, and that there- tore many ladies refused to admit her into their company. Jackson, prompted partly by his generous temper, and partly by the bitter recol- lections of what had been said against his own wife, exerted all his influence to break the social ban under which the wife of his Secretary and personal friend had been put. The ladies, how- ever, were not to be dictated to, and they car- ried the day against the victor of New Orleans. Against the wives of the members of his cab- inet even the President's iron will was power- less, and Calhoun, the Vice-President, according to his own statement, considered it his duty to take the lead in this determined opposition against the attempt to force the suspected lady upon society. Van Buren, on the contrary, who was a widower and led a bachelor's life, even surpassed his wonted politeness in his treatment of Mrs. Eaton. Jackson, however, was utterly unable to draw the correct line between private and public affairs whenever his feelings were en- dsted in a cause. Van Buren therefore greatly ingratiated himself with the President by assid- uously paying his court to Mrs. Eaton, while Calhoun, by strictly adhering to the rigid course of morality, which has always distin- guished the family life of South Carolina, had *o pay for it by a corresponding decline in Jack VICE-PRESIDENT. 87 aon's good will. Both Van Buren and Calhoun ardently wished to succeed the general in the presidency, and neither of them failed to see that Jackson's favor might go far towards de- ciding who should be the next occupant of the White House. Moreover, Calhoun was serving his second term as Vice-President. All the precedents were against his presenting himself once more as a candidate for reelection, and he justly apprehended that to return for four years into private life might postpone the realization of his long-deferred hopes ad calendas Grrcecas. fle was therefore most anxious that Jackson tdiould serve but one term, while, for the same reason, Van Buren and his partisans were not less zealous advocates of Jackson's reelection. So, while everything was yet quiet and smooth on the surface, the mine was dug and charged ; one spark sufficed to lead to a great catastrophe. Calhoun himself remained to the end of his life firmly convinced that Van Buren was the engineer who had constructed the in- genious battery for the explosion. Though there is no documentary proof for it, yet it can hardly be doubted that Van Buren did in fact eake part in devising the scheme ; but he was too wary and too cunning in such transactions ever to do himself what could be done as well, r even better, by some devoted friend. Ad- 88 JOHN C. CALHOUN. ams, however, writes on January 30, 1831, *' Wirt concurred entirely with me in opinion that this was a snare deliberately spread by Crawford to accomplish the utter ruin of Cal- houn." The opportunities for these two men to be well informed were too good not to re- quire that the greatest weight be accorded to their opinion. Besides, the powder for the petard was confessedly furnished by Craw- ford's guilty indiscretion. He divulged the secrets of certain of the cabinet meetings of Monroe's administration, which filled Jackson's mind with deep hatred and contempt against Calhoun. If we were writing the biography of Andrew Jackson, it would be necessary, in this connection, to review the whole controversy concerning the general's conduct in the Semi- nole war. But in a life of Calhoun we can with propriety dispense with that thankless task, confining our remarks to a single point in it, and even that may be treated with great brevity. In the course of his operations against the Seminoles, General Jackson had not only crossed the Florida boundary, as he was authorized to io in case the object of the campaign could not otherwise be attained, but he had forcibly taken possession of the Spanish forts at St. Mark's Pensacola. In July, 1818, the question aa VICE-PRESIDENT. 89 to whether and how far these high-handed pro- ceedings should be sustained by the administra- tion formed the subject of long and earnest discussions by Mr. Monroe and his cabinet. The general had acted in good faith. A letter to the President, in which he communicated his intentions, having accidentally remained unan- swered, he mistook the silence for tacit consent, and afterwards, without regard to dates, even adduced a subsequent letter of the Secretary of War to a third person as proof that the govern- ment had given him full discretion. This was by no means the view which Mr. Monroe and his cabinet took of the matter. Even Adams, who went farthest in supporting the general's course, did not undertake to justify it wholly by rules of international law, but deemed it neces- sary to adduce considerations of high policy for his opinion. Calhoun, as Adams states in his Diary, " principally bore the argument against me, insisting that the capture of Pensacola was not necessary upon principles of self-defence, and therefore was both an act of war against Spain and a violation of the Constitution ; that the administration, by approving it, would take all the blame of it upon themselves ; that by leaving it upon his responsibility they would *ake away from Spain all pretext for war and or resorting to the aid of other European pow- 90 JOHN C. CALHOUN. era, they would also be free from all reproach of having violated the Constitution that it was not the menace of the Governor of Pensacol?* that had determined Jackson to take that place ; that he had really resolved to take it before ; that he had violated his orders, and upon his own arbitrary will set all authority at defiance." He therefore demanded an inves- tigation of the general's conduct ; but although " all the members of the cabinet, except myself [Adams] are of opinion that Jackson acted not only without, but against, his instructions," and " that he has committed war upon Spain," a middle course was finally adopted, which, with- out directly and formally disavowing the gen- eral, satisfied Spain. Jackson knew that his conduct had not met with the approval of the administration, but he had heretofore believed that the contemplated proceedings against him had been principally urged by Crawford, and that, on the other hand, Calhoun had exerted himself in his de- fence. Now, however, a letter from Crawford to Senator Forsyth (April 30, 1830), which had been written for this purpose, was put into hia hands, and undeceived him on the latter point, itt the same time giving a false and malicious coloring to the whole transaction. If any mem- ber of the administration had been animated VICE-PRESIDENT. 91 by a really hostile spirit against tbe general, it had been Crawford ; yet Crawford now pre- tended that, upon learning all the attending cir- cumstances, he had become satisfied that Jack- son was fully excused, if not justified. And the weight which he thus shook from his own shoulders he shifted upon the back of Calhoun, by the bold exaggeration that the latter had persistently demanded the punishment of the general. These revelations threw Jackson into a tow- ering passion. On May 13 he sent Crawford's letter with a curt note to Calhoun, demanding " to learn of you whether it be possible that the information given is correct." Calhoun might have declined to answer the interroga- tory, because nobody had a right to demand from him a confession concerning what had passed in the cabinet meetings of the adminis- tration, of which he had been a member. He, however, replied with a long statement and elaborate argument, which had too much the character of a justification of his conduct and of an impeachment of Crawford's behavior and motives. Though he proved that Jackson could and ought to have known that the proceedings in Florida were, at the time, considered by him (Calhoun) transgressions of the orders issued from his department, and that he had, without 92 JOHN C. CALBOUN. any personal hostility, acted according to hia convictions of duty, for which he owed no ac- count to the general either then or now, all such arguments did not avail him anything, and his dignity would have been better served by tak- ing higher ground. Most truly did he say, " It was an affair of mere official duty, involving no question of private enmity or friendship ; " but that was a view which Andrew Jackson was absolutely unable to understand. In theory he may have admitted the possibility of an honest difference of opinion, but whatever related to himself he could only see in an eminently per- sonal light ; and if any one whom he deemed his friend had the misfortune and audacity to differ with him, the brand of Cain was indelibly stamped on that man's forehead. All Calhoun got for his pains was violent, impudent, and absurd abuse, mingled with ludicrous pathos. He was charged with " secretly endeavoring to destroy my reputation," while the poor victim "had too exalted an opinion of your honor and frankness to believe for one moment that you could be capable of such deception. ... I re- peat, I had a right to believe that you were my sincere friend, and, until now, never expected to have occasion to say of you, in the language >f Caesar, M tu, Brute!" The reproach of a lack of frankness was VICE-PRESIDENT. 93 oowever, not quite unfounded, but it was now, rather than heretofore, that Calhoun wag guilty of it. He declared in his reply of May 29, " I neither questioned your patriotism nor your motives." Adams's Diary, that invaluable source of historical information, furnishes the proof that this was not strictly true. On July 14, 1818, Adams gives it as his impression that "Calhoun, the Secretary of War, generally of sound, judicious, and comprehensive mind, seems in this case to be personally offended with the idea that Jackson has set at naught the instructions of the department." Again, in a short synopsis of a conversation between himself and Calhoun, on March 2, 1831, two weeks after the publication of the correspond- ence with Jackson, Adams writes, *' He said, too, that his remark in the cabinet meet- ing, in reply to my argument that Jackson's taking foe Spanish forts had been defensive, to meet the threats of Masot, namely, that Jackson had deter- mined to take the province before, was not with al- lusion to the letter of January 6, 1818, 1 but to a rumor that Jackson had been personally interested in a pre- vious land speculation at Pensacola." This breach witn Jackson was the death- blew to the presidential aspirations of Calhoun. 1 Jackson's letter to the President, before alluded to, whkk utd accidentally remained unanswered 94 JOHN C. CALHOUN. Mr. Wirt thought " that he had blasted his prospects of future advancement forever," and Adams called him " a drowning man," at the Bame time, however, asserting that he " never- theless entertains very sanguine hopes." Per- haps this expression was a little too strong, but at all events Calhoun maintained his candidacy a while longer, although he not only had to encounter the enmity of Jackson's partisans, but could also no longer count upon the support of New England, which had become ill-disposed towards him by reason of the political course of his friends in Congress. It was rumored that Clay's Western friends were inclined to take him up, in case they should find the chances of their own champion desperate, and Calhoun himself seems to have thought it possible that, if he should conclude to run against Jackson, the election might revert once more to the House of Representatives. But the drift of public opinion was too strong not to destroy these illusions very speedily. Calhoun's disap- pointment was, undoubtedly, very bitter ; but those strangely misjudged the man who attrib- uted to it the terrible energy with which he nenceforth pursued the course upon which he had entered with the South Carolina Exposi- tion. He was not driven by disappointed am bition into a sectional policy with a view to VICE-PRESIDENT. 95 If ards tearing the Union asunder, in order to become the chief of one half, because he could not be the chief of the whole. Slavery had split the Union into two geographical sections, and, in spite of everything man could do, the rent widened into a chasm, and the chasm into an abyss. That was not the work of Calhoun, but the unavoidable consequence of the fact that the Union was composed of free and slave- holding States. He could not have done it if he had wanted to, and he was as far as any man from wanting to do it. The only effect of the disappointment of his ambition was the quick dispersion of the mist which had hitherto been lying over his eyes as over those of the whole people. The shackles of minor considerations and personal interests began to fall from his limbs. Embittered but free, he henceforth pur- sued his course, forming alliances without heed- ing the claims of old or new party connections, and not afraid to encounter the enmity of any >ne ; never ceasing to love and cherish the Union, but learning to love slavery better and better. He was not a demi-god, but a man, having his full share of human weakness and ittleness. But nature had not only endowed him with a powerful brain ; the marrow of hi oones and the core of his heart were sound. Not for the world would he have betrayed hi 96 JOHN C. CALHOUN. country, and even slavery could not turn him into a dark conspirator. Yet it has been pre- tended that he was guilty of such betrayal and conspiracy merely in order to see the title Pres- ident prefixed to his name. Those who, like Senator Benton, honestly believed this, stum- bled into an egregious blunder, because, in spite of all their keen-sightedness, they remained blind to the fact that the wedlock between slav- ery and freedom could not be a lasting one. What they attributed to the traitorous machin- ations of his disappointed ambition would have happened, even though out of every fibre of John C. Calhoun a Henry Clay, a Daniel Web- ster, and a Thomas Benton had been made. It was not a crime, but it was his misfortune, that he saw everything relating to slavery with such appalling clearness, discerning, with unerring eye, the last consequences at the first glance. As soon as all hope had to be given up that the protective system could be destroyed with Jackson's help in the regular parliamentary way, Calhoun resumed the contest at the point where he had left it with the South Carolina Exposi- tion. His second manifesto " Address to the People of South Carolina," dated Fort Hill, July 26, 1831 was published in the u Pendleton Messenger." The whole question of the rela- tion which the States and the general govern VICE-PRESIDENT. 97 raent bear to each other, i. e., of state sover- eignty, was reargued. The key-note of hia whole argument and of his whole subsequent political life is the assertion, "The great dis- similarity and, as I must add, as truth compels me to do, contrariety of interests in our country . . . are so great that they cannot be subjected to the unchecked will of a majority of the whole without defeating the great end of government, without which it is a curse, justice." This is the real broad foundation of his doctrine that the Union could never have a safe foundation upon any other legal basis save state sover- eignty, which enables the minority to defend themselves against usurpations. No new argu- ment is adduced either on the constitutional or on the economical question, but the whole rea- soning is closer and the language is more direct and bolder. The federal government has dwin- dled down to a mere " agent " of the " sover- eign States," and the veto power of these ia termed " nullification." Calhoun had, of course, not expected to con- rince his adversaries. What he wanted was to mark off the old, widely trodden road with the utmost precision, so that in future no gap could be reasoned into it, and to consolidate his own party, and to inspire it with resolution to live up to its profession of faith. The apprehen 98 JOHN C. CALHOUN. sion that this would be done was great enough to dampen the ardor of the protectionists when the tariff question came again before Congress. The duties were considerably reduced, but the plantation States were not satisfied either with the amount or with the manner in which the reduction was effected. South Carolina re- ceived the new tariff as a declaration that the protect' ve system was " the settled policy of the country," and on August 28, 1832, Calhoun issued his third manifesto, determined to have the die cast without further delay. This letter to Governor Hamilton of South Carolina is the final and classical exposition of the theory of state sovereignty. Nothing new has ever been added to it. All the later discussions of it have but varied the expressions and amplified the argument on particular points. Thirty years later the programme laid down in it was carried out by the South piece by piece, and the justification of the Southern course was based, point by point, upon this argument. The late champion of a national policy and of consolidating measures now takes for his starting-point the assertion that, " so far from the Constitution being the work of the American people collectively, no such political body, either now or ever, did exist." The historical review by which he tried to prove this assertion con VICE-PRESIDENT 99 tains two seemingly slight, but in fact very important, errors. The colonies did not "by name and enumeration " declare themselves free and independent States, nor is the Constitu- tion declared " to be binding between the States BO ratifying,'' but Article VII. of the Constitu- tion reads, " The ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the es- tablishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying." From these historic " facts " he draws the conclusion " that there is no direct and immediate connection between the individual citizens of a State and the general government." Strange indeed! for the authors and the advocates of the Constitution thought that the most important change effected in the political structure of the Union, by substituting the Constitution for the Articles of Confedera- tion, was exactly the establishment of direct and immediate connections between the indi- vidual citizens and the federal government ; and not a single day passed in which a great number of citizens were not actually brought into contact with the federal government, in the courts, in the custom-houses, in the depart- ments, etc., without being reminded in any way whatever that they were citizens of this or that oarticular State. If the relation between the Individual citizen and the federal government 100 JOHN C. CALHOUN. were, in fact, exclusively through the State, then, indeed, it might have been true that " it belongs to the State as a member of the Union, in her sovereign capacity in convention, to determine definitely, as far as her citizens are concerned, the extent of the obligation which she has contracted ; and if, in her opinion, the act exercising the power [in dispute] be un- constitutional, to declare it null and void, which declaration would be obligatory on her citizens." The federal government is floating in the air without a straw of its own to rest upon, the sport of the sovereign fancies of the States. " Not a provision can be found in the Consti- tution authorizing the general government to exercise any control whatever over a State by force, by veto, by judicial process, or in any other form, a most important omission, de- signed, and not accidental." And the actual state of the case corresponds with the right, for " it would be impossible for the general government, within the limits of the States, to execute, legally, the act nullified, while, on the t ther hand, the State would be able to enforce, egally and peaceably, its declaration of nullifi- cation." Yet nullification is declared to be " the great conservative principle " of the Union. Undoubtedly, there is method in this madness, tmt madness it is nevertheless ; for the whole VICE-PRESIDENT. 101 theory is neither more nor less than the system- atization of anarchy. The Union is constructed upon the principle that the essence of the idea State, the supremacy of the will which has to act for the whole, that is, in a free State, the government of the laws, is by principle ex- cluded from its structure. If there ever was an illustration of the " tragedy of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out," here it is. This vast republic, to which the future belonged more than to any other state of the globe, was to b* a shooting star, a political monster without a supreme will, because this could be lodged no- where with safety. The resort to force " should folly or madness ever make the at- tempt " would be utterly vain, if at all pos- sible, for " it would be ... a conflict of moral, not physical, force." This moral force, how- ever, was also but a rope of sand, if a sovereign State should so will it. Even a decision by three fourths of the States would by no means be unconditionally binding upon all the members of the Union. " Should the other members un- dertake to grant the power nullified, and should the nature of the power be such as to defeat the object of the association or union, at least as far as the member nullifying is concerned t would then becpme an abuse of power OL ^he part of the principals, and :hus present 102 JOHN C. CALHOUN. case where secession would apply." The Union was to have laws only so long and just so far as every constituent member of it was pleased to submit to them. In his great political tes- tament, the " Disquisition on Government," Calhoun directly says, " Nothing short of a negative, absolute or in effect, on the part of the government [!] of a State can possibly pro- tect it against the encroachments of the united government of the States, whenever [!] their powers come in conflict." And as even this might prove not to be a sufficient protection, each State was to have, in the form of the right of secession, a most absolute veto against all its co-States. What a nice checker-board the United States might become, if the exercise of this right should get to be the political fashion I Suppose the States at the mouths of the great streams, and four or five others commanding a part of their navigable waters, should secede, what a pretty picture the map of the United States would present ! Why, the German Bund of by-gone days would have had a most for- midable rival. Calhoun himself would have turned with disgust and contempt from the idea of thus bridging over the craggy actualities of life with the cobwebs of an ovei'-subtle logic, ,i he had conceived the possibility of his theory being ever put into practice in this manner. 1| VICE-PRESIDENT. 103 seemed to him so plausible only because he was fully conscious of the fact that, if it were ever put to the test, the Union would split into two solid geographical sections. Never would he have stultified his intellect by this ingenious systematization of anarchy, if he could not have written, " Who, of any party, with the least pretension to candor, can deny that on all these points [the great questions of trade, of taxation, of disbursement and appropriation, and the nature, character, and power oi the general government] se deeply important, no two distinct nations can be more opposed than this [the itaple States] and the other sections ? " CHAPTER V. THE SENATE. ON November 24 the South Carolina con Fention passed the nullification ordinance, which was to take effect on February 1, 1833. Cal- houn at once resigned the vice-presidency, in order to take the seat in the United States Sen- ate, vacated by General Hayne, who had been elected Governor of South Carolina. Hun- dreds of eyes closely scrutinized the face of the " great nullifier " as he took the oath to sup- port the Constitution, but the firm repose of his countenance dispelled all doubts of his sincer- ity. His personal courage, however, was seri- ously questioned by many. Benton and others assure us that he finally yielded, because he had been informed that Jackson had threatened to hang him as high as Haman. This dramatic anecdote has been repeated so often that the mass of the American people have come to be- lieve it as an undoubted historic fact. That Jackson may have uttered some such threat is probable enough, but Calhoun never betrayed luch a weakness of nerves as to justify a sus- THE SENATE. 105 picion that an empty threat could wipe from his brains all remembrance of the Constitution. And an empty threat this most certainly was, if it was ever made. Jackson was not now the general commanding in the wilds of Flor- ida, but President of the United States; and Calhoun was not an Arbuthnot or Ambrister, but a senator of the United States. The sec- tion of the Constitution, however, has yet to be written which empowers the President to hang any man, and especially a United States sena- tor. The hanging story may have been good enough at the time for political purposes, but it deserves no place in history. Yet Calhoun knew well enough that not only he personally, but also his State, was playing a high game, in which eventually powder and lead, and perhaps even the hangman, upon the requisition of the courts or of a court-martial, might speak the last word. He therefore did yield, but only because Con- gress and Jackson notwithstanding the justly celebrated "proclamation" yielded still more. The explanations with which Calhoun accom- panied his affirmative vote on a certain provision of the tariff bill, after he had declared it un- constitutional, were vain talk ; he bent his proud neck, because Mr. Clayton had left him no al- ternative except to submit, or to let the whole Bompromise fail. On the other hand, however, 106 JOHN C. CALHOUN. the new tariff conceded in the main the de- mands of South Carolina, and the so-called Force Bill, which gave the President the means to subdue by force of arms any resistance to the laws of the Union, was only passed after the passage of the tariff bill had been fully se- cured. Congress, with the reluctant approval of the President, bought the acquiescence of South Carolina, and then the daring little State was told that she would have been crushed had she persisted in her mad course. A dread hon- orable and patriotic indeed, but on the part of the federal government much to be regretted of the consequences had forced both parties from their original stand-point. The princi- ple was purposely left undecided, and, as to the immediate practical questions, a compromise was effected ; but if either party had a right to claim the victory, it was certainly not Jackson and the majority of Congress, but Calhoun and South Carolina. Another, and perhaps the best, proof that ap- prehensions for his personal safety, on account of Jackson's reported threats, had nothing to do with the course pursued by Calhoun, is the calm- Dess with which he reviewed the field after the contest was over. There was not a single man in either camp who judged the results of it more correctly than he. Whenever a suitable THE SENATE. 107 opportunity was offered, he claimed, in a calm and dignified but very decided manner, that the overthrow of the protective, system was due to the resistance offered by South Carolina, and that the conservative and beneficial character of nullification had been proved by experience. At the same time, however, he never failed to acknowledge that the doctrine of states-rights had suffered a defeat by the passage of the Force Bill. He even laid greater stress upon this fact, and exaggerated its significance. On April 9,1834, he delivered a speech in support of a bill, which he had introduced, to repeal the obnoxious act, although by its own limitation the power conferred by it on the President was to expire at the termination of this session. Those who charged him with doing so only in order to appear consistent, greatly deceived themselves. From the moment that he had as- Bumed the leadership of the states-rights party the principiis obsta was always present to his mind, and the unswerving rigor with which he applied it goes far to explain why he held such H unique position among the Southern statesmen in the slavery conflict. " The precedent, unless the act be expunged from the statute book, will live forever, ready, on any pretext of future danger, to be quoted as an authority to confer on the chief magistrate similar or even more 108 JOHN C. CALHOUN. dangerous powers, if more dangerous can be de- vised." Therefore he declared it " subversive of our political institutions, and fatal to the lib- erty and happiness of the country," although, as to the immediate object for which it pur- ported to be passed, the compromise tariff had rendered it a piece of waste paper ere it had been inscribed on the statute book. He waa not lulled into the sleep of false security by the calm after the first blast of the storm. Al- ready in the so-called Edgefield letter of March 27, 1833, declining an invitation to a public dinner, he had written, " The struggle to pre- serve the liberty and Constitution of the coun- try, and to arrest the corrupt and dangerous tendency" of the government, so far from being over, is not more than fairly commenced. . . . Let us not deceive ourselves by supposing that the danger is past. We have but checked the disease. If one evil has been remedied, another has succeeded." As he declined all public demonstrations pro- posed to be given in acknowledgment of the stand he had taken against the federal govern- ment, because he did not want to carry fuel to the fire of his calumniators, who attributed his course solely to impure personal motives, so also he abstained from currying the favor of his own party by shouting triumph and flattering then THE SENATE. 