CALHOUN
After John Caldwell Calhoun, who was born March 18, 1782, the birth-year
of Webster, had become large enough to go to the field, the most of his
time until he was eighteen was spent in work on the plantation. His father
had never had but six months' schooling. There were no schools in that
region except a few "old field" ones, where the three R's only were
taught. To one of these John went for a few months. The boy learned to
read, and manifestly he had acquired some habit of reading. In his
thirteenth year he was sent to school to his brother-in-law, Moses
Waddell, who was an unusually good teacher. He found a circulating library
in the house. This was his first access to books. He read old Rollin, and
he probably moused about in Robertson's History of America and Life of
Charles V, and Voltaire's Charles XII. Having laid Rollin aside, he
assailed Locke's famous Essay; but when he got to the chapter on Infinity
his health had become bad, doubtless due to his change from active to
sedentary habits and from physical to mental activity. So he was taken
back to his work at home. His father had died in the meanwhile, and his
mother, who had great business talent, taught him, as we are told, "how to
administer the affairs of a plantation."[41] It will appear in the sequel
that he was superbly trained.[42] When he attained the age of eighteen the
family had become convinced that he ought to be got ready for a
profession. John, knowing himself to be the mainstay of his mother, and
having resolved to be a planter, at first would not hear to this. But the
family persisted. This doubtless influenced him to turn the subject
carefully over in his mind; and the decision which he made showed an
understanding of his own peculiar talents and needs, and also a prescience
of his future which, when his youth, small opportunity of observation, and
want of schooling are remembered, are very wonderful. He gave this family,
who were not well-to-do, to understand he would not accept a limited and
makeshift education. Naturally they asked what sort did he mean, and he
answered, "The best school, college, and legal education to be had in the
United States."[43] Then they asked, How long did he think all this would
take, and he promptly answered seven years. To the average reader it seems
that the time necessary to carry this unschooled lad through the course he
proposed had been egregiously underestimated by him; but to the family, as
they thought of the appertaining annual expenses, it must have looked very
long. They had to give in. That irrefragable influence over his people
which showed itself as soon as he came upon the public stage begins here.
Some one long afterwards said of him, that if he could but talk with every
man he would always have the whole United States on his side. It is more
than probable that in the five years after he had left Waddell's school he
had, in plantation management and other interests of the family,
convinced them that he always acted or advised wisely. Another comment is
in place here. Study of the record of his early life convinces you that
very soon after, if not before, the commencement of his legal studies, he
decided to make law only a stepping-stone by which to enter public life
and also acquire the means to plant. I cannot help inferring that this
was--somewhat vaguely it may be--his intention already formed when he
dictated terms to the family as just told. It is not at all impossible
that to him who afterwards astonished the world by the sureness of his
prophecy there had even then been revealed the career awaiting; and so he
resolved to get ready for college in two years, and pass the rest of the
seven where, besides competent instructors, he would have cultivated
society, libraries, and the best of opportunities to qualify himself for
public life. Be our conjecture true or not, in two years after he had
opened his Latin grammar he entered the junior class at Yale, and two
years later he graduated with credit. After reading law in an office he
took a year's course at the Litchfield law school in Connecticut, and then
he went into an office again for a while. Some time in June, 1807, he hung
out his shingle at Abbeville Court-house, as it was called up to the time
of reconstruction. A few days afterwards in that month occurred the attack
on the Chesapeake, and when the news came it caused a public meeting in
the town. Some good report of him must have been bruited about in the
community in advance of his coming. It is almost certain that his
education had greatly developed those powers of conversation mentioned
above, and that many listeners had greatly approved his views of the
outrage, and the patriotic indignation he uttered over it. It is not
stretching probability too far to assert that, young as he was, he was by
far the ablest man that could be found in the locality to advise upon the
burning question which had arisen so suddenly. He was selected to draft
appropriate resolutions and present them. There is no record of these or
of his speech. But as we know that the resolutions carried, and that
tradition still reports admiringly of the speech, we may be sure that his
performance in both was extraordinarily good. Although there had been a
strong popular prejudice in the county--or district, as it was then
called--against lawyer representatives, October 13, 1807, less than four
months after the meeting just described, he was elected to the legislature
at the head of the ticket.
