John Caldwell Calhoun, 1782-1850. This great statesman, and champion of
southern rights and opinions, was born in Abbeville District, South
Carolina. In the line of both parents, he was of Irish Presbyterian
descent. In youth he was very studious, and made the best use of such
opportunities for education as the frontier settlement afforded. He
graduated at Yale College in 1804, and studied law at Litchfield,
Connecticut. In 1808 he was elected to the Legislature of South Carolina;
and, three years later, he was chosen to the National House of
Representatives. During the six years that he remained in the House, he
took an active and prominent part in the stirring events of the time. In
1817 he was appointed Secretary of War, and held the office seven years.
From 1825 to 1832 he was Vice President of the United States. He then
resigned this office, and took his seat as senator from South Carolina. In
1844 President Tyler called him to his Cabinet as Secretary of State; and,
in 1845, he returned to the Senate, where he remained till his death.
During all his public life Mr. Calhoun was active and outspoken. His
earnestness and logical force commanded the respect of those who differed
most widely from him in opinion. He took the most advanced ground in favor
of "State Rights," and defended slavery as neither morally nor politically
wrong. His foes generally conceded his honesty, and respected his ability;
while his friends regarded him as little less than an oracle.
In private life Mr. Calhoun was highly esteemed and respected. His home
was at "Fort Hill," in the northwestern district of South Carolina; and
here he spent all the time he could spare from his public duties, in the
enjoyments of domestic life and in cultivating his plantation. In his home
he was remarkable for kindness, cheerfulness, and sociability.
###
To comprehend more fully the force and bearing of public opinion, and to
form a just estimate of the changes to which, aided by the press, it will
probably lead, politically and socially, it will be necessary to consider
it in connection with the causes that have given it an influence so great
as to entitle it to be regarded as a new political element. They will,
upon investigation, be found in the many discoveries and inventions made
in the last few centuries.
All these have led to important results. Through the invention of the
mariner's compass, the globe has been circumnavigated and explored; and
all who inhabit it, with but few exceptions, are brought within the sphere
of an all-pervading commerce, which is daily diffusing over its surface
the light and blessings of civilization.
Through that of the art of printing, the fruits of observation and
reflection, of discoveries and inventions, with all the accumulated stores
of previously acquired knowledge, are preserved and widely diffused. The
application of gunpowder to the art of war has forever settled the long
conflict for ascendency between civilization and barbarism, in favor of
the former, and thereby guaranteed that, whatever knowledge is now
accumulated, or may hereafter be added, shall never again be lost.
The numerous discoveries and inventions, chemical and mechanical, and the
application of steam to machinery, have increased many fold the productive
powers of labor and capital, and have thereby greatly increased the number
who may devote themselves to study and improvement, and the amount of
means necessary for commercial exchanges, especially between the more and
the less advanced and civilized portions of the globe, to the great
advantage of both, but particularly of the latter.
The application of steam to the purposes of travel and transportation, by
land and water, has vastly increased the facility, cheapness, and rapidity
of both: diffusing, with them, information and intelligence almost as
quickly and as freely as if borne by the winds; while the electrical wires
outstrip them in velocity, rivaling in rapidity even thought itself.
The joint effect of all this has been a great increase and diffusion of
knowledge; and, with this, an impulse to progress and civilization
heretofore unexampled in the history of the world, accompanied by a mental
energy and activity unprecedented.
To all these causes, public opinion, and its organ, the press, owe their
origin and great influence. Already they have attained a force in the more
civilized portions of the globe sufficient to be felt by all governments,
even the most absolute and despotic. But, as great as they now are, they
have, as yet, attained nothing like their maximum force. It is probable
that not one of the causes which have contributed to their formation and
influence, has yet produced its full effect; while several of the most
powerful have just begun to operate; and many others, probably of equal or
even greater force, yet remain to be brought to light.
When the causes now in operation have produced their full effect, and
inventions and discoveries shall have been exhausted--if that may ever
be--they will give a force to public opinion, and cause changes, political
and social, difficult to be anticipated. What will be their final bearing,
time only can decide with any certainty.
That they will, however, greatly improve the condition of man ultimately,
it would be impious to doubt; it would be to suppose that the all-wise and
beneficent Being, the Creator of all, had so constituted man as that the
employment of the high intellectual faculties with which He has been
pleased to endow him, in order that he might develop the laws that control
the great agents of the material world, and make them subservient to his
use, would prove to him the cause of permanent evil, and not of permanent
good.
NOTE.--This selection is an extract from "A Disquisition on Government."
Mr. Calhoun expected to revise his manuscript before it was printed, but
death interrupted his plans.