109 with paeans. To sound the tocsin was the un- grateful task of the rest of his life, and the greater the success of the slave power the harder he pulled the rope. In August, 1833, he wrote to the citizens of Newton County, who had ten- dered him a public dinner, " I utter it under a painful but a solemn conviction of its truth that we are no longer a free people, a people living under a Constitution, as the guardian of their rights ; but under the absolute rule of an un- checked majority, which has usurped the power to do as it pleases, and to enforce its pleasure at the point of the bayonet. . . . This condition we had been long approaching ; and to it we are now absolutely re- duced by the proclamation and force act. ... So long, then, as the act of blood stains our statute book, and the sovereignty of the States is practically denied by the government, so long will be the duration of our political bondage." This is the ceterum censeo, which recurs in all his speeches during the next years. In his first great speech after the nullification session, he declared, " I stand wholly disconnected witb the two great parties now contending for ascendency. My political connections are with that small and denounced party which has voluntarily retired from the party strifes of the day, with a view of saving, if possible, the lib- jrty and the Constitution of the country iu this great of our affairs." HO JOHN C. CALHOUN. He had not become a Whig, nor had he ceased to be a Democrat, but he was one of the most uncompromising adversaries of Jacksouism. In all the leading questions of these years, so full of bitter strife, he stands in the front rank of the opposition, but he has no more in common with Clay and Webster than before. He and they fought side by side against a common enemy, but he did not fight with them for a common cause. In their defensive warfare against the removal of the government depos- its from the United States Bank, these three occupied the same ground ; but when it came to the question of renewing the charter of the bank, or to the general problem of the cur- rency, their ways separated, though they did not diverge so much as one would suppose from Calhoun's subsequent course. With regard to the bank, \ie sat as yet, so to say, on the fence. He did not conceal the lively distrust and grave apprehensions with which he viewed the close connection of the gov- ernment with a privileged moneyed corporation of such enormous means, but the reasons of expediency still prevailed over the objections which would have been decisive with him, if he had felt free to follow his inclination and general principles. He himself even reminded fchfc Senate of the fact that the bank wouW THE SENATE. Ill probably not have been established, if it had not been for his exertions. His argumentation was as clear and logical as usual and it led him to definite practical propositions; and yet his speeches leave the impression upon the reader's mind that he himself did not know exactly what to think and what to will. Like the coun- try, he was in a state of transition with regard to this perplexing problem, and it is a curious fact that so early as 1834 he pointed out the ultimate solution of it ; but he did it in such a way that it would be absurd to claim for him the honor of the discovery. In his speech of January 13, on the removal of the deposits, he aaid, " So long as the question is one between a Bank of the United States, incorporated by Congress, and that system of banks which has been created by the will of the Executive, it is an insult to the understanding to discourse on the pernicious tendency and unconstfc tutionality of the Bank of the United States. To bring up that question fairly and legitimately, you must go one step farther : you must divorce the gov- ernment and the banking system. You must refuse all connection with banks. You must neither receive nor pay away bank-notes ; you must go back to the old system of the strong-box, and of gold and silver. . . I repeat, you must divorce the government en- tirely from the banking system ; or, if not, you are hound to incorporate a bank as the only safe and 112 JOHN C. CALHOUN. efficient means of giving stability and uniformity to the currency." Calhoun was not a " statesman " of the type which, at this time, began to become only too common in the United States. He did not owe his position to the grace of King Caucus and the favor of his grandees, the washed and unwashed patriots of the primary meetings. He there- fore did not know and understand everything by intuition, as this privileged class of mortals do, but he was obliged to study and reflect upon the subjects with which he had to deal as a leg- islator. As a seat in the legislative hall was in his opinion as well the most responsible as the most honorable post in which a man can be put by the confidence of his fellow-citizens, he ap- plied himself to this task with all the thorough- going earnestness of his nature. It is therefore a matter of course that his speeches never lacked a positive element of more or less, and not un frequently of considerable, merit. Yet ever since the Southern Samson has put his head into the lap of the Delilah of state sover- eignty, his strength is on the wane whenever he returns to his old place among the builders of his country's greatness and happiness. Crit- ically to dissect the arguments of others and to expose the weak points of their devices, to de- nounce their inconsistencies and mercilessly tc THE SENATE. 113 lash the moral shortcomings of their policy, and, above all, to point out the breakers ahead of the ship of state, these are the things in which he excels. Jackson's administration offered a wide field for the vigorous application of all these pecul- iar qualities, and it was but human that Cal- hoan should avail himself the more willingly if the opportunity on account of his personal Delations with the President. His speeches on ihe removal of the deposits and on Jackson's protest against the resolution of the Senate, de- nouncing it as an unwarrantable assumption of power, exposed the President's high-handed way of dealing with the Constitution and the laws, also the gross fallacies and inconsistencies of his reasoning, in a truly masterly way, and were not less admirable defences of the consti- tutional rights and privileges of the legislative branch of the government. He did not spare the President, but neither his personal griev- ances nor the intensity of his political anger and dibgust carried him beyond the line which respect for the office ought to draw whenever the chief magistrate of the republic is spoken of ; and his most vigorous thrusts were not fdmed against the person, but against the sys- tem .which had been inaugurated by Jackson. If the high- toned c?oral severity of the above- 114 JOHN C. CALHOUN. mentioned speeches was seasoned now and then with cutting irony and haughty defiance, Cal houn's remarks on the wholesale dismissal of federal office-holders without cause betray pa- triotic sadness and deep anxiety for the future of his country. The subject was of too serious a nature to permit him to indulge in personal animosities or party bickerings. The removal of the deposits, the protest, the whole bank question, though all of great import, were after all but questions of the day, which would soon be dead issues, of no interest to anybody ex- cept the student of history. But would not the very life-blood of the body politic be poisoned if the government should fall into the hands of mercenaries, with whom politics constituted only a trade, to which they devoted themselves for the sake of the " spoils " of office ? Was not the love of country in danger of being drowned in the whirlpools of party strife, if the official spokesmen of the national parties should be men who owed their position to the dexter- ity with which they gathered followers around their standards by means of the spoils? Would not the politics of the republic degenerate more and more from a contest about great public measures, principles, and ideas, into a mean scuffle about the husks, if it should become an acknowledged principle that " to the victor be- THE SENATE. 115 long the spoils " ? Would not every party be forced to follow suit if the example should be once successfully set, for what party could hope to vanquish with untrained volunteers the, skilled bands of lansquenets fighting for booty ? Would not the management of the^public af- fairs rapidly sink until it became a by- word, if, instead of fitness for the office, the services ren- dered to the party, or rather to the chiefs of the party, should become the criterion for all the appointments, and if the federal offices should come to be filled with those who had not suc- ceeded in private life; for would not the others at best consider the federal offices but momen- tary make-shifts, if ability and faithfulness could no longer secure their tenure ? Last, but not least, would not the people begin to turn with disgust from politics when they saw the statesmen more and more ousted by mere bread- and-butter politicians ? And what is the life of a democratic republic worth if the people accus- tom themselves to consider politics the monop- oly of a set of men whom they do not respect? In his speech on the removal of the deposits, Calhoun had said, with burning indignation : " Can he [Secretary Taney] be ignorant that the whole power of the government has been perverted Into a great political machine, with a view of cor nipting and controlling the country ? Can he l>e 116 JOHN C. CALHOUN. ignorant that the avowed and open policy of the government is to reward political friends and punish political enemies ? . . . With money we will get par- tisans, with partisans votes, and with votes money, is the maxim of our public pilferers. . . . With money and corrupt partisans a great effort is now making to choke and stifle the voice of American liberty through all its constitutional and legal organs by pensioning the press ; by overawing the other departments ; and finally by setting up a new organ, composed of office- holders and partisans, under the name of a National Convention, which, counterfeiting the voice of the people, will, if not resisted, in their name dictate the tuccession" In a speech of February 13, 1835, he summed up the ultimate results of the spoils system in the following words : " When it comes to be once understood that poli- tics are a game ; that those who are engaged in it but act a part ; that they make this or that profession not from honest conviction or an intent to fulfil them, but AS the means of deluding the people, and through that delusion to acquire power, when such profes- sions are to be entirely forgotten, the people will lose all confidence in public men ; all will be regarded as mere jugglers, the honest and the patriotic as well as the cunning and the profligate ; and the people will become indifferent and passive to the grossest abuses of power on the ground that those whom they may , under whatev"" p^djws. instead of reforming THE SENATE. 117 mil but imitate the example of those whom they have expelled." Does not this passage read like a cutting from an editorial of the last number of an " indepen- dent " newspaper of the present day, advocating civil service reform ? But though he foresaw with astonishing perspicacity what this mis- chievous innovation must inevitably lead to, the root of the evil and the remedy for it he discov- ered no more than did any of his contempora- ries. The uniform practice of the preceding administrations concerning dismissal from office even Jefferson's hardly forming an exception, although the loud complaints of the opposition had not been wholly unfounded made him believe that nothing more was needed than to deprive the President of the power which, as he contended, had been conferred upon him under a mistaken construction of the Constitu- tion. He himself, as he openly avowed, had formerly held the opposite opinion, and the ar- gument with which he supported the assertion that the power of appointing did not imply that of dismissing was more ingenious than pro- found and sound. But whatever the true an- Bwer to the constitutional question be, the great mistake lay in the supposition that the evil eould be cured by putting the power of dis- missal from office under the direct control oi 118 JOHN C. CALHOUN. Congress or the Senate. Experience has proved that Congress was more to be feared than the President ; for, in spite of the clear provision of the Constitution, even the power of appoint- ment has in the main virtually passed from the hands of the President into those of the mem- bers of Congress ; and the civil service reform- ers of our days usually consider this the worst feature of the actual system. Calhoun, like the whole Whig opposition, mistook a mere symp- tom for the cause of the disease. Because Jackson's administration assumed more and more the character of the reign of an autocrat, they apprehended that the encroachments of the Executive upon the domain of the other departments of the government, and more es- pecially the legislative, would continue to un- dermine the Constitution until the whole fabric of republican liberty should be in danger of top- pling to the ground. The above-quoted de- nunciation of the National Convention, "com- posed of office-holders and partisans," which was to " dictate the succession," closed with the following words : " When the deed shall have been done, the revolution completed, and all the powers of our republic, in like manner, con- solidated in the Executive and perpetuated by his dictation." Calhoun and the Whigs faileo io see that, whosoever might become President THE SENATE. 119 it could not possibly be an Andrew Jackson II, Jackson might be powerful enough virtually to Dominate his successor, but to appoint an heir was beyond his power. The presidential office was only the means of exercising this extraor- dinary power ; but the source of it was the peculiar disposition of the majority of the peo- ple towards him, and this peculiar disposition was a thing which he could not bequeath to anybody. Van Buren knew this so well that in his letter accepting the nomination by the Baltimore Convention he humbly declared, "As well from inclination as from duty, I shall, if honored with the choice of the American peo- ple, endeavor to tread generally in the foot- steps of President Jackson." He was Jackson's choice, but the heirs of the general were the politicians, and Van Buren would never have occupied the White House if he had not been one of the master minds of the politicians. If he had ever presumed to speak in Jackson's tone and to act in his autocratic spirit, the " Sage of Kinderhook " would have been con- sidered by his own party to be out of his senses. March 4, 1837, did not inaugurate a second "era of good feeling. The opposition re- mained loud and passionate, but the melodies of their war-songs were changed, or they were ,t least sung in another key. To pretend that 120 JOHN C. CALHOUN. Martin Van Buren would " name " his successor, and that there was still immediate danger oi the liberties of the country being crushed by the consolidation of all powers in the Executive, would have been simply ridiculous. The fears entertained on this head during the administra- tion of Jackson had certainly not been fictitious, though they had been generally very highly colored for the sake of effect. The best proof of their serious character was furnished by a movement for an amendment to the Constitu- tion, abolishing the veto power of the President. Calhoun, however, had not so far lost the sobri- ety of his judgment as to approve of this idea. He declared the veto " indispensable," because without it " the independence of the Presi- dent," so far as concerned Congress, would be destroyed. He shared for the moment the er- roneous views of the Whigs as to the future, but as to the past, i. e., the origin of the evil, he went farther back than they. The encroach- ments of the Executive upon the legislative and iudicial department of the government were vith him " the second stage of the revolution ; " but it had begun " many years ago, with the commencement of the restrictive system, and terminated its first stage with the passage of the Force Bill of the last session, which absorbed ill the rights and sovereignty of the States, and THE SENATE 121 consolidated them in this government." Thua his argument returned to its starting-point. The only way to secure "the preservation of our institutions " was to adopt the doctrine of state sovereignty with all its consequences ; and the last cause of all the evils complained of, by which the liberty of the country, and perhaps even the existence of the republic, were put in jeopardy, was the violation of this fundamental principle by the federal government. From this time forward, every speech of Cal- houn which is not strictly confined to some spe- cial subject, contains a repetition of these two assertions in some form or other, and his incli- nation is constantly growing to make the range for his observations, on all subjects whatsoever, wide enough to permit some remarks on these topics, or at least a passing allusion to them. The wiseacres, who laughed all the warnings of the alarmists to scorn, began to consider him a kind of monomaniac on this head. Yet it was they whose minds wandered through the dales and o'er the hills of cloud-land, while his feet remained firmly planted on the rock of actual- ities. Every day the slavery question became more exclusively the needle which determined the course of the politics of the country, and if tafety for the interests of the slave-holders could be obtained at all in the Union, it was 122 JOHN C. CALHOUN. only through the doctrine of state sovereignty No one understood so well as Calhoun that the appearance of the abolitionists had laid the axe to the root of slavery, though they were but a handful of men and women, with neither fame, social position, office, money, nor the general approbation of the public mind to make them formidable adversaries ; and therefore as yet no one fully understood how terribly in earnest he was and how correctly he read the future, when he declared at every opportunity that the minority, that is the South, was doomed, if state sovereignty was not recognized as the central pillar on which the dome of the Consti- tution rested. In January, 1831, William Lloyd Garrison had established in Boston " The Liberator," with the programme of " immediate and unconditional emancipation," and in December, 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society had put forth its " declaration of principles," declaring against slavery a war which excluded the possibility of peace. The slave States were thrown into a. wild excitement by the proceedings of the enthusiastic little band, and in the North the mob, very generally countenanced by public opinion and even by the authorities, had begun to hunt the agitators down as criminals who like Western horsp-thievcs, were of too danger THE SENATE. 123 ous a character to be admitted within the pale of the law. Some time, however, was yet to elapse, ere the question came directly before Congress. An occasional remark on "the fanat- ics and madmen of the North, who are wag- ing war against the domestic institutions of the South, under the plea of promoting the general welfare," is therefore about all we hear from Calhoun on this subject, during the first years. But when at last the discussion made its way into the halls of legislation he at once took part in it in a manner which proved that for a long time all his faculties had been concentrated upon the topic ; for he, and he alone, fully mas- tered it. CHAPTER VI. SLAVERY. IN the Senate the flood-gates of debate were opened by Calhoun's motion (January 7, 1836) not to receive two petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The war of words, in which nearly one half of all the senators took part, lasted until March 11. Even by his Southern colleagues Calhoun was severely reproved for opening this box of Pandora. They accused him of going on a quixotic expedition in search of abstract political principles, because he himself declared that the abolitionists could not possibly " entertain the slightest hope that Congress would pass a law, at this time, to abolish slavery in this District, . . . and that seriously to attempt it would be fatal to their cause." Was it not a frivolous playing with fire and powder to force the discussion of this question upon Congress, since the material ights and interests of the South were abso. .-.itely secured by the perfect unanimity ol Congress, most energetically backed by public opinion in all the Northern States ? Would 8L AVERT. 126 not this uncalled-for debate do more to pro- mote the cause of abolitionism than all the pamphlets and emissaries of the abolitionists had been able to do ? For whether his consti tutional argument was sound or not, it was an incontestable fact that his motion was con- sidered by the North a wanton attack upon the right of petition. There was undoubtedly a good deal of truth in all these objections to the course pursued by Calhoun. Yet the charge was wholly unfounded that he was endeavoring intentionally to in- cense the North and the South against each other, in order to promote the purposes of his party. He spoke the simple truth when he asserted, in his speech of March 9, 1836, that, " however calumniated and slandered," he had " ever been devotedly attached " to the Union and the institutions of the country, and that he was " anxious to perpetuate them to the latest generation." He acted under the firm convic- tion of an imperious duty towards the South and towards the Union, and his assertion was but too well founded that these petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia were blows on the wedge, which would ulti- mately break the Union asunder. That the attack of the, abolition petitions was not directed against slavery in the States, but 126 JOHN C. CALHOUN merely against slavery in the District, was, though not from the legal point of view, yet as to the ultimate practical result, matter of ab- solute indifference. If, as all the petitions as- serted, the nature of slavery made its existence in the District a national disgrace and a national sin, the same disgrace and the same sin weighed down every Southern State. Calhoun's asser- tion, therefore, could not be refuted, that " the petitions were in themselves a foul slander on nearly one half of the States of the Union." If the national legislature now, in any way, offered its assistance to brand the peculiar institution of one half of the constituent members of the Union, it certainly violated the spirit of the Con- stitution ; for the Constitution, as everybody ad- mitted, not only tacitly recognized slavery as a fact which the States exclusively had power to deal with, but moreover served in many essen- tial respects as its direct support and protection. Calhoun was therefore unquestionably right when he said that, unless an undoubted provi- sion of the Constitution compelled them to re- ceive such petitions, it was their duty to reject them at the very threshold ; and he proved that there was no such absolute compulsion by an un- doubted constitutional provision. On the other hand, however, inasmuch as some obligation! were imposed upon the whole Union with re SLAVERT. 127 gard to slavery, the existence of slavery in some of the States was actually and legally also a con- cern of those States in which it did not exist. And in respect to whatever actually and legally concerned the people, they had a constitutional right to demand that their representatives should listen to their wishes and grievances presented in the form of petitions. Besides, no ingenuity could reason out of the Constitution the power of Congress over slavery in the District ; for some- where the power had to be lodged, and the legislative power of Congress over the District was expressly declared to be " exclusive in all cases whatsoever." To lay down the principle that Congress was in duty bound to shut its door against all anti-slavery petitions was there- fore most certainly an abridgment of the right of petition. JThe opponents of Calhoun were, in fact, no less right than he. Not their argu- ments, but the facts, and the Constitution, which had been framed according to the facts, were at fault. The founders of the republic had been under the necessity of admitting slavery into the Constitution, and the inevita- ble consequence was that conclusions which were diametrically opposed to each other could be logically deduced from it by starting the trgument first fron? the fact that slavery was an acknowledged and protected institution 128 JOHN C. CALHOUN. which, so far as the States were concerned, was out of the pale of the federal jurisdiction ; and then from the no less incontestable fact that the determining principle of the Constitution was liberty, and that the spirit and the whole life of the American people fully accorded with the Constitution in this respect. The flaw in all the reasoning of Calhoun on the slavery question was, that he took no ac- count whatever of the latter fact. The logical consequence of this was that his constitutional theories were of a nature which rendered the acquiescence of the North in them an utter im- possibility. He never became fully conscious of this fact, which rendered all his exertions to obtain absolute safety for slavery in the Union as vain as the pouring of water into a cask with- out a bottom. His reasoning 041 the dangers which threatened slavery in the actual Union, under the actual Constitution, was, however, not in the least affected by it. From the first he saw them with such an appalling clearness that his predictions could not but seem halluci- nations of a diseased mind so long as the peo- ple, both at the North and at the South, had not been taught by bitter experience that the conflict was irrepressible, because a compromise between antagonistic principles is db initio an impossibility. From the first he saw, predicted SLAVERY. 129 and proved that, unless his constitutional doc- trines were accepted, slavery could not be safe in the Union, and that therefore the slave States would have to cut the ties which bound them to the North. "Our true position," he declared in the above mentioned speech, " that which is indispensable to our defence here, is, that Congress has no legitimate jurisdiction over the subject of slavery either here or elsewhere. The reception of this petition surrenders this commanding position ; yields the question of ju- risdiction, so important to the cause of abolition and so injurious to us ; compels us to sit in silence to wit- ness the assault on our character and institutions, or to engage in an endless contest in their defence. Such a contest is beyond mortal endurance. We must in the end be humbled, degraded, broken down, and worn out. " The senators from the slave-holding States, who, most unfortunately, have committed themselves to vote for receiving these incendiary petitions, tell us that whenever the attempt shall be made to abolish slavery they will join with us to repel it. ... But I announce to them that they are now called on to re- deem their pledge. The attempt is NOW being made. The work is going on daily aud hourly. The war is waged not only in the most dangerous manner, but in the only manner that it Jan be waged. Do they xpect that the abolitionists will resort to arms, and commence a crusade to liberate our slaves by force ? 9 130 JOHN C. CALHOUN. Is this what they mean when they speak of the at- tempt to abolish slavery? If so, let me tell our friends of the South who differ from us that the war which the abolitionists wage against us is of a very different character, and far more effective. It is a war of religious and political fanaticism, mingled, on the part of the leaders, with ambition and the love of notoriety, and waged not against our lives, but our character. The object is to humble and debase us in our own estimation, and that of the world in gen- eral ; to blast our reputation, while they overthrow our domestic institutions. This is the mode in which they are attempting abolition, with such ample means and untiring industry ; and now is the time for all who are opposed to them to meet the attack. How can it be successfully met? This is the important question. There is but one way : we must meet the enemy on the frontier, on the question of receiv- ing ; we must secure that important pass, it is our Thermopylae. The power of resistance, by an uni- versal law of nature, is on the exterior. Break through the shell, penetrate the crust, and there is no resistance within. In the present contest, the question on receiving constitutes our frontier. It is the first, the exterior question, that covers and pro- tects all others. Let it be penetrated by receiving this petition, and not a point of resistance can be found within, as far as this government is concerned If we cannot maintain ourselves there, we cannot on tny interior position. . . . There is no middle ground that is tenable." SLAVERY. 131 Has not the history of the slavery conflict fully borne out every one of these assertions ? Calhoun reads the future as if the book of fate were lying wide open before him. Only as to the means by which he proposed to avert the impending dangers he was as blind as all the rest of the people. If the enlistment of the moral and religious sentiment of the world against slavery was a war, in which the South must ultimately break down, what was the use of hermetically closing the Capitol at Washing- ton against all the manifestations of the spirit of abolitionism? Since when did the civilized world or even the American people wait for the gracious permission of Congress, ere they dared to form their religious opinions or moral convictions? And if the religious, moral, and political convictions of Congress and of the people did not agree, which of the two would finally have to yield, Congress or the people? Even if it had been but a political question, the attempt would have been simply absurd to decree it out of existence by a resolution of the legislature not to listen to what the peo- ple had to say about it. But if it was also a moral and religious question which most certainly it was the attempt was doubly ab urd. There is no " frontier " which can be successfully defended against ideas, and n< 132 JOHN C. CALHOUN. * shell " is BO hard that such ideas cannot pene- trate it. The confession that, if the shell were broken through, there was no assistance within, amounted therefore to a confession that slavery would at last succumb, if the slave-holding States remained in the Union. From all sides Calhoun was accused of stir- ring up sectional animosity and strife in a most unwarrantable manner, by exciting the South with his wild talk about awful dangers, which had nowhere any existence except in his own feverish brain. The truth, however, was that he did not see spectres in broad daylight, but that he took too hopeful a view of the future. What in his opinion was but a dire eventuality, which could be easily averted, was, by his own showing, the inevitable end of the slavery con- flict. Abolitionism tolled the death-bell of slav- ery in the Union, and dearly have the Amer- ican people had to pay for it, that they ever doubted Calhoun's declaration that, whenever the slave-holding States had to choose between the Union and slavery, they would not hesitate for a moment to decide in favor of slavery. " We love and cherish the Union ; we remember with the kindest feelings our common origin, with oride our common achievements, and fondly antic- rpate the common greatness and glory that seem to twuit us: but origin, achievements, and anticipation SLAVERY. 133 of common greatness are to us as nothing, com pared with this question. It is to us a vital ques- tion. It involves not only our liberty, but, what is greater (if to freemen anything can be), existence itself. The relation which now exists between the two races in the slave-holding States has existed for two centuries. It has grown with our growth, and strengthened with our strength. If has entered into and modified all our institutions, civil and political. None other can be substituted. We will not, cannot, permit it to be destroyed. . . . Come what will, should it cost every drop of blood and every cent of prop- erty, we must defend ourselves ; and if compelled, we would stand justified by all laws, human and di- vine ; ... we would act under an imperious neces- sity. There would be to us but one alternative, to triumph or perish as a people. ... I ask neither sym pathy nor compassion for the slave-holding States. We can take care of ourselves. It is not we, but the Union, which is in danger. . . . We cannot remain here in an endless struggle in defence of our char- acter, our property and institutions." Calhoun spoke to deaf ears. The petition was received, but the prayer of the petitioners was rejected by an overwhelming majority after a short and unimportant debate, in which the South was repeatedly and emphatically assured that thus a precedent was lo be established for the rejection of all similar petitions, without discussion, directly after their reception. 134 JOHN C. CALHOUN. James Buchanan was the father of the great device of thus, with an obliging compliment to both sides, slipping through between the ham- mer and the anvil. It was a new trial of the old art of cloaking by empty formulas the contradic- tion of principles and the collision of facts. The petitioners did not see any material difference between a refusal to receive and a rejection on principle without any discussion ; and the prin- ciple, on the unconditional maintenance of which alone, in Calhoun's opinion, the safety of slav- ery depended, was surrendered. Ill-will against the South had nothing whatever to do with that. Though slavery was not liked in the Northern States, they were as yet but too will- ing to satisfy the demands of the South. They shunned the agitation of the slavery question more than did the South, and they were most willing to suppress abolitionism. The trouble .Duly was that there was no way of doing it. It is hardly to be supposed that the more in- telligent and educated Southerners can have deemed it possible for the North to adopt the means which the Southern radicals proposed, with insulting imperiousness ; and yet there was ft goodly number of Northern politicians who readily consented to decree even the impossible. President Jackson's message of December 2 1835, had invited Congress to pass a law pro 8L AVERT. 13d hibiting, "under severe penalties, the circula- tion in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications intended to instigate slaves to insurrection." In point of fact, no such publication had ever been issued by any American press ; but what the President really wanted was, of course, clear enough: the mails should be closed to all publications tainted with the spirit of abolitionism. On Calhoun's mo- tion, this part of the message was referred to a special committee, which, on February 4, 1836, introduced a bill, accompanied by a report. Calhoun, who was the author of the bill and of the report, defended them on April 12, 1836, in one of the most remarkable speeches ever delivered either by him or by anybody else in Congress. The recommendation of the Presi- dent was rejected, because a law "discrimi- nating, in reference to character, what publica- tions shall not be transmitted by the mail," would be an abridgment of the liberty of the press. Moreover, and above all, the principle upon which such a law would have rested de- livered the South, bound hand and foot, to the discretion of the federal government. If Con gress had the right to determine what publica- tions were incendiary and to forbid their trans- mission through the mail, it evidently had also the right to decide what publications were not* 136 JOHN C. CA.LHOUN. incendiary and to enforce their transmission through the mail. Both objections were un- questionably well founded, and an unsophisti- cated mind would have naturally expected to see the conclusion drawn from them that the publications of the abolitionists could not be legally excluded from the mail. The bill, how- ever, prohibited "deputy-postmasters from re- ceiving and transmitting through the mail, to any State, Territory, or District, certain papers therein mentioned, the circulation of which is prohibited by the laws of said State, Terri- tory, or District." Calhoun, in fact, demanded it least as emphatically as Jackson the exclu- sion of abolition publications from the mail, and even the means by which he proposed to attain his end were virtually the same, though they appeared under a different nomenclature. The only real difference between the President and the senator was the constitutional doctrine on which they based their respective demands ; but that was indeed a difference of the last impor- tance. Jackson's idea was simply that, as slav- ery was an institution recognized by the Con- stitution, the federal government could not allow itself to be used for undermining it, but was obliged to protect it against attacks which were not only "unconstitutional," but "repug aant to the principles of our national compact SLAVERY. 137 and to the dictates of humanity and religion.'* Calhoun, on the other hand, took exactly the opposite view. According to him, the federal government had no right to meddle in any way whatever with this question; all it could do, and what at the same time was bound to do, was to enjoin upon its officers to conform themselvea strictly to the laws of the State in which they happened to be employed. " The internal peace and security of the States are under the protection of the States themselves, to the entire exclusion of all authority and control on the part of Congress. It belongs to them, and not to Congress, to determine what is or is not calculated to disturb their peace and security. ... In the ex- ecution of the measures which may be adopted by the States for this purpose [to prohibit the circulation of any publication or any intercourse calculated to dis- turb or destroy the relation between master and slave], the powers of Congress over the mail, and of regulating commerce with foreign nations and be- tween the States, may require cooperation on the part of the general government ; and it is bound, in con- formity with the principle established, to respect the laws of the State in their exercise, and so to modify its acts as not omy not to violate those of the States, but, as far as practicable, to cooperate in their execu- tion." Calhoun's bi) 1 therefore provided that post- 138 JOHN C. CALHOUtf. masters who " knowingly " transmitted or de- livered any " paper " treating of slavery in a way contrary to the laws of the State should be punished by fine and imprisonment. Which clause of the Constitution conferred upon Con- gress the power to enact national laws for fur- thering the execution of the state laws, this strictest of the strict constructionists forgot to tell. Like a noble steed on the race-course he did not look to the right nor to the left, his course leading in a straight line to the goal. If he had but once cast a passing glance on either side, he could hardly have helped being himself amused at the strange consequences of his the- ory, if nature had not denied him all sense of humor so far as politics were concerned. The laws of the States on the incriminated publica- tions might be as different as the glass splinters and the little pebbles in a kaleidoscope vary in shape and color. The federal law, therefore, would enjoin upon the postmasters to obey and execute some dozen different and perhaps even contradictory laws relating to the same subject, a law which would at all events have the merit of novelty in the history of legislation. A postmaster in Massachusetts imprisoned for omitting to do a certain thing, and a postmas- ter in South Carolina imprisoned for doing this rery thing, both punished in pursuance of tht HL AVERT. 139 same federal law, these two gentlemen, if no one else, would certainly not be convinced of the soundness of Calhoun's theory. The United States statutes were not disfig- ured by such a monstrous law. The blot is sufficiently ugly that it received in the Senate nineteen votes, four of which were cast by North- ern senators. Calhoun himself had probably not expected a more favorable result, for even of the four Southern members of the committee only Mason, of North Carolina, besides himself, had given the report and the bill an unqualified approval. The whole speech of April 12, 1836, gives the impression that its real purpose was not so much to convince the Senate of the neces- sity or propriety of passing this particular bill as to get the argument before the country as a new manifesto, or rather pronunciamento, of the slave power. At all events, it is only from this point of view that it is of great importance. Calhoun had taken a great step beyond the stand-point which he had occupied during the nullification controversy. Then he had said that the federal government and the States were parties to a compact having no common judge, and therefore each was entitled to decide for itself as to the extent of its obligations un- der the compact, as to the violations of the same by the other party, and as to the means 140 JOHN C. CALHOUN. and the measure of the remedy. Only at this subsequent stage, and in evident contradiction of the alleged " party " relation, was the na- tional government made to assume the position of an " agent " of the States. Now we hear nothing more of a compact ; the federal govern- ment stands no more on an equal footing with the States ; it appears only in the character of their agent, and a most humble, nay, a pitiful and despicable agent it is, for it is bound to do the bidding of every one of its constituent mem- bers, no matter how contradictory, how absurd, how outrageous their behests may be. Yet Cal- houn has not changed his general constitutional theory concerning the relation between the fed- eral government and the States. It appears in a modified light only because he does not confine his reasoning to the constitutional question. The history of the slavery question has forced him boldly to step beyond it, and plant his foot on the higher and firmer ground of the unalter- able facts. He holds fast to the Constitution, for he shares the almost idolatrous veneration of the whole people for it ; he knows how to find in it what he needs, and he is fully conscious that he would be a general without a single, soldier in his army from the moment when his theories rod his practical demands should avowedly oome into conflict with its provisions. But th SLAVERY. 141 leading idea of his whole argument is the too well founded conviction that, whether in con- formity with the Constitution or not, the issue would be decided according to the facts. Slav- ery is, in his opinion, not only a fact, but an immutable fact, because it is the direct out- growth of the natural relation between the white and the black races. " To destroy the existing relations would be to de- stroy this prosperity [of the Southern States], and to place the two races in a state of conflict, which must end in the expulsion or extirpation of one or the other. No other can be substituted compatible with their peace or security. The difficulty is hi the di- versity of the races. So strongly drawn is the line between the two in consequence, and so strengthened by the force of habit and education, that it is impossi- ble for them to exist together in the community, where their numbers are so nearly equal as in the slave-hold- ing States, under any other relation than that which now exists. Social and political equality between them is impossible. No power on earth can over- come the difficulty. The causes lie too deep in the principles of our nature to be surmounted. But, with- ut such equality, to change the present condition of the African race, were it possible, would be but to change the form of slavery." When the Republicans, many yeans later, made the political and social equality of the L42 JOHN C. CALHOUN. freedmen one of the principal planks of their party platform, they never, to the knowledge of the author, quoted this declaration of Cal- houn, though a higher authority than the fore- most representative of the slave-holders could, of course, not be adduced for the necessity of such a radical change in the relation of the two races. This is the best proof that, although, or perhaps precisely because, Calhoun was the fanatical champion of the ideas of the Middle Ages with regard to slavery, he was so far in advance of hia times with regard to the slavery question, that his prophetic warnings could not possibly be of any use to the country. They were always at- tentively listened to, here with patriotic anger, there with scorn and disdain, and by some with an involuntary shudder; but nobody really brought them home to his understanding, and therefore they were too soon forgotten, to be transmitted as a portentous bequest to the gen- eration which was to work out their fulfilment in wading through an ocean of blood. Many suspected him of treason, while he performed only with a sorrowing heart the office of a Cas- sandra ; they accused him cf planning the de- struction of the Union, while he heaped one ir- refutable argument upon another, proving the impossibility of the maintenance of slavery ii the Union ; and when the very " dough-facee ' SLAVERY. 143 began to see that their clamoring for peace was as the whistling of a boy against the storm, they charged him with being the principal author of the catastrophe, because he had foretold it. His claim to a place among the first men who have acted a part on the political stage of the United States has never been contested, and yet he has been handed down to posterity a mere distorted shadow of the real man, because his incessant cries of " Beware ! " and " Woe to you ! " remained fresh in the memory of the peo- ple, while the reasoning of which these warn- ings had been but the last conclusion, was for- gotten or misconstrued. Yet in spite of all this, he and those to whom his memory has been dear have had no right to complain, because, though he was no traitor, but honestly and ear- nestly wished to see the Union preserved, still the Union and all that made it valuable and dear to him were " as nothing " to him com- pared with slavery. This being the case in the fullest sense of the erm, and slavery being an immutable fact, the word compromise is not to be found in his polit- ical vocabulary with regard to the slavery ques- tion. In a second speech on abolition petitions (February 6, 1837), bf the West, as had been supposed, we find, to our surprise, that it is in our power, with proper exertions, to turn its copious stream to our own ports. Just at this important moment, when this new and brilliant prospect IB unfolding to our view, the Deposit Bill IM 152 JOHN C. CALHOUN. about to place under the control of the States inter, ested ample means of accomplishing, on the most ex tended and durable scale, a system of railroad com munication that, if effected, must change the social, political, and commercial relations of the whole coun- try vastly to our benefit, but without injuring other sections." The federal government dares not do indi- rectly what it has no right to do directly how often had he declared this to be a fundamental principle of constitutional law ! And yet what was this proposed distribution if not " internal improvements" by indirection? True enough, not internal improvements which Congress deemed of national importance, but under the exclusive control of the separate States, and in- tended, in the first place, to serve state inter- ests. But it is not because the consistency of Calhoun might be called into question that this idea deserves more attention than it has hith- erto received from historians. The arch-doc- trinaire was in the South one of the first to see that with the railroads a force had been intro- duced which was to exert a most powerful influ- ence in shaping the destinies of the country, not only in general, but also with regard to the re- Jation of the two geographical sections lying re- epectively north and south of Mason and Dix- on'g line. He himself proposed a certain rout* SLAVERY. 153 through the Alleghanies, spending eight days on his exploring expedition, and walking over a considerable part of the ground. The interest which he manifested in this problem was so great that the Southern papers spoke of him as the fittest man to be made the president of the great Southern and Western Railroad Company. He was fully awake to the importance of the fact that the difference in the wealth of the two sections increased every year in favor of tho North ; and he saw that, as the general econom- ical development would go on at an unparalleled rate in consequence of communication by steam, this difference would necessarily increase at the same ratio if the South should lag behind the North in realizing the possibilities created by the new invention. Yet his last conclusion could not have been more wrong, if every one of his premises had been erroneous. Not Con- gress and its tariff laws, as he supposed, but slavery was the cause of the remarkable phe- nomenon which justly rendered him so uneasy; and therefore the new invention, which was a blessing to all mankind, was sure to prove a curse to the slave-holders. As eady as 1817 a representative of Louisiana had declared in Congress, " We need no roads " and a country which needs no roads cannot have railroads. The will of the South was as nothing in this 154 JOHN C. CALHOUN. question. The principal cities might indeed be connected by rail, and it was done in the course of time ; but there were, so to speak, no brooks and rivers to feed the main streams, and, what- ever the South might do, it could not create them. The idea of Calhoun, to make up for lost time and overtake the North by means of railroads, was a more preposterous delusion than any he had indulged in heretofore. No power on earth could spur the South into a livelier pace, because it is the very nature of the " pe- culiar institution " to move in a jog trot. The railroads only served to put this fact into a more glaring light ; while in the North they acceler- ated the economical development more than the wildest imagination could have anticipated at that time. It was neither all nor the worst that Cal- houn's hopes were to be wholly disappointed, and that a new impetus was to be given in the direction in which the economical development of the country had been moving ever since the adoption of the Constitution. He was undoubt- edly right in doing his best for an extensive railroad system, for the less the South kept up in this respect with the North the more unfa- vorably would it compare in every respect with ^he non-slave-holding States. But every spike which fastened a rail in Southern soil was a SLAVERY. 155 nail driven into the coffin of slavery ; for every engine, nay, every traveller and every bale of goods, came impregnated with the spirit of the times, which would not and could not brook slavery. The South had no choice ; Calhoun was right in believing that self-preservation bade the South to grasp even more eagerly than the North at the cup which was to mankind what the alchemists had vainly tried to find for the individual, an elixir of life ; but slavery turned it into poison. The irrepressible con- flict between North and South was to end with the disruption of the Union ; but another and more intense irrepressible conflict gnawed the intestines of the South, and it was this that rendered the doom of slavery inevitable. What> ever the merits or demerits of the deposit scheme were from a general point of view, if the Southern States should invest their share in railroads, it would certainly have been the best use they could make of the money, and yet it would have been better for them to throw all the surplus into the sea. The adoption of Calhoun's device led to one of the most curious episodes in the financial history of the United States, which abounds with strange incidents. But whatever may be thought of the remedy, it will not be denied that Calhoun was right in asserting that the govern 156 JOHN C. CALHOUN. ment ought not to take more out of the pockets of the citizens than it really needed for its le- gitimate purposes, and that a chronically ple- thoric treasury might have grave consequences. Calhoun chiefly apprehended that such a con- stantly overflowing purse would be a powerful means to corrupt the whole government machin- ery still more than heretofore, by leading to a further increase of the vast patronage of the federal government, and by enlisting all the federal officers still more exclusively in the party service, and that the independence and sovereignty of the States would thereby be still more endangered. It had evidently become with him a matter of course that every legislative problem of a general character must, in some way or other, stand in close connection with these two ques- tions. The alarming increase of the revenues was partly due to the enormous sales of the public lands, which were, to a great extent, bought on speculation. Here was certainly a problem of the first magnitude and beset with extraordinary difficulties ; but it is, to say the least, rather surprising to see the greatest stress laid on the dangers which were to arise in those two respects from this source. This is not the olace to discuss the great land question, and we will therefore not inquire into the merits or de- SLAVERY 157 merits of Calhoun's general opinions concern- ing it. The reason for his proposition (Febru- ary, 1837) to cede the public lands to the new States, namely, " to place the senators and rep- r -sentatives from the new States on an equality with those from the old, by withdrawing our local control, and breaking the vassalage under which they are now placed," would, however, hardly admit of a serious criticism. A less far-fetched opportunity was offered him to discuss state sovereignty, from a new point of view and in a thorough manner, in the debate on the question of admitting Michigan as a State. Congress had made the admission dependent upon the condition that Michigan should agree to a certain boundary line. This agreement had been made, but opinions differed as to whether it had been made in a legal or illegal manner. As to the concrete question, it suffices to say that Calhoun was of the latter opinion. We have to look somewhat more closely only at the general theory, which he proclaimed on this occasion. Calhoun asserted that the condition concern- ing the boundary attached "simply to her ad- mission into the Union," and did not affect in the least either the acceptance of her constitu- tion by Congress or " the declaration that she is a State." There was no difference of opinion 158 JOHN C. CALBOUN. \s to the first part of the assertion, but it was contended on the other side that Michigan was not and could not be a State before her admis- sion into the Union. Calhoun proved that this assertion was incompatible with the act of Con- gress imposing the boundary condition. That, however, could not be decisive as to the main question. Contests upon great constitutional principles cannot be decided by appealing to the wording of a statute, because this might be grossly inaccurate and careless ; besides, the Constitution would then be but a piece of wax in the hands of Congress, for Congress might at first pass a law to suit itself, and then declare the correct reading of the Constitution to be thus and thus, since this law says so and so. But Calhoun did not rest his case solely upon this act of Congress. He said : " I now go farther, and assert that it [the position of the friends of the bill before the Senate] is in di- rect opposition to plain and unquestionable matter of fact. There is no fact more certain than that Mich- igan is a State. She is in full exercise of sovereign authority, with a legislature and a chief magistrate. She passes laws ; she executes them ; she regulates titles, and even takes away life, all on her own authority. Ours has entirely ceased over her; and yet there are those who can deny, with all these fact* before them, that slie is a State. They might a* wel ieny the existence of this hall ! " 8LAVERT. 159 If Calhoun had been able under any circum- stances to consider a question of this nature with a judicial mind, instead of entering upon its ex- amination with the foregone conclusions of a passionate partisan, he would have perceived at the first glance that the case was far from be- ing so plain as he made it out. Michigan was unquestionably no longer a Territory, and she did and she did of right all that he had mentioned. The most appropriate or it is perhaps more correct to say the least inappro- priate name to be found in the insufficient no- menclature of political science for the common- wealth, therefore, was possibly a " State." That, however, was of very little consequence with regard to the point made by Calhoun. Every- thing depended upon the answer to the ques- tion what kind of a State it was, or, in other words, what the term " State " signified in this particular case. That Michigan was not at this moment a State in the most general acceptation of the term, even Calhoun would hardly have ventured to deny. Would he have dared to as- sert that, while the question of her admission into the Union was pending, she would have the fight to declare war against some other sover- eign power, to conclude treaties, to coin money, to grant letters of mark and reprisal, etc. ? Un- deniably she lacked many of the most esses 160 JOHN C. CALHOUN. tial powers inherent to sovereignty, and, in consequence, she evidently was not a State aa that phrase is most frequently used. Just aa evidently she was not a State of the Union in the sense of the Constitution, for the ques- tion under consideration was her admission into the Union. Yet no one pretended that she was out of the Union. Whatever her legal rela- tion towards the federal government might be, she certainly was a part of the great common- wealth known by the name of the United States of America. Calhoun could the less contest this fact, because another proof which he ad- duced for his assertion was that Michigan had elected senators, and, according to the Consti- tution, only States elect senators. This argu- ment clearly went too far the other way. In correct language, Michigan had not elected senators of the United States, but she had elected two men, who were to be her senators in Congress after she had been admitted into the Union. Also, since Michigan was a part of the republic, the authority of Congress over her had incontestably not " entirely ceased," for there is and can be no part of the republic over which Congress has not some authority. Whether this authority went so far as to give Congress the right to remand Michigan inta her former territorial status, if she refused to BLAVERT. 161 somply with the conditions imposed upon her admission into the Union, need not here be inquired into. Calhoun's argument is like . sword without a blade, if it be proved that Mich- igan was but a State in an inchoate condition, which could be perfected only by the act of Congress admitting her into the Union. Calhoun did, of course, not contest that an act of Congress was needed to make Michigan a State of the Union, but he did not assent any further to the proposition just stated. " I am told, if this be so, if a Territory must be- come a State before it can be admitted, it would fol- low that she might refuse to enter the Union after she had acquired the right of acting for herself. Cer- tainly she may. A State cannot be forced into the Union. She must come in by her own free assent, given in her highest sovereign capacity through a convention of the people of the State. Such is the constitutional provision ; and those who make the objection must overlook both the Constitution and the elementary principles of our government, of which the right of self-government is the first, the right of every people to form their own government, and to determine their political condition." The right here claimed is not the right of se- cession. If secession, not as an eventually jus- tifiable revolutionary act, but as a constitutional right, is a monstrous political absurdity, thii 11 JOHN C. CALHOUN. right thus asserted concerning Michigan is an absurdity in comparison with which the right of secession is the soundest political conception, and even, like nullification, "a conservative principle." Calhoun now and afterwards main- tained that a so-called enabling act of Congress was required to give a Territory the right to erect itself into a State. But if any political proposition can be called self-evident, it is cer- tainly this : that an enabling act can only give permission to a Territory to erect itself into a State of the Union. Even if Congress could ever be so regardless of duty, and so mad as to give a Territory permission simultaneously with adopting a state constitution to will itself out of the Union, in which clause of the Consti- tution did this strict constructionist find the power granted to Congress to commit such a suicidal act? The Constitution, which Calhoun proclaimed the grandest embodiment of political wisdom thus far seen by the world, would have been the greatest monstrosity ever conceived by the human mind, if the Union could con- stitutionally lose all its territorial possessions, merely because the inhabitants of the Territories were pleased to bow themselves out of it, by way of acknowledging the privilege accorded them to become full members of the Union, That "so long as these sound principles are ob SLAVES Y. 168 served " no State would ever " reject this hig privilege," or would " ever refuse to enter this Union," but rather would " rush into your em- brace, so long as your institutions are worth preserving," was an assertion of no consequence whatever. The possibility stamps the theory as such an infinite absurdity that it would be an insult to the reader to discuss it at all, if John C. Calhoun had not been its advocate. But one month later he very correctly spoke of "the public domain " as being " the property of the whole people of the United States." So an insignificant minority the inhabitants of the Territories had the right to deprive the whole people of this inestimable property, and appropriate it exclusively to themselves, and, with the indirect sanction of Congress, given by the permission to adopt state constitutions, set up in business for themselves, without per- haps even deigning to say good-by to this Union, which improved so wonderfully upon the example of King Lear. But enough, and more than enough, of this doctrine, which every gchool-boy will pronounce to be utter nonsense. Yet one of the most acute political reasonera produced by America honestly believed it, be- Mtuse it was a logical outgrowth of the doctrine of state sovereignty and because the doctrine of state sovereignty was the sheet-anchor which 164 JOHN C. CALBOUN. held the worm-eaten bark of slavery to her moorings. Poor man ! Adams wrote some months later " Calhoun looks like a man racked with furious passions and stung with disappointed ambition, as he is." Certainly, Calhoun had not forgot- ten his bitter disappointments, nor had he ceased to hope that he would, after all, some time reach the goal of his wishes ; but his per- sonal ambition had long ago become wholly subordinate to the passions which the slavery conflict had awakened in his bosom. The en- croachments of the slave power upon the do- main of liberty went on at an alarming rate but Calhoun derived no satisfaction from any success, because every advance disclosed to his mind more clearly the immensity of the space still to be traversed, ere the slave-holders could say to themselves : Put out the watch-fires, let as rest and enjoy the fruits of our toils, for there is nothing more to be apprehended. In his second speech on the admission of Michigan, he had thus very correctly characterized him- self: " It has perhaps been too much my habit to look more to the future and less to the present than is wise ; but such is the constitution of my mind that when 1 see before me the indications of causes c .vlated to effect important changes in oar politics, SLAVERY. 16& Condition, I am led irresistibly to trace them to their sources, and follow them out in their conse- quences." His name would appear in smaller letters in the history of the United States, but his happi- ness as a man would have been greater, if it had been otherwise. What wonder that passion raked its deep furrows into the face of a man who fought with all the fervor of his hot blood and all the energy of his iron will for a cause, and yet perceived that every victory gained in- creased the number and determination of its enemies, and rendered their ultimate triumph more probable, if not certain ! If he had still been open to arguments on this head, this con- dition of the struggle would have necessarily awakened doubts in his mind concerning the justice of his cause ; but as his stand had been irrevocably taken, the remarkable phenomenon had just the opposite effect. The denunciations tf slavery by the abolitionists incited him to ex- tol it in unmeasured terms. In a brief but most important speech (Feb- uary 6, 1837) the question of receiving the Abolition petitions was taken up by him once more. It was not done with a view to a recon- sideration of the memo-able decision of the Senate, though he tried to prove that his opin- ion had been fully borne out by the course of 166 JOHN C. CALHOUN. events. He saw his prophecies about to be ful- filled, and his object was to warn the Senate once more to arrest its fatal course down the in- clined plane, which terminated in an abyss. " I then said that the next step would be to refer the petition to a committee, and I already see indica- tions that such is now the intention. . . . We are now told that the most effectual mode of arresting the progress of abolition is to reason it down ; and with this view it is urged that the petitions ought to be re- ferred to a committee. That is the very ground which was taken at the last session in the other House ; but instead of arresting its progress, it has since advanced more rapidly than ever. The most unquestionable right may be rendered doubtful if once admitted to be a subject of controversy, and that would be the case in the present instance." This was all very true, but Calhoun was mistaken in supposing that it could be helped. In this very speech, he himself furnished the best proof that nothing, which either the Sen- ate or any other earthly power could do, would alter any of these facts in the least. True enough, the attempt of the House of Repre- sentatives to reason abolitionism down had oeen worse than futile. The antislavery spirit rh the doctrine of state sovereignty he had built the citadel of nullification, which would in all emergencies furnish a last unconquerable ref- nge. Strong as this position was, he soon be- came convinced that it was not strong enough. Without abandoning it, he DOW warned the tfvththat the permanent and absolute security 19 178 JOHN C. CALHOUN. f slavery was a question of life and death with the South, and that this plain fact would deter- mine its action, if the antislavery spirit was not promptly and forever crushed out. A constant warfare, calculated morally to ruin the slave- holding States in their own eyes and in the eyes of the civilized world, would not and could not be endured by them. Now he himself chal- lenged not only the abolitionists, but the whole North and the whole civilized world, to a deci- sive combat with those moral and intellectual arms from which, according to his own state- ment, the slave-holding States alone had any- thing to apprehend, a most audacious but un- avoidable step. If a successful defence was at all possible, the attack had to be met with the same weapons with which it was made. As long as the South apologized for slavery as a dire ne- cessity, a vast majority of the Northern people would insist upon having the constitutional ob- ligations scrupulously fulfilled by the federal government. But they would do it less and less willingly, because the antislavery spirit, which was the spirit of the times, could not be checked by the Constitution ; for the Constitution was a rule of action, but not a law for the thoughts and sentiments of the people. If the hostile feeling against slavery was to be conquered, the people had to be convinced that it was mistaken BLAVERT. 179 and wrong. And as slavery could not be an in different thing, if its maintenance was a ques- tion of life and death with the South, it must necessarily be a blessing. Thus the necessities of defence imperatively demanded the trans- formation of slavery from a curse into a most enviable institution, for moral and political rea- sons. That there was some truth in Calhoun's as- sertions could not be gainsaid. The conflict between labor and capital constituted the sig- nificance of the times in the western world, and the slave-holding States knew nothing of it, because labor was owned by capital, and there- fore capital arranged the relation in every re- spect wholly to suit itself. So long as labor did not appeal to brute force, the South was, in con- sequence, exempt from the dangers and disor- ders which result from this conflict in communi- ties where labor, too, has its rights and is in a condition to defend its interests ; there it was navigation on a pond, here on a never motion- ess and sometimes tempestuous sea ; but there "he sun bred poisonous miasmas in the stagnant waters, and the navigator was in danger of suffo- cating in the mire if the boat capsized by some accident, while here were the dangers, but also the vigor and all the resources, of real, ever-pro- gressing life. Had Calhoun so entirely forgotten 180 JOHN C. CALHOUN. all that he had seen during his college years in New England that this difference really escaped his keen eye ? Had he grown to be so impreg- nated with the spirit of slavery that the spirit of the people of the free States had become to him a book closed with seven seals? Could they ever be made to believe that slavery was " a positive good " ? And if this declaration would always have the sound of a blasphemy in their ears, what would he have gained for the security of slavery in the Union, even if his assertion were true ? The hatred of slavery in the North was as yet very far from being so deadly as he ex- pected it to become in a little while ; but still slavery was hated upon political, moral, and religious principles. Principles, however, are vital forces in the history of mankind, and what a man believes to be a principle works with him as such. Therefore, even if Calhoun were right, his declaration could only fan the flames of the conflict between South and North. It was the formal announcement that this conflict never could terminate in a peace, nor even be inter- rupted by an honest truce. All the free States were genuine democracies, and therefore the assertion that slavery is the most solid and durable foundation upon which to rear free institutions was in their eyes simply ft contradictio in adyecto. Whether the institn SLAVERY. 181 tions which the South reared on this base were good or bad, they were confessedly the products of a different civilization, of a civilization dif- fering from that of the North not only in details, but in the formative principle. It is, however, self-evident that two civilizations, with antago- nistic formative principles, cannot permanently coexist in one political organism, because they move in opposite directions. Instead of recon- ciling the North and the civilized world to the existence of slavery, Calhoun's new gospel of slavery was a declaration of aggressive war. But one step more could be taken in this direc- tion : the deeds could be made to conform to the theory, the conversion of the heathen to the new gospel could be undertaken ; the logical conse- quence of the doctrine of the " positive good " was the propagandism of slavery. The time was not far off when the South, with Calhoun as its foremost leader, was to take this last step, which proved to be the beginning of the end. . For a while, however, the atten- tion of the country was diverted from the slav- ery conflict by financial and other economical questions, which pressed themselves into the foreground in a most unpleasant manner. We have seen how many wise heads in the Capitol at Washington, and among them that vt Calhoun, were troubled by the fear that the 182 JOHN C. CALHOUN. United States government stood in danger of something like the fate of King Midas. But instead of having to deal with an overflowing treasury, they had to struggle with the disas- trous consequences of the crash of 1837, the worst economical crisis the country had as yet experienced since the war of independence. Cal- houn took a prominent but not a leading part in all the questions mediately and immediately connected with this catastrophe. To present the reader with an intelligent synopsis of his views would require a discourse on the general history of the times, which cannot be com- pressed within the small frame of this biogra- phy. It appears, however, the less necessary to enlarge upon them, because no new principles were involved in the discussion, and the stand taken by Calhoun did not mark a new epoch in bis general career. From the personal point of view it is almost of more interest that, in Feb- ruary, 1837, he had a last direct encounter with General Jackson, who had taken him to task for some remarks supposed to have been made by Calhoun in a speech on the land question As the hot-tempered President had based his grossly abusive letter on an inaccurate report, Calhoun had no difficulty in chastising him se- rerely for this attempt " upon the privileges oi * United States senator ; " this time, however SLAVERY. 183 himself overstepping the limits which the offi- cial station of his adversary should have im- posed upon him. Perhaps this incident influenced to some ex- tent his language in the speech which he deliv- ered a few days later on the relations of the United States to France ; -but it would be ridic- ulous to suppose that personal hostility to Jack- son was the reason of his opposition to the policy of the President in the indemnity ques- tion. He proved beyond contradiction that the untoward turn which this affair had taken was mainly due to the false steps of the administra- tion, and he conclusively showed that in a war between the United States and France the former would have infinitely more to suffer, while neither could derive any advantage from it. The national pride was flattered to hear the victor of New Orleans blow the war trumpet BO lustily and defiantly ; but the sober second thought of the people entirely agreed with Cal- houn, that it would be madness, on a mere ques- tion of " etiquette," to provoke a war with the oldest ally of the United States, who had ren- dered them such signal services in their hour of need. CHAPTER VII. UNDER VAN BUEEN. Much time was to elapse ere justice was ren- dered Calhoun with regard to the course he saw fit to pursue upon the leading question of the day, President Van Buren's sub-treasury scheme, which was to sever entirely and for- ever the connection between the government and banks of every description. It was but natural that the Whigs were deeply chagrined to see Calhoun part company with them in the moment when, as he himself freely admitted, the continuation of the alliance would have led to the overthrow of the administration party ; but they had no right to expect anything else from him. He was not guilty of any treachery, nor could he be justly charged with inconsist- ency, though in 1835, when the sub-treasury scheme was first introduced by General Gordon, he had declared it " premature," and in 1836, when the proposition was renewed by Ben ton, u impracticable at the time;" nay, even though he had himself proposed the establishment of a United States Bank for twelve years " as a UNDER VAN BUREN. 186 better and more practical plan to unbank the banks." It accorded strictly with the facts when he declared, "We joined our old oppo- nents on the tariff question, but under our own flag and without merging in their ranks." No- body had ever pretended that he had become a Whig ; he had concluded an alliance with the Whigs for the specific purpose of opposing the encroachments of the executive upon the do- main of the other departments of government, and of counteracting all the dangerous tenden- cies of Jackson's unscrupulous autocratic rule. From Martin Van Buren, however, nothing was to be apprehended. " Executive usurpa- tion had been arrested. The Treasury was empty, and the administration had scarcely a majority in either House or in the Union." The object of the alliance had been accomplished. The questions which were now the order of the day left the two great national parties intact, but Calhoun was free to join either side, be- cause he belonged to neither. " He was master of his own move, and acknowledged connection with no party but the state-rights party, the small band of nullifiers, and acted either *ith or against the administration or the na- tional party, just as it was calculated to further the principles and policy which we, of that party, regarded as essential to the liberty and 186 JOHN C. CALHOUN. institutions of the country." Viewing the general situation of the country in the manner he did, it was therefore a matter of course that he pitched his solitary tent for the present next the camp-fires of the administration party. " We have, Mr. President, arrived at a remarkable era in our political history. The days of legislative and executive encroachments, of tariffs and surpluses, of bank and public debt and extravagant expen- diture, are past for the present. The government stands in a position disentangled from the past, and freer to choose its future course than it has ever been since its commencement. We are about to take a fresh start. I move off under the states-rights ban- ner, and go in the direction in which I have been so long moving. I seize the opportunity thoroughly to reform the government ; to bring it back to its orig- inal principles ; to retrench and economize ; and rig- idly to enforce accountability. I shall oppose strenu- ously all attempts to originate a new debt ; to create a national bank ; to reunite the political and money powers (more dangerous than church and state) in my form or shape ; to prevent the disturbances of the compromise, which is gradually removing the last vestige of the tariff system. And, mainly, I shall use my best efforts to give an ascendency to the great conservative principle of state sovereignty over the dangerous and despotic doctrine of consolidation." Had the Whigs, then, quite overlooked that although he had fought with them against UNDER VAN BUREN. 187 Jackson, it was an utter impossibility that he should ever exert himself for their ascendency ? That the man who declared that he " wished to be considered nothing more than a plain and an honest nullifier," should " join the friends of the tariff, of a national bank, and the whole system of congressional usurpations, and utterly break down his old friends of 1827, who had taken shelter under his position, and thus give a complete and final victory to his old op- ponents of that period, and with it a permanent ascendency to them and their principles and policy, which, he honestly believed, could not but end in consolidation, with the loss of our liberty and institutions," this, indeed, was a most preposterous idea. Calhoun, however, was mistaken in one point, and that the most ma- terial. The victory of the administration could never turn to the advantage of the states-rights party. The independent Treasury gave the ad- ministration of the finances a really political character for the first time, and it therefore necessarily contributed to the growing together of the " sovereign " States into a national Union. Our sources do not inform us whether Cal- houn ever became aware oi this fact. His first great movement to bring the government " back to its original principles " looks less like the hope- 188 JOHN C. CALHOUN. ful beginning of a thorough reform than like the desperate effort of a man who is in danger of being swallowed up by the surging waves, to pile up dike upon dike till he has a wall so broad and high that he can laugh the most furious storms to scorn. Vain exertions, for his dikes are not constructed of earth, stone, and mortar, but of mere assertions. The most strenuous efforts of the North to put down abolitionism by public opinion had been met by the South with the contemptuous remark that all the satisfac- tion the South got for its just complaints was " words, mere words ; " and now the great leader of the slave power had nothing more substantial to throw into the way of the anti- slavery spirit than " words, mere words." The last aim and end of the bringing back of the government to its original principles was the security of slavery; and this was to be obtained not by legislation, but by resolving this and that with regard to the constitutional and political aspect of the slavery question. Did these long strings of resolutions, by being spread over the journal of the Senate, acquire any secret virtue which made them a wall of adamant, against which all the arms of the antislavery spirit would splinter like glass ? Whom did they bind ? Not even the Senate itself, and yet infinitely less the other departments of thf UNDER VAN BUREff. 189 government or even the people. They had no legal authority whatever, and though they might be of great moral weight with many persons, what effect was to be expected from the mere opinion of the temporary majority of the Senate, which might be changed at any moment, if all the bulwarks of the Constitu- tion were no longer deemed in themselves suf- ficient protection for the peculiar institution? Surely, the resolution mania, which from this time possessed Calhoun, is alone ample proof how justly he was charged with being a doc- trinaire. But it was a great mistake to suppose that all the weeks which the haughty planter forced the Senate, at th expense of its legitimate legisla- tive business, to pass in debate on his constitu- tional opinions were spent to no purpose. It has been said before that, with regard to the slavery question, this doctrinaire was the only one who moved on at even pace with the events, and he knew now as well as ever what he was about. So far as he expected anything from his resolutions for the greater security of slavery be was not only disappointed, but he did in fact, is he was charged on all sides with doing, pour oil upon the flames. But the resolutions were not only designed to serve as additional guards tor the " positive good ' ' of the South they 190 JOHN C. CALHOUN. were besides a programme for the future, and as such they were a political event of the first magnitude. The central idea of the resolutions of Decem- ber 27, 1837, was, of course, that the safety of the South depended entirely upon the doctrine of state sovereignty, and their immediate pur- pose was to get the Senate formally pledged to this principle in its direct bearings on the slavery question. Hence the series was very logically opened by stating how the Union came into existence under the Constitution. It is declared that every State " entered into the Union " by its own voluntary act. The old Union under the Articles of Confederation, therefore, evidently had ceased to exist some time before; when and how, Calhoun unfort- unately forgot to say. The Senate, however, with thirty-one against thirteen votes, assented to this bold falsification of a plain historical fact. This premise once secured, Calhoun had won the game. From the purely Confederate nature of the Union the second resolution was deduced : that the intermeddling of States or of a " com- bination of their citizens with the domestic-, in Btitutions or police of the others, on any ground, or under any pretext whatever, political, moral or religious, with a view to their alteration 01 UNDER VAN BUREN 191 subversion," is "not warranted by the Con- stitution." Pompous and positive as this reso- lution sounded, it was of so gelatinous a char- acter that, while the political agitator could do anything he pleased with it, the constitutional jurist could not keep the smallest particle of it firmly between his fingers. Who was able to enumerate " the domestic institutions " to which the doctrine of the resolution could be rightfully applied? Webster showed conclu- sively that slavery, for one, did not belong to them. Where, too, was the master mind which could give a serviceable definition of " inter- meddling," or of " with a view to their altera- tion," or of " not warranted by the Constitu- tion " ? If all this was to have so precise a meaning that the doctrines of rights should and could be fixed in laws, and their observance secured by compulsory legal measures, and it was, obviously, only on this supposition that they could serve the purpose intended, then every- thing which had relation to the domestic institu- tions of other States would become a punishable violation of the Constitution. The existence of slavery had to vanish from the consciousness of the free States; for until this happened their thoughts must be in some degree occu- pied with it; the thoughts mast manifest them wives, and every manifestation of the thought* 192 JOHN C. CALHOUN. had, in and of itself, a tendency to operate an " alteration " of the existing state of things. Yet the resolution served well enough Calhoun'a main purpose. What this was, he plainly told in his rejoinder to the suggestion to strike out the word " religious," that " the whole spirit of the resolution hinged on that word." The Senate was to declare that the anathema of the Constitution rested on the heads of the fanatics who presumed to question the rightfulness of negro slavery on moral and religious grounds ; and the Senate complied with the demand ; only fourteen out of forty-five votes being recorded in favor of striking out the words " moral " and " religious." But what had Calhoun gained by that, even supposing that his interpretation of the spirit of the Constitution was correct? Would the religious convictions of the people be subverted by the Constitution, or would the latter become a dead letter from the moment when it stood in acknowledged antagonism to the former ? Always there was the same fun- damental error in all his reckoning. He clearly perceives that the whole slavery question hinges upon the political, economical, and moral an- tagonism between slavery and liberty, tries to suppress some manifestations of it, and draws from that suppression conclusions, as if it were identical with the suppression of the antago UNDER VAN BUREN, 193 nism itself. But the futility of his efforts has pressed him another step forward : instead of merely forbidding the agitation to enter the Capitol, he now bids Congress declare that the Constitution wants to see every door in the free States hermetically closed against it. To understand the whole import of the sec- ond resolution it is, however, necessary to read it in connection with the third, which indirectly overthrew the demand of the former, but of course in favor of slavery. This third resolu- tion declared it to be the duty of the federal government to use its powers in such a manner as "to give . . . increased stability and secur- ity to the domestic institutions of the States that compose the Union." The people of the free States were to have no political, moral, or religious thoughts on slavery, or at least not to manifest them in any way whatever disagreea- ble to the slave-holding States ; but they were bound, through the federal government, act- ively to exert themselves in its favor. It is not said in what manner and to what extent this was to be done ; but did not the very gen- erality of the terms used imply that it had to be done in any manner and to any extent de- clared necessary by the slave-holding States ? For they alone had the right to iudge what the stability and security of their peculiar institu- 13 194 JOHN C. CALHOUN. fcion demanded. There was not a trace of doc- trinarian spirit in this resolution. It was a pos- itive programme, big with consequences which would have curdled the blood in the veins of Calhoun himself, if he had foreseen them all. It was the first step towards deriving the prac- tical results of the doctrine of the " positive good ; " the first step towards securing the ser- vices of the federal government for the glorious work of slavery propagandism. The fourth resolution applied the foregoing doctrines by name to slavery, declaring all at- tacks on it " a manifest breach of faith, and a violation of the most solemn obligations, moral and religious." The Senate called upon to in- struct the people in this spirit about their re- ligious obligations ; abolition, according to Cal- houn, in possession of the pulpits, the schools, and the press ; the abolitionists declaring slav ery " the sum of all villainies," was anything more needed to prove that two antagonistic principles were here in deadly conflict ? With this one line Calhoun had irrefutably demon- strated the vanity of all his efforts to save slav- ery and the Union. The next resolution read, " Resolved, That the intermeddling of any State or States, or their citizens, to abolish slavery in thii District, or in any of the Territories, on the ground UNDER VAN BUREN. 195 or under the pretext, that it is immoral or sinful, or the passage of any act or measure of Congress with that view, would be a direct and dangerous attack on khe institutions of all the slave-holding States." If all that had been asserted in the preceding resolutions was correct, this one was certainly incontrovertible ; therefore it was all the more Bignificant that Calhoun refrained from declar- ing the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia unconstitutional, although he express- ly stated this to be his opinion. But while he chus politely and obligingly bowed to the con- stitutional doctrines of the North, its moral and religious convictions were once more imperi- ously bidden to leave this question alone. " The deluded agitators must be plainly told that it is no concern of theirs what is the character of our institutions." Not a finger was to be raised against slavery " under the pretext " of its im- morality or sinfulness, not only where it actu- ally existed, but also, added the sixth and last resolution, where it might exist in future. " To refuse to extend to the Southern and Western States, any advantage which would tend to strengthen or render tnem more secure, or to increase their imits or population by the annexation of new ter- ritory or states, on the assumption or under the pie- text that the institution of slavery, as it exists among them, is unmoral or sinful, or otherwise obnoxious, 196 JOHN C. CALHOUN. Irould be contrary to that equality of rights and ad rantages which the Constitution was intended to se- cure alike to all the members of the Union." One great merit this last resolution had : its language was so plain that no child could mis- understand it. The principle of slavery prop- agandism was proclaimed with the utmost bold- ness, and the federal government was absolutely denied the right to interfere with it on any ground or pretext connected in any way what- ever with slavery. Not to interfere was, how- ever, in this case, identical with an obligation to lend a helping hand, for " the annexation of new territory or states " could be effected only by the Union. And why should the Union not exult- ingly march on under the black flag of slavery as far as the South was good enough to lead it ? It is true, " many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil," but " that folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world. . . . The blessing of this state of things ex- tends beyond the limits of the South. It makes that section the balance of the system ; the great conservative power, which prevents other portions, less fortunately constituted [!], from ushing into conflict." Verily, here is a doc- trinaire with a positiveness in his doctrine? UNDER VAN BUREN. 197 powerful enough to grind into dust the col- umns of the most gigantic political edifice. Not long ago Calhoun had declared that nothing was needed to render the South perfectly safe ave concert of will and action. Now, Provi- dence had thrown ample opportunities into the way of the Union to test whether that was sufficient to cajole and whip the North into obedience, and to force upon it this pro- gramme of the slave power, which, by the very consciousness of its hopeless weakness, was un- der the imperious necessity of rendering itself the despotic master of the Union, in order to save itself. After this great sally, several years passed ere Calhoun thought it opportune to make the next decisive move in the cause of self-govern- ment and republican liberty on the basis of slavery. The waves of party strife rolled high during all these years, and Calhoun was far from being an unconcerned and idle spectator. His speeches of this period fill a stately volume, and are fully on a level with his other parlia- mentary efforts on general legislative topics. Yet the biographer, who confines himself to what is really characteristic of the man or to vhat has exerted a determining influence on the hiBtory of his country, can pass them over with ft few general remarks. What he himself said 198 JOHN C. CALHOUN. of the extraordinary session of Congress in 1841 applies, so far as he is concerned, to this whole time. " What are we doing, and what engrosses all our attention from morn to noon, and from week to week, ever since our arrival here at the commencement of this extraordinary session, and will continue till its end ? What but banks, loans, stocks, tariffs, distribution, and supplies?" The old economical controversies, more or less altered by circumstances, are the battle-ground of the parties, fighting with undiminished ardor and varying success. The old arguments are repeated ad nauseam. Though all the questions were of the highest importance, and much erudition, in- genuity, eloquence, and passion were displayed on both sides, the continuous reading of the debates is simply treadmill work. Calhoun's speeches, too, abound with repetitions. The sta- tistical data, the illustrations, the arrangement of the thoughts, change ; but he fights for his old doctrines with the old reasons : independent treasury, no bank, no internal improvements, no protective tariff, no distribution of the proceeds of the sale of the public lands, cession of the public lands to the States in which they are sit- uated, no loans, etc. A good deal of sound rea- loning, a good deal of bold and sometimes reek- Jess generalizing, now and then exaggerated into downright absurdity, may be found in all hi* UNDER VAN BUREN. 199 ipeeches on these interesting subjects. The thorough student of the general history of the United States cannot dispense with perusing them all carefully, but they do not show either the man or the statesman in a new light. From the personal point of view, they are the most interesting on account of some sharp encounters which he had with Clay and Webster. Each of the three great senators tried to demonstrate his own consistency throughout his political ca- reer, and the inconsistency which had marked that of his adversary ; and each of them was per- fectly successful as to the latter task, and, in spite of infinite ingenuity and eloquence, sadly failed as to the former. With the change of conditions, their political convictions had changed, and, by changing these, they had learned to read the Constitution in a different way. Neither of them lost anything in the es- timation of the people by this fact, because it was an honest change of opinion, and since their constituents had gone through the same process they might have had the manliness and candor to avow it unreservedly. But perhaps the re- proach that not one of them ventured upon a stand-point of such moral elevation rests more apon the general tendency of American politics joan upon them personally. Once, indeed, Cal loan openly confessed that ne had been orig 200 JOHN C. CALHOUN. inally inclined to take a latitudinarian and national view of the powers of the federal gov- ernment; but when he spoke in the deep and incisive tones of an authority, and that be- came more and more his habitual way of speak- ing, or when an opponent had nettled his self- love, he was but too easily betrayed into wast- ing his time and his ability in vain attempts to knead his earlier sayings and political acts into the mould of his present convictions. Some of the speeches of this period require particular notice, but they are precisely those which were only remotely or not at all con- nected with the party issues. The illegitimate connection of the civil ser- vice with party politics had become such a cry- ing evil that another effort was made to strike it at the root ; but again the would-be reform- ers sought the root where it did not lie. A bill was introduced and debated upon, which, as Calhoun expressed it, proposed " to inflict the penalty of dismission on a large class of the offi- cers of this government, who shall electioneer, or attempt to control or influence the election of public functionaries either of the general or state governments, without distinguishing be- tween their official and individual character as citizens." Calhoun, who spoke on the bill or. February 22, 1839, declared it for this reaso UNDER VAN BUREN. 201 unconstitutional. We need not inquire whether this charge was well founded, or whether he made good his case as to the constitutional question. Supposing that he was right, this de- fect of the bill could have been easily mended ; but he very justly asserted that such a law would " prove either useless, or worse than use- less." " But suppose the immediate object of the bill ac- complished, and the office-holders rendered perfectly silent and passive, it might even then be doubted whether it would cause any diminution in the influ- ence of patronage over elections. It would indeed greatly reduce the influence of the office-holders. They would become the most insignificant portion of the community, as far as elections were concerned. But just in the same proportion as they might sink, the no less formidable corps of the office-seekers would rise in importance. The struggle for power between the ins and the outs would not abate in the least, in violence or intensity, by the silence or in- activity of the office-holders, as the amount of pat- ronage, the stake contended for, would remain un- diminished. Both sides, those in and those out of power, would turn from the passive and silent body of the incumbents, and court the favor of the active corps, that panted to supplaut them; and the result would be an annual sweep of che former, after every election, to make room to reward the latter, and (hi* on whichever side the scale of victory might 202 JOHN C. CALHOUN. turn. The consequence would be rotation with a vengeance. The wheel would turn round with such velocity that anything like a stable system of policy would be impossible. Each temporary occupant, who might be thrown into office by the whirl, would seize the moment to make the most of his good fortune, before he might be displaced by his successor, and a system (if such it might be called) would follow, not less corrupting than unstable." That was all true enough, but what had he to propose instead ? " Place the office-holders, with their yearly salaries, beyond the reach of the executive power, and they would in a short time be as mute and inactive as this bill pro- poses to make them. Their voice, I promise, would then be scarcely raised at elections, or their persons be found at the polls." If he had changed but one word, if he had said party in power instead of executive power, this advice would, indeed, have been the egg of Columbus. The context hardly allows a doubt that he now, as before, only wished to assign a controlling influence over the removals to Congress or the Senate ; and if that was to be the whole reform, his law, like the bill under discussion, would have been "useless, or worse than useless." As concerning the slavery conflict, so also in this Question, he foresaw and foretold the impending dangers and inevitable evil consequences, and UNDER VAN BUREN. 203 he showed great ability in criticising the opin- ions of the other political physicians ; but hia own prescriptions were poisonous drugs. In respect to the civil service, this is not very surprising, because, though Calhoun saw clearer than most of his contemporaries, he had after all not made a serious effort to push his examination beyond the surface of the ques- tion ; another generation was to grapple with this problem, for it had to grow infinitely worse ere the necessity of getting at the bottom of it could be fully realized. But of the slavery conflict he had a better right than anybody to say, as he frequently did, that he had thor- oughly examined it in all its bearings, and that he understood it. Therefore the apodeictic man- ner in which he promised a radical cure, if but the application of his remedies would be con- sented to, exposes him to the charge of having been a dishonest quack, if he is not admitted to have been an honest fanatic, who, like all fanat- ics, viewed his subject but from one fixed point and under one unchangeable visual angle. This deep conviction of his own infallibility ju relation to everything concerning slavery rendered it a very significant fact that he once was compelled to admit that he was at his wits' tnd, and had no advice to offer. Of course neither pride nor policy allowed the very word? 204 JOHN C. CALHOUN. to fall from his lips, but the folded arms and knitted brow with which, after reiterated loud complaints, he suffered the government to re- main in the embarrassing situation, into which it had been thrown by trying to serve the inter- ests of the slave-holders, spoke with a most im- pressive eloquence. Two American vessels with negroes on board, the Comet and the Encomium, had been stranded, in 1830 and 1834, on the false keys of the Bahama Islands, and the local authorities of Nassau, New Providence, had refused to rec- ognize the negroes as slaves and deliver them up to their owners. In 1835 a very similar case occurred. The brig Enterprise was forced by stress of weather into Port Hamilton, Ber- muda, and the local authorities detained the slaves, pretending that they had become free- men by coming within English jurisdiction. The United States government took up all three cases in behalf of the owners, and claimed a fair compensation. England at last yielded as to the first two, but persisted in her refusal as to the last, and, at the same time, declared that no such claim would ever again be allowed. This distinction was based upon the fact " that before the Enterprise arrived at Bermuda slav- ery had been abolished in the British Empire.' On March 4, 1840, Calhoun introduced i UNDER VAN BUREN. 205 the Senate a set of resolutions declaratory of what he conceived to be the principles of the iaw of nations applying to the case, and severely condemning the course of the English author- ities. Some days later he delivered a long speech in support of the resolutions, and had the satisfaction of seeing them unanimously adopted. The South liked to dwell upon this fact as a striking proof of the justice of its claims. The unanimity of the Senate was, how- ever, only apparent. Of fifty-two senators, only thirty -three voted ; nineteen were evidently not satisfied that Calhoun had made good his case, but for reasons best known to themselves they preferred not to say so. The " unanimous " vote of the Senate was, in fact, a proof of the awe in which almost all the Northern politi- cians stood of the slave power, but there was very little reason to draw from it the conclu- sion that the doctrine propounded in the resolu- tions could not be called into question. Adams, who certainly knew as much of the law of na- tions as any member of Congress, wrote con- cerning the Enterprise resolutions, "Calhoun crows about his success in imposing his own bastard law of nations upon the Senate by his preposterous resolutions, and chuckles at Web- iter's appealing to those resolutions now, after 4odging from the dntv of refuting and con- minding them then." 206 JOHN C. C ALSO UN. The essential point of Calhoun's doctrine wai that he denied the right of England, with re- gard to citizens of foreign countries, to make any difference between slaves and other prop- erty, if by some unavoidable cause the slaves should momentarily come within the limits of her jurisdiction. This opinion was based upon the assertion that slavery was fully recognized by the law of nations. England did not directly and in so many words assert the contrary, but she proved by her acts that, at least so far as any positive obligations could be deduced from this principle, she refused to acknowledge its existence or its binding force upon her. This fact was in itself proof absolute that Calhoun'a assertion could at best be true only with a most important qualification. He overlooked the fact that the law of nations is not immutable, but constantly changing and developing with the general development of civilization. The very fact that England assumed the position she did sufficiently proved that this law was in a state of transition as to the principle in question. The law of nations rests upon the free consent of the civilized peoples. If, therefore, the great- est maritime power of the world, with most ex- tensive possessions adjacent to the sea or sur- rounded by it in all parts of the globe, withdrew its assent to a principle of which the practical UNDER VAN BUREN. 207 application was confined to the sea-coast, it could no longer be maintained. That this was BO with regard to the case in hand was the more evident, because none of the other European powers of any consequence had a practical in- terest in the question, and the hostility of pub- lic opinion all over the civilized world against slavery was constantly and rapidly increasing. Calhoun's resolutions, therefore, were neither more nor less than a vain protest against the onward course of civilization, and the Senate, by "unanimously" adopting them, announced to the world that the most democratic and most progressive state of the universe was bound to cry Halt ! and pull back the wheel of time whenever and wherever the interests of the slave-holders were in danger of being crushed by it. To oblige the slave power, the Senate had made an ugly blot on the record of the United States, and the slave power did not derive the least advantage from it, nay, it even sustained positive damage. England did not change her course by a single point on account of the reso- lutions, and the attention of the world had again been called in the most po ; nted manner to the allegation that slavery was indeed a "positive good " and the best foundation of liberty. That A positive damage, and no small one, fot 208 JOHN C. CALHOUN. every syllable of what Calhoun had said years ago, with such impressive emphasis about the part played by the moral convictions in the tragedy of this conflict, was true. Every such manifestation of the slave power caused its op- ponents to write with larger letters on their own banner the device under which the slar- pcracy had been sailing ever since the adoption of the Constitution : Let us alone ! Slavery is a state institution with which the federal govern- ment has no concern. Let us alone ! To be left alone in this sense was, however, to be delivered over to destruction by the moral and economical agencies which rule the world. The ' Let us alone " of the slave-holders meant, You have not only to shut your eyes and ears, but also to lock up your thoughts and your con- sciences, whenever our interests I'equire you to do so ; for slavery is a domestic institution of the sovereign States ; but it is your duty to throw the whole weight of the Union for us into the scales, whenever we tell you that our safety demands it, for the Constitution recog- nizes and " guarantees " slavery. How long would the North submit to such a bargain ? That question nobody could answer as yet ; but two things were certain : every time that the federal government submitted to its enforce- ment, the number of those in the North wh UNDER VAN BUREN. 209 grew restive under it increased; and every time that the slave-holders had succeeded in enforc- ing it, they were compelled to push both sides of their claim a long step farther. Calhoun, understanding the nature of the slavery ques- tion better than any other Southern man, had to march far ahead on both diverging lines, and therefore, while no other single man has done BO much to erect the temple of the slave power, also no other single man has done so much to render its sudden downfall inevitable and to hasten the catastrophe. So it was in this case. What a triumph that not a single senator dared to raise his voice against the " bastard law of nations," and what a portentous humiliation to have nothing but " words, words, and again words " to oppose to England's " outrageous course " I The South pocketed at the same time the glorious impotent resolutions and a signal defeat. There is no question that Calhoun very keenly felt the defeat, for he had declared that a " vital principle " was involved for the South, and that England " interdicted nearly as effect- ually the intercourse by sea between one half of this Union and the other, as to the greatest und most valuable portion of the property of the South, as if she was to send out cruisers gainst it." Yet he soon scrupulously avoided 14 210 JOHN C. CALHOUN. touching upon the question even in private con vevsation. But he deemed the success which he had obtained over the North of more import, for the obvious reason that the fate of the slave power depended not upon the international, but upon the national, standing of slavery. In No- vember, 1841, the English authorities of Nas- sau dared to repeat their former offence under most aggravating circumstances, for the brig Creole was brought into the harbor by the very slaves, who had successfully revolted and killed one of the slave-holders in the struggle. Yet Calhoun did not deem it necessary to hurl a new set of resolutions against England ; nay, he even refrained from venting his wrath in a speech; but he did not omit to commend very heart- ily the remonstrance of Webster, as Secretary of State, which was, indeed, based entirely on the resolutions of March 4, 1840. "The letter which had been read," he said, " was drawn up with great ability, and covered the ground which had been assumed on this subject by all parties in the Senate." He hoped that it would " have a beneficial effect, not only upon the United States, but Great Britain. Coming from the quarter it did, this document would do more good than in coming from any other quarter." Was it not an ominous sign of the times tha uch praise, in such an affair, was bestowed UNDER VAN BUREff. 211 upon Daniel Webster from these lips? Fur- ther, the great statesman of Massachusetts could boast of having won the approval of the great Carolinian in another question relating to slav- ery. To the surprise of most people, as well in the North as in the South, Calhoun was in favor of the ratification of the treaty concluded at Washington, on August 9, 1842, in which the high contracting powers, England and the United States, obligated themselves to main- tain a squadron of a certain strength on the African coast for the purpose of suppressing the slave-trade. It seems hardly necessary to state that Calhoun was not pleased with the agreement ; very far from it, indeed. He pre- mised his affirmative vote by the declaration " that there were several circumstances which caused no small repugnance on his part to any stipulations whatever with Great Britain on the subject of those articles ; and he would add that he would have been gratified if they and all other stipulations on the subject could have been entirely omitted ; but he must, at the same time, say he did not see how it was possible to avoid entering into some arrangement on the subject," and, considering all the circumstances of the case, he did not think this agreement bad enough to justify the rejection of the whole treaty, while it was better than to maintain the 212 JOHN C. CALHQUN. dangerous status quo. If Calhoun thought thus, it is not astonishing that Adams declared " the negotiation itself a Scapinade; a struggle be- tween the plenipotentiaries to outwit each other, and to circumvent both countries by a slippery compromise between freedom and slav- ery." But Calhoun was certainly no friend of slippery compromises. Was it then really only the embarrassing situation of the United States which caused him to consent to this? Adams thought not. He writes, " There is a temper- ance in his [Calhoun's] manner, obviously aim- ing to conciliate the Northern political sopranos, who abhor slavery, and help to forge fetters for the slave." But what reason did he have to wish just now to conciliate this numerous fam- ily of the species " dough-face " ? The ambitious wish which had so long and so violently agitated Calhoun's life while he stood in his prime had once more taken hold of his mind, now that he had entered upon the years in which all that this earth has to be- stow begins to lose its charm and gloss, because the twilight has set in and the evening shades are darkening. The deep animosity which the nullification conflict had excited against him throughout the North had so far subsided that South Carolina ventured to urge upon her sistei States his claims on the presidency. She IB UNDER VAN BUREN. 218 tended no empty compliment. Her own ad- miration for her favorite son did not so entirely becloud her judgment that she flattered her- self and him with the anticipation of certain success ; but she deemed it so far possible that she entered his name upon the list of candi- dates with all the hot and overbearing impetu- osity with which she was wont to take up every important question. Calhoun, too, indulged in the hope that the dream of his earlier manhood might at last be realized. At the end of 1842 he resigned his seat in the Senate, the resigna- tion to take effect from the close of the 27th Congress. The Legislature of South Carolina, immediately upon the acceptance of the resig- nation, unanimously nominated him a candi- date for election as President of the United States. To-day nobody will question that Calhoun was by far the superior of all his Democratic ompetitors in intellect and in justly acquired fame and character ; and even at that time but *ew failed to see this, though many did not see fit publicly to acknowledge the fact. But in tpite of his great superiority in all the essential qualities, no calm observer could doubt for a moment that his hopes were sure to be disap- pointed. The second and third rate politicians Merted, directly or indirectly, so great an in- 214 JOHN C. CALHOUN. fluence upon the party nominations that the chances of the first men of the nation to reach, in ordinary times, the goal of the presidency had become exceedingly small. The special in- terests of this class of people were better served by sending one of their own chiefs into the White House than by elevating to the chair a leading statesman, whose renown and influence were not based upon their cheap cunning and petty arts. But even if this had been other- wise, Calhoun would have had no chance what- ever. It was, to say the least, exceedingly doubtful whether he could ever be elected, if nominated by the party, and therefore it was certain that he would never receive the nomi- nation. It is true that he was not entirely with- out support in some of the Northern States. The Irish especially manifested everywhere some predilection for him, on account of his pedigree, and in New York, where the Whigs indulged very freely in their nativist and anti- Catholic tendencies, this predilection could al- most be mistaken for genuine enthusiasm. But as the first commandment of the political dec- alogue of the Irish masses was to vote the regu- lar ticket, and as his Irish extraction was nearly all they knew of him, their support was of very ittle avail, unless his other partisans were nu onerous and enthusiastic enough to scare his op UNDER VAN BUREN. 215 ponents within the party into submission. If the Southern wing unanimously and emphati- cally declared themselves for him, the Northern would, perhaps, not dare to resist. But only ignorance or blind admiration could suppose for a moment that the Southern Demo- crats could be marched up in serried ranks to sustain his candidature. Ever since he had ab- jured his early national and latitudinarian bias, and become an "honest nullifier" in the ser- vice of the slavocracy, he had unfitted himself to be the leader of a great national party, be- cause he had assumed the leadership of an ex- treme sectional faction. Perhaps this extreme faction was destined, in the course of time, to develop into a party, which would exercise des- potic sway over the whole South. Nay, it waa sure to come to that, because the correct un- derstanding of the slavery conflict must spread with its own development. As yet, however, ninety-nine out of a hundred saw the slavery question thfough a mist, and therefore even those who would have followed Calhoun through Urick and thin, to even out-Heroding Herod, were now shocked and dismayed by his radi- calism. There was probably not a single slave- nolder in the whole Union who was not glad to nave in the United States Senate such a cham- pion of the peculiar institution, whose courage 216 JOHN C. CALHOUN. and will were equal to any emergency ; but outside of South Carolina, the number of those who were very anxious to see him at the head of the government was comparatively small. The Calhounites fought stubbornly and car- ried their point in the first preliminary ques- tion, the postponing of the national conven- tion to the spring of 1844, against the ad- herents of Van Buren, who had wished to set it for as early a date as November, 1843. In the other controverted previous question, however, the partisans of Van Buren were all the more unyielding. The Calhounites wanted the dele- gates to the national convention elected by dis- tricts, while their opponents would have the decision as to the mode of election left to the States. If the national convention was to rep- resent, so far as possible, not the political log- rollers, but the party, the preference had un- doubtedly to be accorded to the proposition of the Calhounites but it was certainly somewhat strange that they, who believed themselves to have a monopoly of the pure states-rights doc- trine, ventured to wish to give prescriptions to the "States." So far as their course was determined by what they supposed to be the interest of theii respective candidates, both factions might have aaved their time and temper, and allowed thic UNDER VAN BUREN. 217 question to take care of itself. Van Buren was successful in the trial heat, but his final morti- fication was only the greater; for after all he lost the race, although his foremost competitor had taken the wise resolution to withdraw from it altogether on January 20, 1844. South Carolina was dismayed, but she did not, as she had done heretofore, throw away her electoral votes by voting for some candidate of her own. This time she submitted to the party behest, although she did it with anything but good grace. The defeat of Calhouu's candidat- ure had, however, but little to do with her an- ger. She indulged once more in a spasm of loud- mouthed passion on account of the double face which James K. Polk, the Democratic can- didate, had seen fit to put on with regard to the tariff question, in order to secure for him- self the electoral vote of Pennsylvania, without which his election was deemed impossible. Polk was accused of having gone over, bag and bag- gage, to the camp of the protectionists ; indig- nation meetings and dinners, with an abundance of furious toasts, denunciations, and threats, were the order of the day ; the " Charleston Mercury " was not satisfied with urging " leg- islative nullification," but invited the people of the State to adopt " ulterior measures," in case hat " should prove inadequate." 218 JOHN C. CALHOUN, There is always a fire where such volumes of imoke becloud the sky ; but this time the quan- tity of smoke stood in no proportion to the size or heat of the fire. Calhoun disapproved of this wild ado about so little, and that now hap- pened quite frequently which but a few weeks before had seemed impossible, that his name was not mentioned at all at the political festivi- ties of the radicals. He did not take this slight much to heart, nor had he any reason to do so. Not only was it a matter of course that Polk had not become a protectionist, but it was also perfectly evident that for the present the tariff was but a question of the second or third order. In both parties the opinions were far from be- ing in full accord on this head, and in neither did the masses of those who were not most immediately interested in it feel very deeply about it. And now should a storm be artifi- cially raised about a little more or less of duties, and thereby the gauntlet thrown into the face not only of the whole Whig party, North and South, but of all those who were too dull of comprehension to see the conservative force of nullification, and who clung to the old-fashioned idea that a law is a law, and has to be obeyed, now, when the opportunity was offered of tecuring a prize of incalculable value to the iemocracy? Holmes and Rhett might amuse UNDER VAN BUREN. 219 their followers by a revival of the nullification idea, " meditate ulterior measures," talk of dis- union, and declare that " to this complexion it must come at last ; " Calhoun had packed away his thunderbolts, and thus far he alone knew how to use them effectually. So early as 1839 he had, in the face of al- most countless declarations to the contrary, and yet apparently in good faith, astonished the Senate by the emphatic assertion that a dis- solution of the Union ever had been, and would remain in all future time, an imaginary danger. Replying to Mr. Buchanan, he had said : " The senator has done no more than justice to that measure [the compromise tariff]. It terminated honestly and fairly, without the sacrifice of any in- terest, one of the most dangerous controversies that ever disturbed the Union or endangered its exist- ence. Not the danger of dismemberment, as we learn from the senator, was anticipated abroad. No, the danger lay in a different direction. Dismemberment is not the only mode in which our Union may be destroyed. It is a federal Union, an Union of sov- ereign States, and can be as effectually and much more easily destroyed by consolidation than by dis- memberment. He who knows anything of the history of our race and the workings of the human breast best understands the great and almost insuperable difficulties in the way of dissolution. There is scarcely %u instance on record of any people, speaking the 220 JOHN C. JALHOUN. tame language and having the same government and laws, who have ever dissolved their political connec- tions through internal causes or struggles. . . . The constant struggle is to enlarge, and not to divide ; and there neither is nor ever has been the least dan- ger that our Union would terminate in dissolution." That was no bait thrown to " the political sopranos " of the North. He believed what he said, yet he did not mean to retract a single syl- lable of what he had declared so often before. The Union and abolition, as he had once ex- pressed it, cannot coexist. If the spirit of the fanatical visionaries of the North is not chained down, then the Union is irretrievably gone, for between the Union and slavery the South has no choice. But he is satisfied that the South will never be pressed before this alternative. In the letter, before mentioned, to the citizens of Athens, he had written : " Of all the questions which have been agitated under our government, abolition is that in which we of the South have the deepest concern. It strikes directly and fatally, not only at our prosperity, but our existence as a people. Should it succeed, our fate would be worse than that of the aborigines whom we have driven out, or the slaves whom we command. It is a question that admits of neither concession nor compromise. . . . There is one point in connection with this important subject on which the Soutf UNDER VAN BUREN. 221 uught to be fully informed. From all that I saw and heard during the session, I am perfectly satisfied that we must look to ourselves, and ourselves only, for Bafety. It is perfectly idle to look to the non-slave- holding States to arrest the attacks of the fanatics. . . . Nor would it be less vain to look to Congress. The same cause that prevents the non-slave-holding States from interference in our favor at home will equally prevent Congress. . . . But, if true to our- selves, we need neither their sympathy nor aid. The Constitution has placed in our power ample means, short of secession or disunion, to protect ourselves." We have seen more than once that he had his hours of despondency, when this conviction was severely shaken, but it was never wholly relinquished. And now he thought that the day had come when a pillar of such gigantic dimensions could be put as an additional sup- port under the dome of slavery that it would be able to withstand all the assaults of aboli- tionism. The annexation of Texas was to ren- der the Union indissoluble by strengthening the slave power so much that it would have noth- ing more to apprehend. CHAPTER VIIL TEXAS. As early as May 23, 1836, Calhoun had de- clared in the Senate that he " had made up his mind not only to recognize thtj independence of Texas, but for her admission into this Union ; and if the Texans managed their affairs prudently, they would soon be called upon to decide that question. No man could suppose for a moment that that country could ever come again under the dominion of Mexico ; and he was of opinion that it was not for our interests that there should be an in- dependent community between us and Mexico. There were powerful reasons why Texas should be a part of this Union. The Southern States, owning a slave population, were deeply interested in preventing that country from having the power to annoy them." Thus, but one month after the battle of Ja- cinto, he publicly and formally announced his programme with regard to the question whicl was to be the pivotal point on which the fate of slavery was to turn. No other single indi- vidual did so much as he to bring about the annexation. He himself has emphatically TEXAB. 228 claimed that merit, and he considered it the greatest and most beneficent achievement of his public career. Perhaps it was, as things finally turned out, but he would have cursed the day on which he put his hand to the plough, if he had known what a dragon seed was to be planted. On February 24, 1847, when the har- vesting of the fatal crop had already begun, he said in the Senate : " I trust, Mr. President, there will be no dispute hereafter as to who is the real author of annexation. Less than twelve months since, I had many compet- itors for that honor : the official organ here claimed, if my memory serves me, a large share for Mr. Polk and his administration, and not less than half a dozen competitors from other quarters asserted them- selves to be the real authors. But now, since the war [with Mexico] has become unpopular, they all seem to agree that I, in reality, am the author of nnnexation. I will not put the honor aside. I may now rightfully and indisputably claim to be the au- thor of that great measure, a measure which has so much extended the domains of the Union ; which has added so largely to its productive powers ; which promises so greatly to extend its commerce ; which has stimulated its industry, and given security to our most exposed frontier. I take pride to myself as being the author of this great measure." Though there is no positive proof for it, Ben- ton's allegation is therefore probably true, that 224 JOHN C. CALHOUN. Calboun was also the real author of the intrigue which was to give the annexation wheel the necessary impetus, after several years had been spent in unsuccessful attempts to put it prop- erly into motion. Other circumstances point in the same direction, and that he at first care- fully kept himself concealed in the background is satisfactorily explained by the fact that the immediate purpose of the intrigue was to bring the still enormous influence of Jackson into play. In the beginning of 1843 a Baltimore news- paper published a letter of Gilmer, dated Jan- uary 10, to " a friend " (Duff Green) in Mary- land, on the necessity of the annexation of Texas. Benton says that the letter was like a flash of lightning from a clear sky. The public, however, were allowed to settle down once more into indolent unconcern, for what followed was played under cover. The letter touched most strongly the two chords which were sure to find tho loudest echo in Jackson's breast : preserva- tion against England's ambitious desires and the strengthening of the Union. But as the name of Gilmer, as well as Green, awakened the sus- picion that Calhoun was seated in the prompt- er's box, the letter was sent to the "Sage of tiie Hermitage " by Aaron V. Brown, of Ten who was but an unconscious tool IB TEXAS. 226 other hands. Jackson answered at once in the tone desired, and although the letter had been confessedly asked for only for the purpose of working on the masses, it was now carefully put away until the opportune moment for its pub- lication should come. Those who held the wires behind the curtain had attained their im- mediate end. Jackson had irrevocably engaged himself for immediate annexation. Without himself being aware of it, he had thereby de- prived himself of the possibility of throwing his whole weight into the scales in favor of Van Buren ; for immediate annexation was to be made the leading issue of the presidential cam- paign of 1844. This was another reason for the Calhounites to insist upon the postponement of the nominating convention, for they needed time to tie the South so closely down to this programme that it could not afterward draw back for the sake of a question of persons. A few months later, one of the greatest ob- stacles in the way of the annexationists was removed by Webster's exit from the cabinet. Upshur, who, after a short interregnum under Legare", became Tyler's Secretary of State, worked with his whole energy and with consid- erable skill at the solution of this problem. On October 16, 1843, he proposed a treaty of an- nexation to the Texan agent Texas, however, y 226 JOHN C. CALHOUN. was not now quite so eager to grasp the out- stretched hand as she had been heretofore. Thanks to the efforts of England and France, there was an armistice between her and Mexico, and negotiations tending to a formal peace had been begun. Van Zandt, the Texan charg d'af- faires in Washington, in a letter of January 17, 1844, called the attention of Upshur to the fact that, under these circumstances, a treaty of annexation would drive Mexico to the immedi- ate resumption of hostilities, and that it would also cost Texas the friendship of the mediating powers. He therefore confidentially inquired whether, in case the proposal of annexation were accepted by the Texan executive, the President would, even before the ratification of the treaty, protect Texas by a sufficiently strong land and maritime force against all attacks. Upshur dared not answer either yes or no. To refuse the request was to drive Texas wholly into the arms of England, while to grant it was to pledge the President to assume, on his own responsibility, as the price of Texas, the war of Texas against Mexico. The bursting of the cannon Peacemaker on board the Princeton, on February 28, 1844, ended the embarrassment of the Secretary. To whose hands should the consummation of the tnnexation now be confided? The answer to TEXAS. 227 this question was not given, as one would have expected, by the President, but by Henry A. Wise. Already, more than two years before, in a speech delivered in the House of Repre- sentatives, the hot-biooded Virginian had gone into ecstasy over the idea " of planting the lone star of the Texan banner on the Mexican capi- tol," of extending slavery to the Pacific, and of robbing the Mexican churches. Now he thought that the time had come to enter upon the real- ization of this sublime programme, and he was too great a man to let the trifling considerations of propriety, honesty, and right stand in his way. He had the effrontery to go to McDuffie and induce him to urge upon Calhoun the ac- ceptance of the Secretaryship of State, caus- ing him (McDuffie) to believe that he (Wise) had been sent by the President. Then he urged Tyler to offer the place to Calhoun. The Pres- .dent at first declined to comply with the wish, but he finally submitted, when he had been told what his devoted friend had presumed to do. Calhoun accepted, declaring at the same time that he would resign the office so soon as an- nexation should become an accomplished fact. It was the universal understanding that it was Dnly for this special purpose that he had been called to the helm, and that only for this reason 228 JOHN C. CALHOUN. he consented to become a member of the cabinet of the President, who had no party in Congress, and but a corporal's guard of office-holders among the people, to sustain him. He after- wards fully confirmed this view. On February 12, 1847, he said in the Senate : "According to my view, the time was not propi- tious in one respect. The then President had no party iu either House. I am not certain that he had a single supporter in this, and not more than four or five in the other. It appeared to me to be a very unproprtious moment, under such circumstances, to carry through so important a measure. When it vas intimated to me that I was to be nominated for 'he office of Secretary of State, I strongly remon- strated to my friends here ; but before my remon- strance reached them, I was unanimously appointed, and was compelled to accept. I saw the administra- tion was weak, and that the very important measure would be liable to be defeated. But circumstances made action on it inevitable." Niles's " Register " of March 23, 1844, said : " The nomination of John C. Calhoun to the office cf Secretary of State, and the entire unanimity with which that nomination has been approved, not only by the Senate, but the public press of the country, presents the incident, in our judgment, as one of the naost eventful, certainly in the life of that distin pushed and talented statesman, and very poeaiblj TEXAS. 229 also, in the future and fate of the country, the inter eats of which, to a vast extent, indeed, are thereby confided to him, at a moment of exceeding delicacy." That the Senate unanimously confirmed the nomination of a man of Calhoun's standing was a matter of course ; but it would have been strange indeed if it had with entire unanimity " approved " it, and stranger still if the whole press, and consequently also the whole people, had rejoiced at it, too strange to be believed, although some years later he himself asserted that he had been called "by the unanimous voice of the country to take charge of the State Department." Just because it was in fact "a moment of exceeding delicacy" and " the future and the fate of the country " were, " to a vast extent," confided to his hands, the nomination of this most thorough-going and most daring partisan inevitably caused the deep- est concern to all the opponents of annexation, while it gave the greatest satisfaction to all its advocates. And he fully justified as well the expectations of the latter as the apprehensions of the former ; but in doing so he blurred his fair fame. The man who had had the courage to become " an honest nullifier " ought to have had the courage to manage this annexation ousiness with perfect honesty, though with a high hand, and not stoop tc sail under false col- 280 JOHN a CALHOUN. ors. He would never have forgotten so far as he did what he owed to the dignity of his coun- try and his personal honor, if he had not thought the annexation of such vital importance that almost anything seemed justifiable to render success more certain. From the moment when Calhoun arrived in Washington, the negotiations, which had been rather stagnant during the interregnum, were resumed with zeal, while public opinion was aroused by the publication of Jackson's letter of February 12, 1843, postdated 1844. John Nelson, who provisionally had charge of the State Department, had declined to accede to the before-mentioned condition of Texas, for the obvious reason that the President had not the constitutional power to employ armed force against a state with which the Union was at peace. He had, however, assured the Texans that Tyler was "not indisposed" to make the desired disposition of the troops, in order that they might be able to protect Texas at the " proper time." Calhoun now tried his luck with similar vague phrases, but the Texan agents would not be paid off in such a way. On April 11 he yielded with a heavy heart, informing the two plenipotentiaries that an order had been issued to concentrate a powerful squadroF n the Gulf of Mexico, and " to move the dis TEXAS. 231 posable forces " on the southwestern frontier "to meet any emergency." The only object he attained was that he was allowed to evade the greatest difficulty by one word, which left a possibility open to him, not, indeed, to justify the action of the administration, but to defend it by dialectic subtleties. He declared that, " during the pendency of the treaty of annexa- tion, the President would deem it his duty to use all the means placed within his power by the Constitution to protect Texas from all foreign invasion." On the following day the treaty was signed. Ten days elapsed ere the treaty was sub- mitted to the Senate. The reason of this, under the circumstances, very surprising delay was the wish of the Secretary to lay simultaneously before the Senate a copy of a letter, which was formally a reply to a dispatch of Lord Aberdeen, and addressed to Mr. Pakenham, the English plenipotentiary, but which in fact was a piece of special pleading in justification of annexation, directed to the people of the United States. A more remarkable and more revolting document has never been issued from the State Depart ment of the country. In the dispatch of Decembe- 26, 1843, which had been communicated by Mr. Pakenham to Secretary Upshur on February 26, 1844, Lord Aberdeen had said, 232 JOHN C. CALHOUN. " We desire to see [slavery] abolished in Texas. With regard to the latter point, it must be and is well known, both to the United States and to the whole world, that Great Britain desires, and is con- stantly exerting herself to procure, the general aboli- tion of slavery throughout the world. . . . With re- gard to Texas, we avow that we wish to see slavery abolished there, as elsewhere, and we would rejoice if the recognition of that country by the Mexican government should be accompanied by an engage- ment on the part of Texas to abolish slavery eventu- ally, and under proper conditions, throughout the republic." Calhoun declared in his letter of April 18, 1844, to Mr. Pakenham, that these avowals of Great Britain had made it, in the opinion of the President, "the imperious duty of the federal government " to conclude, " in self-de- fence," a treaty of annexation with Texas as the most effectual measure to defeat England's intention. " The United States have heretofore declined to meet her [Texas'] wishes; but the time has now ar- rived when they can no longer refuse, consistently with their own security and peace, and the sacred ob- ligation imposed by their constitutional compact for mutual defence and protection. . . . They are with- out responsibility for that state of things already adverted to as the immediate cause of imposing on them, in self-defence, the obligation of adopting the TEXAS. 233 measures they have. They remained passive so lcr.g as the policy on the part of Great Britain, which has led to its adoption, had no immediate bearing on their peace and safety." It may not be correct to apply, without modi- fication, the code of private ethics to politics ; but, however flexible political morality be, a lie is a lie, and Calhoun knew that there was not one particle of truth in these assertions. Al- most eight years before, on May 23, 1836, as we have seen, he himself had declared annexa- tion to be necessary, and the first and fore- most reason which he alleged for it was the interest which the Southern States had in it, on account of their peculiar institution. Two years later his colleague, Mr. Preston, had moved in the Senate, and Mr. Thompson, of South Carolina, had also moved in the House of Representatives, to declare annexation ex- pedient. Several state Legislatures, as those of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, had agi- tated the question with hot zeal, unreservedly avowing that they did so " upon grounds some- what local in their complexion, but of an im- port infinitely grave and interesting to the peo- ple who inhabit the southern portion of this confederacy." In December, 1841, it was a pub- do secret in the political circles ol Washington that Tyler had again taken up the annexation 284 JOHN C. CALUOUJT. project. It had, in fact, never been abandoned, but only temporarily put off the order of the day, because, for various reasons, the time had not been deemed opportune. But on October 16, 1843, more than two months before Lord Aberdeen's dispatch was written, and more than four months before it was delivered, Upshur had made the formal proposition of annexation. Whether Calhoun had any knowledge of tho existence of this dispatch before he had con- sented to become the successor of Upshur we do not know ; but that he would have accepted Tyler's invitation, and entered upon the office with exactly the same programme, if Lord Aberdeen's dispatch had never been written, nobody has ever ventured to question. It is, therefore, an incontestable fact that there was not a particle of truth in those allegations of the Secretary, and that he was fully conscious of it. To pervert the truth in such a manner re- quired indeed a bold front. Even if the whole world had not been familiar with the fact that ever since the battle of San Jacinto the annex- ation of Texas had been but a question of time with the whole South and the Democratic party, 'Jallioun's assertion would have been simply ri- diculous. Lord Aberdeen's dispatch contained Absolutely nothing to startle or even to surprise TEXAS. 285 the United States. The avowals which, accord* ing to Calhoun, the President regarded with such " deep concern," only stated a fact as no- torious as the existence of slavery itself. That England's hostility to slavery and her desire to nee it everywhere abolished was " for the first time " avowed " to this government " was evi- dently of no consequence whatever, for it did not add a grain's weight to the importance of the fact. Lord Aberdeen expressly declared that England's policy remained unaltered, and Calhoun did not pretend to doubt in the least the truth of this assurance. The mere fact that England had seen fit to state, in an official dispatch, what every school-boy already knew to be the case, could not be a cause of alarm, and the reason which had induced her to do it was calculated to have exactly the opposite ef- fect. Lord Aberdeen had not indulged in any threats, but the only purpose of his dispatch was to dispel any apprehensions which the United States could possibly entertain. He said : " We should rejoice if the recognition of that coun- try by the Mexican government should be accompa- nied by an engagement on the part of Texas to abol ish-slavery eventually, and under proper conditions throughout the republic. But although we earnestly desire and feel it to be our duty to promote such a oueurunoatiou. we shall not interfere unduly, or with 236 JOHN C. CALHOUN. an improper assumption of authority, with either party, in order to assure the adoption of such a course. We shall counsel, but we shall not seek to compel or unduly control, either party. . . . She [Great Brit- ain] has no thought or intention of seeking to act di- rectly or indirectly, hi a political sense, on the United States, through Texas. . . . The governments of the slave-holding States may be assured that, although we shall not desist from those open and honest efforts which we have constantly made for procuring the abolition of slavery throughout the world, we shall neither openly nor secretly resort to any measures which can tend to disturb their internal tranquillity, or thereby to affect the prosperity of the American Union." It did not require the keen intellect of a Cal- houn to see that these emphatic disclaimers were meant to be the essential part of Lord Aberdeen's dispatch, and not the sentences on which he based his reply to Mr. Pakenham. Yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that they only served him as a pretext, because he could find no better one, and that his uneasiness on account of England's policy was feigned. His alarm was not only most real, but it was also fully justified. In the course of the nego- tiations with Texas, Upshur had repeatedly avowed that the alleged ambitious designs of Great Britain, and especially her exertions fo/ the abolition of slavery in the republic, impera. TEXAS. 37 Hvely demanded that the annexation should no longer be delayed. At the same time, however, it was acknowledged on all sides that slavery was doomed in Texas, independently of any- thing England might do. Leading Texans, e. g. Ex-President Mirabeau B. Lamar, had fre- quently declared that the anti-slavery party would soon acquire the ascendency, and that the abolition of slavery could be effected " without the slightest inconvenience." The most zealous advocates of annexation in Congress had em- phatically indorsed this opinion, and Upshur himself had written to Mr. Murphy, " If Texas should not be attached to the United States, she cannot maintain that institution [slavery] ten years, and probably not half that time." Cal- houn held the same opinion. He informed Mr Pakenham that the President had " the settled conviction that it would be difficult for Texas, in her actual condition, to resist what she [Great Britain] desires, without supposing the influence and exertions of Grreat Britain would be extended beyond the limits assigned by Lord Aberdeen ; " rind he added, " and this, if Texas could not re- sist the consummation of the object of her de- sire, would endanger both the safety and pros- perity of the Union." An independent Texas without slavery and the permanent continuance )f slavery in the 288 JOHN C. CALHOU*. Union were, however, irreconcilable. Even if this had been a mistake, as it undoubtedly was not, the opponents of the slavocracy had no rea- son to contest the truth of this confession, for it was the most destructive judgment which could be passed on slavery. The slavocracy de- clared through its most gifted representative, in an official document, that between it and lib- erty there existed a conflict of principle so ir- reconcilable, that by the simple fact of the neighborhood of independent States in which slavery did not exist, it was brought face to face with the question of life or death. Did it not follow directly from this that its political connection with free States was possible only on the supposition of the complete subservience of the latter ? Was there a more forcible proof needed, or even possible, than the very demand which the slavocracy now made, in consequence of that fact? Because the slave-holding States, thought their peculiar institution endangered by the existence of an independent free State, it was declared to be the " imperative duty " and a "sacred obligation" of the United States, .mposed by their constitutional compact, to ab- Borb that State into the Union, in order to pre- vent the abolition of slavery in it. It was not jnly a fact that Texas was to be annexed tc tnake the continued existence of slavery possi TEXAS. 239 ble there, but the fact was officially declared before the whole world by the executive of the Union. The democratic republic, which had based its existence upon the rights of man, was morally and constitutionally bound to prevent the breaking of the chains of the slave in a neighboring republic, though it could be done only by adding these very chains to those which already bound its arms. Calhoun's letter to Pakenham was the official proclamation of the "nationalization" of slavery, only, however, so far as it imposed duties upon the Union, but by no means with regard to any corresponding rights. " With us," the Secretary declared, the policy to be adopted in reference to the African race " is a question to be decided not by the federal government, but by each member of this Union, for itself, according to its own views of its domestic policy, and without any right on the part of the federal government to interfere in any manner whatever. Its rights and duties are limited to protecting, under the guarantees jf the Constitution, each member of this Union i n whatever policy it may adopt in reference to the portion within its respective limits." The fclave-holding States had to say what was nec- essary to protect them in the policy they had been pleased to adopt, and the federal govern- ment had to act accordingly. The President 240 JOHN C. C ALSO UN. had had no choice. The annexation of Texas was " the most effectual, if not the only means of guarding against the threatened danger," and therefore he had acted simply "in obedi- ence " to the constitutional obligation of the Union. In other words, it was the constitu- tional obligation of the Union to engage in slav- ery propagandism in the defence of the interests of the slavocracy, and, confessedly, even at the risk of a war ; for the Secretary declared, in an official dispatch to the American representative in Mexico, that the step had been taken " in full view of all possible consequences." If the United States had indeed assumed such sacred obligations towards the slave-holders, in establishing the Constitution, there could be no impropriety in it that Calhoun concluded his letter with a short but enthusiastic exposition of his theory of the "positive good." But what were those to think of it who did not acknowl- edge those obligations ? Surely, the history jf the United States had entered upon a new phase, if the Secretary of State could dare, in an official communication and in the name of he federal Executive, to lecture a foreign state upon the blessings of slavery. And by his own testimony he stands convicted of having en gaged in this whole correspondence partly for the very purpose of doing that* and of having TEXAS. 241 been grievously disappointed that the rejection of the treaty prevented him from enlarging upon this exalted theme. The " Charleston Mercury " of November 28, 1860, published a previously unknown letter, dated July 2, 1844, in which Calhoun says : " If an opportunity should offer, I had hoped to draw out a full correspondence by my letters to Mr. Pakenham. They were, in part, written with that view, and were intended to lay the foundation of a long and full correspondence ; and I doubt not what was intended would have been accomplished, had the Senate done its duty [!] and ratified the treaty. Their neglect to do so, I fear, will not only lose Texas to the Union, but also defeat my aim in reference to the correspondence. Had the treaty been ratified, my last letter to Mr. Pakenham, which he trans- mitted to his government, would not have been left without a reply, which would have brought on what I intended. As it is, it will not be answered, as J infer from Mr. Pakenham's conversation recently His government is content to leave to our Senate the defence of its course, and is too wise, when it can be avoided, to carry on a correspondence in which they see they have little to gain. I regret it. It will, I fear, be difficult to get another opportunity lo bring out our cause fully and favorably before the world. I shall omit none which may afford a decent pretext for renewing the correspondence." Even ultra-Democrati 3 papers and journals in M 242 JOHN C. CALHOUN. the North criticised the Pakeuham letter in the severest terms. The " Democratic Review," though it advocated immediate annexation, and professed " exalted admiration, respect, and even attachment " for Calhoun, complained with bitterness that the President and hia Secretary had not left a shred of the Southern doctrine, which was also that of the Northern Democrats, that slavery was a local institution, " with which the free States had nothing to do, for which they were in no wise responsible." It reproved with indignation the " volunteer discussion of the essential merits of this pecul- iar local institution through the peculiar organ of our collective nationality, for which, if for anything, the Union, and the whole Union, is emphatically responsible." Without reserve, it avowed that Calhoun had "nationalized" and '* federalized " slavery, " actually pledging the military intervention of the country, by a simple unconstitutional executive promise, to plunge directly into war with Mexico if she should execute her threat of immediate invasion of Texas ; " and all this " on the avowed ground, the almost exclusively avowed ground, of strength- ening and preserving the institution of slav- ery." Such language from a leading organ of theii own party might well have induced the Preai- TEXAS. 248 ient and his Secretary to pause and ponder. Even if they succeeded, they were evidently playing a dangerous game. The deep-seated dis- satisfaction in their own camp indicated that it would probably not be ended by their winning the stakes, and the sequel might be very far from corresponding with the beginning. But Calhoun, who so j tistly boasted of being wont to look to the farthest consequences of every ques- tion, had now neither ears nor eyes for anything except his immediate object. It is asserted that he obtained from Archer, of Virginia, the chair- man of the Committee on Foreign Relations, the solemn promise that he would delay the Senate forty days with regard to the annexation treaty. The alleged reason for this wish was that Mexico's answer to the notification of the treaty was expected by the last day of that term. That was unquestionably an empty pre- tence, for in various ways this time might have easily been shortened a little ; and, besides, it had been declared from the first that Mexico would not be allowed to interfere in any waj whatever in this question. The term was evi dently fixed with relation to the national con- vention of the Democratic party, which was to meet two days earlier at Baltimore. Calhoun wanted to make sure of the party with regard to the main question, ere he aLowed the Senate 244 JOHN C. CALHOUN. to come to a decision on the treaty. The " Spec- tator," the reputed organ of Calhoun in Wash ington, had formally declared that Van Buren was to be considered " as beside the presiden- tial canvass," because he had refused to pledge himself for immediate annexation. Therewith the programme was announced which the an- nexationists were resolved to impose upon the convention at all hazards. After a long and arduous struggle over the preliminary questions, they triumphed completely. The majority vote which Van Buren received at the first ballot was a bootless compliment. His partisans knew that they had lost the game before the voting commenced. On the eighth ballot the name of Governor Polk, of Tennessee, appeared for the first time, and on the next ballot he was nominated. Polk was what, in the political slang of to-day, is called " a dark horse ; " but as to the test question, he could have been im- plicitly trusted, even if the platform had not pledged the party to " the re-annexation of Texas at the earliest practicable period." The impatience, which Calhoun had betrayed in the first stages of his annexation campaign proved that he would have manoeuvred with more quickness and boldness if he had not had good reason to apprehend that the Senate would take serious objection to his policy. It was wet TEXAS. 245 kwown that the -treaty would not be supported by all those who were in favor of speedy annex- ation. The Pakenhatn correspondence was a two-edged sword. Calhoun had cut himself as badly as he had cut his opponents. He had Buceeeded in consolidating the South to the ex- tent that he had expected ; but, at the same time, he had aroused the feeling of the North to such a degree that even the best disposed senators were afraid that they would commit political suicide by voting for this treaty, after it had been officially based on such grounds. Besides, they did not see why such immoderate haste should be necessary. Tyler's and Cal- houn's interests might be well enough served by it, but that was only another reason for them to curb the over-zealous administration. While there were but few, if any, senators who, under any circumstances, would have been anxious to smooth the way of either the President or the Secretary in the pursuit of any personal ends, the majority deemed it a duty to administer to them a severe rebuke for their gross infringe- ments upon the rights of Congress and the lack of consideration for the Senate, which had char- acterized the whole transaction. Even zealous annexationists indulged in searching and caus- tic criticisms of the treaty and alt the attendant .ircumstances, and on fm\e 8 it was rejected t>y a vote of thirty-five against sixteen. 246 JOHN C. OALHOUN. The dismay of Tyler and Calhoun was great, but they were not in the least daunted. They were bent upon attaining their end. If it waa not to be secured in this way, nothing was to deter them from trying any other which prom- ised success, though they might have to ride rough-shod over the Constitution and all the constitutional doctrines which they had hereto- fore professed. On the second day after the rejection of the treaty, the President sent a mes- sage to the House of Representatives, accompa- nied by all the documents relating to the ques- tion. The essence of the message was contained in the declaration that Congress was " fully competent, in some other form of proceeding, to accomplish everything that a formal ratifica- tion of the treaty could have accomplished." That was in fact an appeal from the Senate, which had the unquestionable right to reject a treaty, to the House of Representatives, to which no power has been given by the Consti- tution in relation to treaties. What was the sense of rendering the consent of two thirds of the Senate indispensable for the conclusion of every treaty, if, after a treaty had been rejected by the Senate, a simple majority of both Houses of Congress had the right virtually to ratify it, Dy accomplishing in some other form what the teaty was to have accomplished? Like a TEXAS. 247 French cavalier of the old regime, Tyler waived away this question with the bold reply, " The great question is, not as to the manner in which it shall be done, but whether it shall be accom- plished or not." That such an answer would not have been given, unless it was fully ap- proved by Calhoun, will not be doubted. But when had the most reckless Federalists ever dared to profess such an unblushing latitudina- rianism, or to nationalize the Union to such an extent by pushing the Constitution aside, and giving the federal government carte-blanche in a question more important than any other ever submitted to it ? Verily, the country had fallen upon strange times, if such a doctrine could be officially proclaimed by the President, under the sanction of the man who had come very near plunging the Union into a civil war, by pushing his states-rights theory to such extremities that he found, in the right of nullification, the main- stay of the Union and its great conservative principle. The President had made no definite proposi- tion to Congress, but the language of the mes- sage of June 10 was too plain to admit any doubt that the administration would not let matters quietly take their own course after the close of the session. The check which it had Deceived had made it only more determined and 248 JOHN C. CALHOUN. bolder. Upon a notification from the Texan Secretary of State that Mexico intended a new invasion, Calhoun stated that his letter of April 11 had promised armed intervention only in case this emergency should occur while the treaty of annexation was pending. We have Been how loath he had been to give this promise, which his immediate predecessor, Nelson, had declared unconstitutional, and yet he now, Sep- tember 10, after the treaty had been rejected, volunteered to extend the obligation to the whole time during which " the question of annexa- tion " should remain " pending." In a formal and constitutional sense, however, annexation was not now at all a pending question. That the President had expressed the wish to see it ultimately accomplished, no matter in what way, and that some members of Congress had suggested this and that, did not and could not make it a question in this sense. The treaty had been rejected, the executive had not en- tered upon new negotiations with Texas for an- other treaty, and Congress was not even in ses- Bion. The annexation of Texas was, therefore, no more a " pending question " than the tariff, the bank, or any other political problem in which the people took a lively interest. There was absolutely nothing to be found in the act- ual condition of things from which even th TEXAS. 249 most subtle dialectics could deduce any interna- tional rights or obligations. Besides, the Sen- ate had given it to be understood, in no very ambiguous manner, that, at least in what con- cerned the President's independent initiative, it did not approve of the promises made in the letter of April 11. Calhoun, therefore, forbore to announce, in express words, an armed inter- vention ; but the declaration that the United States would feel themselves " highly offended " by a renewal of the war, and that they would not " permit it," virtually amounted to the same thing. When the news came that Mexican agents were agitating the Indians at the fron- tier, news which never failed to reach Wash- ington, whenever it was opportune that it should come, Calboun followed up his protest of September 10 by authorizing (September 17) the Union troops to enter Texas as soon as the Texans should desire it. In their hot pursuit of the long-coveted prize, which had so unexpectedly slipped through their fingers, Tyler and Calhoun were, in fact, as ready " to assume the full responsibility " for %ny step which promised to bring them nearer the goal as Andrew Jackson had ever been when the constitutionalitv or legality of his acts was called into question. Perhaps they would have proceeded with a littie more caution, if the 250 JOHN C. CALHOUN. Southern annexationists had not set them the example of an unblushing recklessness, which was without a parallel in the whole history of the Union. The threats of disunion, if the North dared to resist this extension of the do- main of slavery, were too common to make the desired impression. Much more effect had the announcement that the North would have to choose between Texas and the abolition of the tariff of 1842. There were many respectable men in the North who honestly believed slav- ery to be a sin and a curse, but who loved their pockets more than they hated slavery. With others, again, their party attachment was stronger than their hatred and fear of slavery. They benumbed their consciences with the illu- sion that they could cleanse their skirts of all responsibility by protesting against the annex- ation and recommending the election of anti-an- nexationists to Congress, while they voted for Polk. As to the office-seekers, a slight raising of the party whip was, of course, sufficient to make them all zealous annexationists, no matter what their convictions had been before the Bal- timore Convention ; their convictions had to be stored away for the time being, for it would have been fool hardiness to carry such heavy bag- gage in so hot a race, with so many competitors, So the annexationists could count upon the TEXAS. 251 whole Democratic party of the North, though a considerable part of it either entirely disap- proved of annexation, or, at least, thought im- mediate annexation inexpedient. Yet, in spite of that and of their complete control over the federal patronage, the annexationists would have lost the election, if the Liberty Party, instead of putting up a candidate of their own, had sup- ported the Whigs, in order to bar the way to the former. The votes of that party caused the Whigs to lose the States of New York and Michigan, and with them the election. Polk was elected, but the history of the election proved beyond contradiction, that the majority of the people were opposed to immediate an- nexation. Tyler's annual message of Decem- ber 3, however, not only asserted the contrary, but declared that both Houses of Congress had been instructed, by "a controlling majority of the people, and a large majority of the States," " in terms the most emphatic," to accomplish annexation immediately, and he therefore recommended it to be done in the most simple way, namely, by joint resolution. How often had the holy anger of Calhoun's constitutional and political conscience been aroused by Jackson's dariiig to put such inter- pretations upon elections ! Yet everything with which Jackson could be justly reproached in 252 JOHN C. CALBOUN. this respect was mere child's play, in compari- son with the monstrosity of the political heresy of this assertion and with its brazen disregard of truth ; and that Tyler neither would nor could have ventured to make it without Cal- houn's consent nobody will contest. It was wmply not true that the election had pre- sented to the people for its decision " the iso- lated question of annexation." If it had been true, the result could, perhaps, by means of Benton's " demos krateo " principle, have been tortured into an instruction " to both branches of Congress, by their respective constituents ; " but neither the most searching chemical anal- ysis nor the most powerful microscope could discover the slightest vestige of this " demos krateo principle " in the Constitution. Besides, the theory of the message refuted itself in such a way that not another word is needed to show it up as a political counterfeit of the most bungling kind. If the electoral votes of the sev- eral States were binding instructions to the re- spective senators, the eleven States which had voted for Clay had instructed their senators, ** in terms the most emphatic," against annexa- tion. The Union, however, consisted at the time of but twenty-six States, and the least im portant of treaties required the assent of two thirds of the senators. Thus the " instruo TEXAS. 253 lions " which the senators had received from the " States " made it impossible to accomplish annexation in the way which Tyler himself had acknowledged to be at least " the most suitable." Yet the "instructions" from a simple majority of States would, by the theory advanced, have made it the imperative duty of the Senate to conclude, without any further previous consid- eration, a compact with a foreign power, than which it is impossible to imagine one more im- portant. If the " people," by means of a pres- idential election, could oblige Congress to in- corporate a foreign state, and if Congress could effect such incorporation by a simple majority resolution, the " consolidation " of the Union was complete, and its confederate character was completely and forever lost. The theory of the message was, in fact, the subversion of all the underlying principles of Calhoun's political doc- trines, upon which he had based his defence of the " peculiar institution." In spite of that, however, he consented to this theory without any compunction, because the slavocracy would have to die, and to die beyond resurrection, if it could not get more land and create more slave- holding States. Congress did not accede to the proposition of i,he President without a little more ado. The House of Represents tires, indeed, was satisfied 254 JOHN C. CALHOUJT. with having the line of the Missouri Compro mise continued through Texas ; but, in the Sen- ate, a back door had to be provided for the con- sciences of those annexationists who held that the only constitutional way of effecting the an- nexation was by treaty. The resolution of the House of Representatives was amended, by au- thorizing the President to negotiate another treaty of annexation, if he should deem it more advisable to do so than to submit the joint reso- lution to Texas. Benton and the other sena- tors, who had sustained the above-mentioned constitutional view, never deigned to inform the people whence they derived the right to give the President the choice to bring about the an- nexation either in the constitutional or in an un- constitutional way, as he should think best. The crutch with which they limped over this obstacle was McDuffie's declaration that Cal- houn would not have the " audacity " to choose the unconstitutional way, and submit the joint resolution to Texas. Did they really so little know the man who had dared to become " an honest nullifier"? On March 1, 1845, the joint resolution was approved by the President. On Calhoun's advice " to act without delay," the cabinet were summoned the next day, and con- curred in the opinion of the Secretary of State, who wrote his dispatch, inviting Texas to ao TEXAS. 255 cept the terms of the joint resolution, the same night, and sent it off " late in the evening of March 3," a few hours before the expiration of Tyler's term of office. His reasons for acting thus he has repeatedly stated with a candor which proves that he would have been equal to a much greater " audacity," if it had been nec- essary to secure his object. In the dispatch to Mr. Donelson he wrote, kt But the decisive ob- jection to the amendment of the Senate is that it would endanger the ultimate success of the measure. ... A treaty . . . must be submitted to the Senate for its approval, and run the haz- ard of receiving the votes of two thirds of the members present ; which could hardly be ex- pected, if we are to judge from recent experi- ence." And on February 24, 1847, he declared in the Senate, " I selected the resolution of the House in preference to the amendment of which the senator from Missouri was the author, . . . because 1 clearly saw, not only that it was everj way preferable, but the only certain mode liy which annexation could be effected. . . . That the course I adopted did secure the annex- ation, and that it was indispensable for that pur- pose, I have high authority in my possession." Thus it was that ne triumphed over all ob- itacles, and succeeded in virtually accomplish- ng the purpose for which he had consented to 256 JOHN C. CALHOUN. become a member of Tyler's cabinet. What right had he to complain that the work was continued by his successors in the spirit in which it had been begun by him ? Why should Folk's diplomatic conscience be more conform- able to the code of private morals than hia own ? In order to get Texas, he, the sternest and most jealous partisan of strict construction, had loosened the bridle of the Constitution more than any of his predecessors had ever dared to do. What right had he to cry out and wash his hands of all responsibility, when his disci- ples refused to listen to his warning voice, and rushed on in mad zeal along the track upon which he had started them? He had hit the mark, but the ball pierced the target and con- tinued its fatal flight. Calhoun's friends expected that he would be called upon to finish the great work which he had directed with so much skill and energy, and it is asserted that he shared their opin- ion. We cannot prove the contrary, but are in- clined to think that he judged Polk more cor- rectly. If he really expected to remain at the head of the cabinet, the wish was father to the thought. Polk certainly never intended to tender him the office. Now, after the annexa- tion of Texas was as good as accomplished, th whole party would probably have been rathei TEXAS. 257 dissatisfied to see the first place awarded to the leader of the small faction on its extreme left wing, which was so easily tempted to break through the bonds of party discipline and as- sume an independent position. Especially Jack- Bon would have been deeply mortified, and Polk, who would never have reached the top of the ladder if he had not clung so faithfully to the heels of the general, was not inclined to ar- ray Jackson's still enormous influence against the administration. Besides, it was asserted that the offended politicians of New York had exacted the promise that, in consideration of their supporting the nominees of the Baltimore Convention, Calhoun should be discarded. But, above all, Polk was personally not at all desir- ous to put a political star of this magnitude and brilliancy in too close proximity with the rush- light of his own talents and achievements. Cal- houn's character and whole political course ab- solutely forbade his honest subordination under another man's mind and will, and Polk was too ambitious and self-conscious to be a mere figure- head where it was his right and even his duty to be the real chief. On the other hand, he was well aware that openly to slight the Cal- hounites in the person of their leader would be the extreme of folly. He therefore offered him the first diplomatic office, the legation at the 17 268 JOHN C. CALHOUN. Court of St. James, undoubtedly fully satisfied that the honor would be politely declined. Many years before, at the end of 1819, when Mr. Gallatin had expressed the wish to be re- called from Paris, Adams had asked Calhoun whether he would accept the post. Calhoun had then answered "that he was well aware that a long and familiar practical acquaintance with Europe was indispensable to complete the edu- cation of an American statesman, and regretted that his fortune would not bear the cost of it. Calhoun devoted much time to the manage- ment of his estate, and he had the reputation of being an uncommonly experienced and effi- cient planter; but his pecuniary circumstances remained modest, though he lived with his nu- merous family in unostentatious but solid com- fort, and could indulge in the true luxury of always bidding a hearty welcome to the throngs of friends who came to enjoy the hospitality of his table and the pleasure of his genial com- pany. It is, therefore, very possible that he would have declined, under all circumstances, Folk's offer, for the same reason which had die hrted his answer to the overtures of Adams. But it is unquestionable that he would have taken the same course for political reasons, if he had been thu wealthiest man on the continent. Polk knew perfectly well that he paid Calhoun an TEXAS. 259 ampty compliment, for it was certain tlwt his going to London in such critical times would be considered by himself and by his political friends a kind of desertion. It was too late in the day to go to Europe in order to finish his education as a statesman. If he now accepted a diplomatic post, it could only be for one of two reasons : either because he wanted to grat- ify his ambition and vanity, or because he thought that he could render his country im- portant services. This kind of ambition, how- ever, though its fire had not entirely ceased to burn in his bosom, was no longer strong enough to determine his resolution in a question of such moment ; and though it might soon be- come of great consequence who was the repre- sentative of the United States in London, yet he could evidently do much more to avert any dangers which might possibly arise if he should stay in his old place in the Senate, where he was not obliged to follow the instructions of other people, but was entirely free to be guided by his own opinion. His character and the peculiar part which he had played these last fifteen years in the history of the Union abso- lutely forbade his being an instrument in other men's hands ; either he had to direct the policy of the Union, so far as that could be done by the Executive, or he had to remain the inde- 260 JOHN C. CALHOUN, pendent senator, the foremost champion of the slavocracy and the leader of the ultra states- rights faction. The former he could not do, and weighty reasons demanded that he should once more return to the post which he had oc- cupied so long with so much distinction. Un- hesitatingly he had thrown his influence intr the scales for Polk, because he had only to choose between him and Clay ; but the late Gov- ernor of Tennessee and Speaker of the House of Representatives would not have been his own first choice, and he was far from being satisfied that either the foreign or domestic policy of the new President would entirely accord with his own views. The wild denunciations in which the radicals of South Carolina had indulged during the campaign had been disapproved by him, but he thought it wise not only to wait, but also to watch. He therefore readily re- turned to his seat in the Senate, which was vacated by his successor as a matter of course. Hij position in his State was such that he might consider the seat as belonging to him of right, BO long as he was willing to remain in public life CHAPTER IX. OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAB. WHEN Calhoun was invited to become the head of Tyler's cabinet, the " Richmond En- quirer " said, " We cannot entertain a mo- ment's doubt that he has been selected with a special regard to the question of Oregon and the annexation of Texas." The order of the two matters ought to have been reversed, but it was correct that, next to Texas, Oregon was the most important subject in the order of the day, and that it required a master's hand to bring the negotiations with England to a mutually satisfactory termination. Yet it is very un- likely that Calhoun himself harbored the delu- sion that he would add a new laurel leaf to hia wreath by accomplishing that task. Everything that could be said in support of the claims of the United States he counted up with his cus- tomary ability, but he had no new fact and no new argument to add to what had been repeated already a dozen times. He, therefore, made no more impression uprn Pakenham than Paken- uaiu made upon him by reiterating for the 262 JOHN C. CALHOUN. tenth time what England had to say in sup- port of her claims. In this way it was evidently impossible to advance a single inch on either side. The two powers could go on telling their respective stories to the end of days, and the only result of it would be the heaping of proof upon proof that nothing could be thus at- tained. The journals of the discoverers and the legal arguments were certainly of some weight, and an impartial examination of them undoubtedly leads to the conclusion that of the two incomplete and con testable titles that of the United States was the better. But no log- books and no principles of public and interna- tional law, as laid down by Hugo Grotius, could avail anything against the simple fact that by a solemn and repeatedly renewed agreement, the Territory was held in joint occupancy by the two powers, and that the possession of it was deemed by both an interest of such mo- ment that neither would ever voluntarily yield .he whole ground to the other. As neither wished to continue the status quo, and still less to cut the knot with the sword, a compromise was the only way to settle the controversy. Great Britain therefore proposed to submit it to an arbitrator ; but on January 21, 1845, Cal- houn, in the name of the President, declined this offer, upon the ground that " it would bt OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR. 268 ttnadvisable to entertain a proposal to resort to any other mode, so long as there is hope of ar- riving at a satisfactory settlement by negotia- tion." There the matter was allowed to rest for the time. Tyler and Calhoun left it to their suc- cessors exactly as they had found it. Yet it ia to be supposed that Calhoun was tolerably well satisfied, and thought that he had done the best thing possible, under the circumstances, for the interest of the United States. In the beginning of 1843 a bill for the occupation and settle- ment of the Oregon Territory had been before Congress. Calhoun opposed its passage, be- cause he thought that the United States had no right, under the convention of 1818-27, to offer land bounties to settlers. With many others, he apprehended that this might lead to a breach with England, and he deprecated it as the great- est folly on the part of the United States to do anything tending to provoke a decision by ar- bitrament of arms. In six weeks England could bring a strong naval and military force from China to the mouth of the Columbia River, vhile the American fleet, which would have to double Cape Horn, would need about six months to reach that point; and the overland march from Missouri would require at least one hun- dred and twenty days, if indeed it were possible 264 JOHN C. CALHOUN. to sustain any considerable force in a region so destitute of supplies. The United States would, therefore, surely be worsted in a conflict of arms for the dominion over that distant coun- try. On the other hand, the almost miraculous growth of the population of the United States and the impetus with which it was " rolling to- wards the shores of the Pacific" rendered it an absolute certainty that, in a comparatively short time, the United States would be as much stronger in Oregon than England as England was now stronger than they. Therefore Cal- houn'a advice was, " Let us be wise and abide our time ; it will accomplish all that we desire with more certainty and with infinitely less sac- rifice than we can without it." "All we want, to effect our object in this case, is * a wise and masterly inactivity.' " Calhoun had now acted in strict conformity to this programme, and, as a settlement of the con- troversy according to the wishes of the United States was as yet impossible, it is to be pre- sumed that he was not exactly dissatisfied that the negotiation had had no result except to add another bundle of useless papers to the archives of the State Department. President Folk's inaugural address made a sharp cut through this policy of " wise and masterly inactivity " by declaring the title ol OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 265 the United States to the Territory " clear and un- questionable." The whole country was thrown into wild excitement by this declaration, for if Congress took the same view of the question the breach with England seemed almost in- evitable. That the President, in spite of his "blustering announcement," as Lord John Rus- sell called that declaration, addressed a com- promise proposition to England was a surprise ; but the chances of an amicable settlement were not thereby increased, for in one of the earlier negotiations the United States had been will- ing to yield more than what was now offered by Polk. Since England had then rejected the greater concession as insufficient, it was a matter of course that she would not now accept the smaller offer. Besides, Polk had accom- panied it with the declaration that "he would not have consented to yield any portion of the Oregon Territory had he not found himself embarrassed, if not committed, by the acts of his predecessors." He therefore withdrew his offer after it had been rejected by England, and his annual message declared " that no compromise which the United States ought to accept can be effected." At the same time he advised the abrogation of the contention of 1818-27. The consequence was that, as Calhoun afterwards lilted , " stock? of every description fell, marine 266 JOHN C. CALHOUN. insurances rose, commercial pursuits were sus- pended, and our vessels remained inactive at the wharves." General Cass, after previous consul- tation with the President and Secretary of State, poured oil into the flames by a violent speech (December 15, 1845), which culminated in the assertion that " war is almost upon us." Several senators expressed in strong terms their dis- satisfaction with the course which the influen- tial senator from Michigan had seen fit to pur- sue. It seemed, however, as if the majority of both Houses of Congress would only too will- ingly follow the lead of the administration. On December 18, Senator Allen, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, moved a joint resolution, advising the President " to give, forthwith, notice to Great Britain that the government of the United States . . . will terminate the convention existing relative to the joint occupancy of the Oregon Territory." And on January 5, 1846, the Committee on Foreign Relations of the House moved a reso- lution, peremptorily demanding "that the Pres- ident of the United States forthwith cause no- iice to be given to the government of Great Britain," etc. The right to give notice at any time they pleased, had been expressly stipulated by the bigh contracting powers in the convention of OREG'jN AND THE MEXICAN WAR. 267 1827. The adoption of those resolutions, there- fore, ^YOuld not have given Great Britain any just cause of complaint. The spirit, however, which actuated the hotspurs made the wordi almost equivalent to a declaration of war. The notice that the United States wanted the joint occupancy to terminate, was understood to be a notification that Great Britain must abandon her claims at once and absolutely, or take the consequences. " Fifty-four forty or fight " was the plain language of the radicals. A set of resolutions, introduced by Senator Hannegan, boldly denied even the power of the govern- ment to settle the controversy by any compro- mise or to concede one foot of the Territory to England. Calhoun, on December 80, 1845, in- troduced a set of counter-resolutions, asserting the power of the government which Hannegan denied ; stating the fact that, however clear the title of the United States to the whole Territory might be in their opinion, there were conflict- ing claims to. the possession of the same be- tween them and Great Britain ; and declaring that the President, in proposing the forty-ninth degree as a compromise boundary, did not " abandon the honor, the character, or the best interests of the American people." These counter-resolutions rolled a heavy load f rom the breasts of all those in whose opinion 268 JOHN C. CALHOUN. it was a criminal folly to treat this question in a manner which, if it was not intended to pro- voke a war, actually pressed the British lion to the alternative of crouching like a whipped Bpaniel, or of using his powerful claws. It was generally believed that it depended upon Cal- houn whether passion and ambition or cool statesmanship should rule the day, and though the resolutions were clad in a strictly negative form they left no doubt which side could count upon his determined support. To-day, probably, nobody will contest that this is one of his best claims upon the gratitude of his country, and yet it cannot be denied that there was a good deal of solid matter in the avalanche of bitter complaints and stinging re- proaches which the Northwestern radicals hurled against him and all the Democrats of the South. Calhoun had carefully abstained from laying down any positive programme in his resolu- tions, because his programme was now, as it had been in 1843, to have none, the policy of " wise and masterly inactivity." And the reasons which he had then adduced for this course were now as good as they had been at that time. He was probably right in suppos- ing that a war would result in the loss of " every inch " of the Territory ; nor could any body question that time was the ally of tbt OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR. 2B9 United States, and was working in their favor with a force which Great Britain would ulti- mately be unable to resist. But this being so, why did he not pursue his reasoning to the last consequences ? According to his argument, the United States were sure to get the whole Terri- tory, if they would but have patience and bide their time ; yet he did not contend for the con- tinuation of the joint occupancy so long as England could be prevailed upon not to give notice. He still asserted that, in his opinion, the title of the United States to the whole Ter- ritory was good, and that he wished to secure the possession of the whole to them ; but the whole tenor of his resolutions, and especially the last one, which declared that the offer of the forty-ninth degree was not an abandon- ment of their " best interests," clearly indicated that a fair compromise would meet with his approval. That was the wisest and therefore a truly patriotic policy, but would he have advocated it if Oregon had been situated south of Ma- son and Dixon's line? The history of the an- nexation of Texas answers this question in an unmistakable manner. Only party passion could doubt that the patriotism of the South was strong enough to defend with energy the rights of the Union, whenever these rights were 270 JOHN C. C ALSO UN. really " clear and unquestionable." But it is equally certain that Calhoun and the other rep- resentatives of the South were not at all anxious to assume any burdens and submit to any sac- rifices in the defence of questionable rights, if the North was to have the benefit of them. As in the opinion of Giddings, the indomitable enemy of slavery, the necessity to restore the equilibrium between the two sections, ur grievances in an address to the other States, and x> admonish them, in a solemn manner, as to the con OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR. 327 lequences which must follow, if they should not be redressed, and to take measures preparatory to it, in case they should not be. The call should be ad- dressed to all those who are desirous to save the Union and our institutions, and who, in the alterna- tive, should it be forced on us, of submission or dis- solving the partnership, would prefer the latter. " No State could better take the lead in this con- servative movement than yours. It is destined to be the greatest of sufferers if the abolitionists should succeed ; and I am not certain but by the time your convention meets, or at farthest your Legislature, that the time will have come to make the call." It is the old programme; only the way of executing it is somewhat changed, and changed exactly in the manner which he had repeatedly pointed out in his speeches and addresses. It was another attempt to save the Union, but, at the same time, another step forward towards its final dissolution, if the North should persist in rejecting the conditions of the South. Cal- hotm's last great speech in the Senate proves that he had not intended the Nashville Con- vention to present an ultimatum to the North, though, for greater effect, lie had perhaps wished to see its propositions clad in the most peremptory language. Whether or not he would have liked to come at once to " an end with ter- roi " rather than to endure still longer "the 828 JOHN C. CALHOUN terror without end," he knew that the South was not yet ready to act. Therefore he did not expect from the Nashville Convention what the faint-hearted and weak-kneed peace fanatics of the North apprehended from it, and it was very far from fulfilling even what he expected. H did not live to drink this new cup of bitter- ness, but he lived long enough not to derive any consolation from the vain hope that this last attempt to save the Union by rendering slavery absolutely safe in the Union would be successful. His eyes were too keen not to see the fast-accumulating indications that another disappointment more bitter than all the dis- appointments he had experienced heretofore was in store for him. His weary limbs longed to stretch out and rest, but he knew only too well that so long as his mortal eyes saw the light of the sun there was no rest for him. By their very keenness, these eyes became his worst tormentors. How often had he told the country that, by everything dear to man and making life worth living, the South would be compelled to sever its connection with the North, if its equal rights in the Territories were not recognized ! But he had never ventured to assert that, if this were done, the peace of the country could nevei again be disturbed by the slavery question, be* OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR. 329 slavery would thereby be absolutely se- cured against all attacks. His arguments were always presented in such an ingenious form that to the blunt logic of many of his hearers this would appear to be the self-evident conclu- sion ; but though he certainly deceived himself to some extent in this respect, he had never di- rectly and expressly asserted the fact. On the contrary, all his speeches were replete with irre- futable arguments, proving that the slavery question could not be decreed out of existence, because the moral, economical, and political an- tagonism between slavery and freedom was a fact, and would assert itself as a fact in all eter- nity. The people, therefore, neither would nor could acquiesce in it, if Congress should attempt to ignore it, or even forbid noticing it. No mat- ter how high the "peculiar institution" was placed on " the rock of the Constitution," the waves of the sea of facts unceasingly beat against it, and gradually washed it away. In his great speech on the Oregon question (March 16, 1846), Calhoun had said : " But I oppose war, not simply on the patriotic ground of a citizen looking to the freedom and pros- oerity of his own country, but on still broader grounds, as a friend of improvement, civilization, and progress. Viewed in reference to them, at no period has it evei oeen so desirable to preserve tde general peace which 530 JOHN C. CALHOUN. now blesses the world. Never in its history has period occurred sa remarkable as that which has elapsed since the termination of the great war in Eu- rope with the battle of Waterloo, for the great ad- vances made in all these particulars. Chemical and mechanical discoveries and inventions have multiplied beyond all former example, adding, with their ad- vance, to the comforts of life in a degree far greater and more universal than all that was ever known be- fore. Civilization has, during the same period, spread its influence far and wide, and the general progress in knowledge, and its diffusion through all ranks of soci- ety, has outstripped all that has ever gone before it. The two great agents of the physical world have be- come subject to the will of man, and have been made subservient to his wants and enjoyments ; I allude to steam and electricity, under whatever name the latter may be called. The former has overcome distance both on land and water, to an extent which former generations had not the least conception was possible. It has, in effect, reduced the Atlantic to half its for- mer width, while, at the same time, it has added three- fold to the rapidity of intercourse by land. Within the same period, electricity, the greatest and most dif- fuse of all known physical agents, has been made the instrument for the transmission of thought, I will not say with the rapidity of lightning, but by lightning itself. Magic wires are stretching themselves in all di- rections over the earth, and when their mystic meshei ihall have been united and perfected our globe it- telf will become endowed with sensitiveness, so tha* OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAS. 331 whatever touches on any one point will be instantly felt on every other. All these improvements, all this increasing civilization, all the progress now making, would be in a great measure arrested by a war be- tween us and Great Britain. As great as it is, it is but the commencement, the dawn of a new civiliza- tion, more refined, more elevated, more intellectual, more moral, than the present and all preceding it. Shall it be we who shall incur the high responsibility of retarding its advance ? " Could he altogether refuse to see how much the advance of this new civilization was re- tarded by the " peculiar institution " ? The most exaggerated eulogies on its conservative virtues could not banish from his sight the glaring contrasts between the two sections; the most positive assertion that these were wholly due to the unjust and unconstitutional economical policy of the federal government could not conceal the fact that, no matter what this policy was with regard to tariffs and inter- nal improvements, these contrasts became more glaring every year. No ingenuity, displayed in the attempt to prove that the North would lose infinitely more by a disruption of the Union than the South, could disprove the fact that these contrasts indicated the increasing weak- ness of the South, not only morally and polit- 'cally, as he had himself avowed, but in every 332 JOHN C. CALHOUN respect ; no prophecy that, after the breaking up of the Union, the economical development of the unfettered South would be unparalleled, could cover up the fact that whatever touched any one point of the civilized part of the globe was instantly felt on every other, and that this economical, moral, and mental consolidation of the civilized world rendered the perpetuation of the "peculiar institution" impossible, be- cause slavery, whether in itself good or bad, grew every day more incompatible with all the laws governing the life of this civilized world. Much duller eyes than his had begun long ago to be struck and alarmed by the fast-accumu- lating proofs of this all-important fact, fur- nished by the under-currents in the slave- hold- ing States themselves. The non-slave-holders had begun to doubt the heretofore unques- tioned identity of their interests with those of the slave-holders. In the border States the old creed was revived that slavery was a " mil- dew " and a " curse " ; in some of them an earnest agitation for its gradual extinction was entered upon. The old cotton States, and among them principally South Carolina, not only bitterly complained of the heavy drafts which the emigration as well to the northwest- ern as to the Mississippi States constantly made upon their wealth and their population, but OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR. 333 they also saw the day approach on which a modified abolitionism would boldly raise its head actually among themselves, if nothing should be done to improve the miserable condi- tion of their poor white people. But all the proposed remedies proved, upon closer exami- nation, to be deadly poisons. The man who had been the zealous advocate of the first great Southern railroad, and who still bitterly ac- cused the federal government of having crip- pled the South economically, now gave it as his opinion that the South would commit sui- cide by introducing factories and stimulating all sorts of industrial pursuits, because the ar- tisan and mechanic aie born enemies of slavery. All this could not shake in the least Calhoun's conviction that slavery was " a good, a positive good." But how could he have seen all this, and failed to perceive that, even if all the Ter- ritories were thrown open to the slave-holders, the " peculiar institution " would be as far as ever from being safely anchored in haven ? The future was still completely hidden from his view, and had forever to remain so ; for, as his theory of slavery had become with him a dogma, he was determined not to see it, and had become incapable of seeing it, unless he lived to see the logma crushed by the accomplished facts. But ae could not help seeing that the entanglement* 334 JOHN C. CALHOUN. of the slavery question grew ever more laby- rinthine, and he could not help feeling that the whole ground was thickly strewn with thorns. Wearily he turned away from the facts, which he neither would nor could understand any more. The 30th Congress had expired, leaving the question of the disposal of the newly acquired Territories where it had found it, and a Whig President had taken possession of the White House. Nine long months the people had to go about their business in this thick and sul- try political atmosphere, ere their law-makers returned once more to the well-nigh hopeless task of solving this problem. Calhoun did not pass this time in idleness. The world of stub- born facts he had been unable to master, but he still thought himself able to prove on paper that he was nevertheless right. In these months, the " Disquisition on Government " and the 44 Discourse on the Constitution and Govern- ment of the United States " were in the main, if not entirely, penned. That he expected to exercise an influence on the decision of the im- pending question by these essays is hardly to be supposed. His idea seems rather to have been to leave an authentic exposition of his political creed as a political testament and solemn warn- ng to posterity. At all events, it is only in tail OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR. 336 Duality that they can claim a place in the his- tory of the United States. Unlike so many of his speeches, they were not political deeds, and did not help to shape the course of events. Be- sides, when they appeared in print, he already rested in his grave, and every day the futility of the attempt to smooth down the wild breakers of realities by pouring on the oil of abstract theories became more apparent. To the stu- dent, these two essays will always remain among the most curious books of the political literature of the United States, and they may be read with great profit, though for the mos^ part not exactly in the spirit intended by the author. The people have passed judgment on them without reading them ; and have repu- diated states-rightism, as Calhoun understood it, that is, state supremacy, as emphatically as they have repudiated the doctrine of the " pos- itive good " of slavery. When the 31st Congress met, December 3, 1849, the slavocracy was smarting under a de- feat, the importance of which could not be overestimated. California, with the informal sanction of the President, but without any au- thorization from Congress, had adopted a state Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary lervitude, and this clause had received the unan- imous vote' of the constitutional convention, 336 JOHN C. CALHOUN. although many of its members were Southern- ers. This was a commentary on the doctrine of the " positive good " of slavery which told more than all the abolition speeches ever made. California was irretrievably lost to the slavoc- racy, for to think that Congress could be com- pelled to force slavery upon her would have been sheer madness. Therefore it had become only the more necessary to struggle with the utmost energy for the rest of the Mexican booty, and for the principle, upon the acknowl- edgment of which those Territories which might be acquired at some future time could depend. The formal irregularities with which the pro- ceedings in California were tainted furnished the South with a position of sufficient tactical strength to continue the struggle, with the hope that, after all, the strenuous exertions would be ultimately rewarded at least by a partial sue. cess. California was not to be admitted into the Union as a State until the North had made satisfactory concessions on all the other controverted points. At last, the slavocracy was apparently unanimous in the determination " to resist the aggressions of the North " to the last extremity. In the House of Representatives. the very same Southern Whigs who had s struction of the Union. By doing more than any other single man towards raising the slavoc- racy to the pinnacle of power, he had actually done more than any other man to hasten the catastrophe and to determine its character, and yet he labored to the last with the intense anx- iety of the true patriot to avert the fearful ca- lamity. But the last efforts of his powerful mind were a most overwhelming refutation of all the doctrines whose foremost champion he had been, ever since the days of nullification. It would have been impossible to pass a more annihilat- ing judgment on them than he himself did in his speech of March 4, 1850, and in the Dis- course on the Constitution. Yet he had been absolutely sincere in everything he had said. On March o, in a short running debate with Mr. i^oote, of Mississippi, he declared, " As things now stand, the Southern States cannot remain in the Union ; " and a few minutes later he asserted, "If I am judged by my acts, I trust I shall be found as firm a friend of the Union as any man within it." Calhoun closed this colloquy with the remark, If any senator chooses to comment upon what 850 JOHN C. CALHOUN. I have said I trust I shall have health to defend my own position." This hope was not to be fulfilled, though he still spoke in the Senate as late as March 13, and in a manner, as Webster stated in his eulogy, " by no means indicating such a degree of physical weakness as did in fact possess him." On the last day of the month, the " magic wires " carried the tidings into every part of the Union that John Caldvvell Calhoun was no more. To the last moment, he mani- fested the deepest interest and concern in the troubles of his country. " The South I The poor South ! God knows what will become of her!" murmured his trembling lips; but he died with that serenity of mind which only a clear conscience can give on the death -bed. On February 12, 1847, he had said in the Sen- ate, " If I know myself, if my head was at stake, I would do my duty, be the consequences what they might." It was his solemn convic- tion that throughout his life he had faithfully done his duty, both to the Union and to his section, because, as he honestly believed slavery to be " a good, a positive good," he had never been able to see that it was impossible to serve at the same time the Union and his section, if his section was considered as identical with the e avocracy. In perfect good faith he had under, taken what no man could accomplish, because OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR. 351 it was a physical and moral impossibility : an- tagonistic principles cannot be united into a basis on which to rest a huge political fabric. Nullification and the government of law ; state supremacy and a constitutional Union, endowed with the power necessary to minister to the wants of a great people ; the nationalization of slavery upon the basis of states-rightism in a federal Union, composed principally of free communities, by which slavery was considered a sin and a curse; equality of States and con- stitutional consolidation of geographical sec- tions, with an artificial preponderance granted to the minority, these were incompatibilities, and no logical ingenuity could reason them to- gether into the formative principle of a gigantic commonwealth. The speculations of the keen- est political logician the United States had ever had ended in the greatest logical monstrosity imaginable, because his reasoning started from a contradictio in adjecto. This he failed to see, because the mad delusion had wholly taken pos- session of his mind that in this age of steam and electricity, of democratic ideas and the rights of man, slavery was "the most solid founda- tion of liberty." More than to any other man, the South owed it to him that she succeeded for such a long time in forcing the most dem- ocratic and the most progressive commonwealth 852 JOHN C. CALHOUN. of the universe to bend its knees and do hom- age to the idol of this " peculiar institution ; " but therefore also the largest share of the re- sponsibility for what at last did come rests on his shoulders. No man can write the last chapter of hia own biography, in which the Facit of his whole life is summed up, so to say, in one word. If ever a new edition of the works of the greatest and purest of proslavery fanatics should be published, it ought to have a short appendix, the emancipation proclamation of Abraham Lincoln. INDEX. ABERDEEN, LORD, dispatches con- cerning annexation of Texas, 232- 237. Adams, J. Q., depreciates Calhonn's administration of War Depart- ment, 43, 44, 52 ; relations with Calhoun 63-56; elected to presi- dency, 62 ; his administration not aided by Calhoun, 64, 65 ; talk with Calhoun about slavery, 75 ; remarks as to Jackson and Cal- houn, 93 ; remarks concerning Calhoun in 1842, 212. BARE OF THE UNITED STATES, bill for incorporation of, 31; Buchanan. James, petitions for abolition of slavery in District of Columbia, 134. SALHOUN, JOHN C., destruction of papers relating to. 5 ; lack of ma- terial for personal history of, 6; birth and childhood, 8; at Yale, 9 ; studies law in Connecticut, 9 ; begins practice of law, 10 ; in state Legislature, 11 ; elected to Congress, 11 ; marries, 11 ; on Committee on Foreign Relations, 15 ; prepares report on President's message in 1811, 15 ; makes his first speech, 16, 18 ; characteristics of his oratory, 17 ; reports in fa- vor of war, 21 ; advocates repeal of Non-Importation Act, 23, 24 ; national character of his views at this time, 26 ; anticipations of fut- ure wars expressed in 1816, 27 ; relations with New England Fed- eralists during war of 1812, 28; and afterward, 60: favors internal improvements, 28-30, 35-37, 39, 40; reports bill to incorporate Bank of the United States, 31-33 ; speech on the "New Tariff Bill," %dvocating rroteotion, 83-35; be- comes Secretary of War in Mon- roe's cabinet.38 ; report on road* and canals, 88-40; organizes the War Department, 41; bat U charged with abuses, 43, 44 : deal- ings with the Indians^ 45-49 ; con- nection with the Rip-Rap Con* tract, 49-52 ; criticised by J. Q. Adams, 43, 44, 52 ; relations with Adams, 58-56 ; rivalry with Craw- ford, 56, 57 ; as candidate for the presidency as successor to Monroe, 56-59 ; disappointed, 60 ; nomi- nated for vice-presidency, 60 ; sup- ported by New England, 60: and elected, 61 ; relationship with the Adams and Jackson factions in 1824-25, 62-64 ; decision denying power of Vice-President to call a senator to order, 64 ; feelings to- wards Adams's administration, 64, 65 ; reelected Vice-President, 65 ; prospects of presidency, 65 ; his friends placed in Jackson's cabi- net, 66 ; views as to tariffs of 1824, 67; admits right of Congress to Prohibit slavery in the Territories, 1 ; talk with Adams about slav- ery and dissolution, 75; changes of view, 75, 76, et seq.; issues South Carolina Exposition, concerning tariff of 1828, 76-84: not a dis- unionist in 1828, 83; distrusts Jackson on the tariff question, 84, 85 ; connection with the Mrs. Eaton imbroglio, 86 ; rivalry and relationship with Van Buren, 87; injured by Crawford, 88 ; takes part against Jackson in cabinet discussions during Seminole war, 89; called to account by Jackson, 91-93 ; abandons hope of succeed- ing Jackson, 94 ; effect of the dis- appointment, 94, 95; continues war against protective tariff, 96: issues " Address to the People oft 854 INDEX. South Carolina," 96; follows It with letter to Governor Hamilton, 08 ; his argument for nullification, 08-108 ; resigns vice-presidency and takes seat in the Senate, 104 ; suspicions as to personal courage, 104, 106; character of nig final action concerning the tariff bill, 106 ; views of the Force Bill, 107 ; declines public demonstrations, 108 ; severs all party connections, 109, 110, 186 ; relations with Bank of the United States, 110-112 ; his position and functions in Congress during Jackson's terms, 112-116; on the removal of the deposits. Ill, 116 ; on the " spoils system " *nd the civil service, 116 et seg., 200-204 ; sustains the veto power, 120 ; becomes the preacher of the doctrine of state sovereignty, 121, 186 ; at first takes little notice of the abolitionists, 123 ; moves, in Senate, not to receive petitions for abolition of slavery in District of Columbia, 124, 165, et seq. f at- tacked by members from the South for this action, 124, 132; argu- ments on his behalf, 126-134 ; ex- tracts from his speech, 129 ; op- poses Jackson's suggestion con- cerning " incendiary " publica- tions in Southern mails, 136-137 ; but brings in a bill of his own, 137-139 ; new theory as to relation of state and federal governments, 189 ; his foresight and opinions concerning slavery, 142-150 ; plans for disposing of surplus national income, 151 ; views concerning railroads in the South, 152-166 ; concerning the public lands, 166 ; concerning the admission of Mich- igan to the Union, 167-165 ; propo- litions for encountering the aboli- tionists, 166-170 et seq., 188 et seq.; proclaims slavery to be " a good a positive good," 172 et seq. ; com- pares the North and the South, 174 et seg. ; during financial diffi- culties of 1837, 182 ; opposes Jack- son's French policy, 183 ; and the Sub-Treasury scheme, 184 ; his true relationship with the Whigs, 184, 186, 187; politically inde- pendent, 185; and the resolutions of December 27, 1837, 190-197 ; in the regular work of Congress, 198 ; his resolutions in the case of the brig Enterprise, 204-209 ; his be havior in the matter 01 tue Cre- ole, 210 ; and commendation of Webster, 210; favors ratifying th Treaty of 1842 with England, 211 ; again ambitious for the presiden cy in 1842, 212 ; his prospects, 214- 216 ; withdraws from the canvass, 217; declares dissolution of the Union an imaginary danger, 219- 221 ; in 1836 declares for admis- sion of Texas to the Union, 222: in 1842 claims to be real author of annexation, 223 ; made Secretary of State by Tyler, 227 ; reasons for accepting this position, 227, 228; resumes negotiations for annexa- tion of Texas, 230; correspond- ence with Pakenham concern- ing annexation, 231-237, 239-241 ; criticised at the South for hxs ac- tion in this matter, 242 ; delays treaty of annexation in Senate, 245 ; proceedings after rejection of treaty for annexation of Texas 246 ; concerning armed interven- tion, 248 ; accomplishes annexa- tion by means of the joint reso- lution, 254, 255; relations with Polk, 266, 257, 260; offered post of minister to England and de- clines it, 257, 253; arguments with Pakenham about the Ore- gon boundary, 261-263; views as to policy of the United States in the Oregon dispute, 263, 264, 269 ; opposes the more violent party, 267, 329: motives of his action, 269-272, 274 ; opposes the belliger- ent steps of the administration towards Mexico, 276 ; demands delay when war is declared to ex- ist, 277 ; speech after the moving of the " Wilmot Proviso," 280 ; his soundness vindicated, 283 ; in re- sponse to accusations he declares himself not responsible for the Mexican war, 2S5 ; denies that he aspires to the presidency, 287, 338 ; advocates policy of a defensive line " in the war, 288, 291 ; de- clares in favor of territorial annex- ation as result of Mexican war, 290; views as to slavery in such annexed territory, 291, 292 ; pre- sents resolutions covering whon matter of slavery in the Territo- ries, 292-307 ; views on the subjec again expressed, 310-313; de- nounces the Missouri Compromise 292, 293, 309; comments on th INDEX. 855 Wilmot I toviso," 802 ; a strong opponent of disunion doctrines, 804,320, 8*21, 849; but once ex- presses fear of disunion, 849 ; con- sents to a compromise concerning Oregon, New Mexico, and Califor- nia, 813 ; in December, 1848, drafts "Address of tbe Southern Dele- gates in Congress to their Constit- uents, 317-320, 321; belief that Calhouu was plotting dissolution of the Union, 820 ; debate with Webster concerning the Constitu- tion and the Territories, 822 ; se- cretly arranges the Nashville Con- vention, 324-827 ; opinions as to the permanent character of the slavery question, 328 ; writes the " Disquisition on Government," and the "Discourse on the Con- stitution and Government of the United States," 834 ; in the debate concerning the admission of Cali- fornia, 83 1, 839-343, 346, 347 ; his views criticised, 344, 346, 846 ; death, 350. California, organization of, as a Ter- ritory, 313-315 ; adopts a state Constitution, 335. Cass, Lewis, on the Oregon boundary dispute, 266. Clay, Ilenry, Speaker of 12th Con- gress, 15. Comet, case of the, 204. Crawford, \Vm. II., rivalry with Cal- houn for presidency, 56, 67 ; in- jures Calhoun in esteem of Jack- son, 88-90, 91. Creole, case of the, 210 KATOS, Mas., the affair of, 85-87. Embargo, recommended by Presi- dent, 20. Jtacouiium. ease of tbe, 204. Enterprise, case of the brig, 204- 209. POOTE, HXNKT 8., and the origin of the Nashville Convention, 324, 326. OARRISON, WM. L., etablishes the " Liberator," 122. Biddings, Joshua, concerning the annexation of Texas and the Mex- ican war, 281. ftilmer, letter of, concerning annex- ation of Texas, 224. Orundy, Felix, on the embargo, 21. VAYNE, GENERAL, elected Governor of South Carolina, vacates seat la Senate, 104. Houston, Samuel, concerning the origin of the Nashville Conven- tion, 324. INDIANS, Calhonn's dealings with. 46H19. JACKSON, ANDREW, defeated by Adams in presidential contest 62 ; elected President, 65 ; puts friends of Calhoun in his cabinet, 66 ; po- sition of, on tariff question of 1828, 84, 85 ; in Mrs. Eaton's affair, 86 ; in the Seminole war, and subse- quent cabinet discussions concern- ing, 88-90 ; discovers Calhoun ' part in these discussions, and be- comes incensed, 90-93 ; threats against Calhoun, 104; really de- feated in the tariff matter, 105, 106 ; suggests law controlling Southern mails, 134 ; policy towards France opposed by Calhoun, 183 ; becomes engaged for annexation of Texas, 224-226 LIBERATOR, The, established, 122. MADISON, JAMES, relation to the war party in 1811-12, 20 ; recommends embargo, 20. Mann, Horace, reports Calhoun to b suspected of plotting dissolution of the Union, 320. Mexico, negotiations with, preceding outbreak of war, 274, 275 ; war de- clared between the United States and, 277. Michigan, question of her admission to the Union, 157-161. Missouri Compromise, denounced bj Calhoun, 293. Mix, Elijah, and the Rip-Rap Con tract, 49. NASHVILLE Convention, origin of the, 824. Nelson, John, connection with Texan negotiations, 230. New Mexico, organisation of, as a Territory, 818, 816. Non-Importation Act, repeal of, 28