In that day presidential electors were appointed by the State
legislatures. Shortly after the session of this legislature to which
Calhoun had been elected opened, there was an informal meeting of the
republican members to make nominations for president and vice-president.
The first was unanimously given to Madison. When the other was up, Calhoun
declared his conviction that there was soon to be war with England. At
such a time there should be no dissension in the party. He gave strong
reasons why George Clinton should not be nominated, as had been proposed;
and he suggested John Langdon of New Hampshire as the proper man. The
thorough acquaintance with the grave situation which he manifested, the
due respect he showed Clinton while opposing his nomination, and the
ability with which he discussed the question, advanced him at once to a
place among the most distinguished members of the legislature.
"Several important measures were originated by Mr. Calhoun while in the
legislature which have become a permanent portion of the legislation of
the State, and he soon acquired an extensive practice at the bar."[44] He
kept in the very midst of the political swim. His reputation as an honest,
true, and able adviser had become so great and influential that the
people, in their warm approval of the strong measures he advocated as
preparation for the threatened war, pushed him out as their candidate for
congress and elected him most triumphantly in October, 1810. The first
session of this, the twelfth congress, commenced November 4, 1811. Clay,
then speaker of the house, evidently expecting much of him, gave him the
second place in the committee on foreign relations. There came before the
house a measure contemplating an increase of the army in view of the war
which appeared to many to be nearer than ever. John Randolph was against
it. In March, 1799, a year before Calhoun started to school, Randolph,
then not twenty-six years old, had fearlessly met the great Patrick Henry
in stump discussion, and had, in the opinion of his auditors, got the
better of it. He was elected to congress in this year. Steadily since then
he had developed, until he was now one of the most prominent figures upon
the national stage. While his powers of discussion of a subject were
great, the power that especially characterized him was that of nonplussing
his antagonist with a snub or a sarcasm. Randolph made an earnest speech.
Calhoun replied. It is not enough to say of this speech that it evinces
full mastery of the subject. It presents every important view most
effectively, satisfactorily answering everything which had been said on
the other side. And it is especially happy in the wise use made at each
proper place of the commands of morality and patriotism.
Mr. Pinkney has instructively and entertainingly illustrated this speech
by his excerpts.[45] To them I here add another, which I would have you
consider,--Randolph had strenuously insisted that the cause of this war,
said by the other side to be impending, should first be defined; and until
this plain duty was done there should be no preparation. To this Calhoun
said:
"The single instance alluded to, the endeavor of Mr. Fox to compel Mr.
Pitt to define the object of the war against France, will not support
the gentleman from Virginia in his position. That was an extraordinary
war for an extraordinary purpose. It was not for conquest, or for
redress of injury, but to impose a government on France which she
refused to receive--an object so detestable that an avowal dared not
be made."
This is a thrust which Randolph especially could appreciate.
The more I examine this first speech of a very young member of congress
upon a question of such transcendent importance to the people of the
United States, the more sound, able, complete,--to sum up in one
word,--the more statesmanly it appears. I am confident that whoever will
weigh it carefully will agree with me. He will not be surprised to learn
that it carried the house decisively. Even in Randolph's own State it drew
great praise. But its fame went abroad everywhere, and it was revealed to
America that she had found among her public men another giant.
In the year 1800 Calhoun was a lad of eighteen, without even a complete
common school education. Represent to yourself clearly what he had
accomplished in the interval from the year last mentioned to December 12,
1811, when, not yet thirty, he made the speech we have just considered. If
any public man of America, burdened with such disadvantages, has
surpassed, or even equalled, this meteoric stride, I do not now recall
him. I am not emphasizing especially that he got to congress in such a
short while. What I do especially emphasize is that he so early won place
as an eminent statesman. In these eleven years he lost no time at all in
idleness, or probation, or waiting.
January 8, 1811, some three months after his election to congress, he
married his cousin, Floride Calhoun--not a first cousin, but a daughter of
a first cousin. His letters of courtship, not to her, but, in the old
style, to her mother; his only letter to her, written shortly before the
marriage; and other letters from and to him afterwards, all of which you
can read in the Correspondence,--show him to be such a lover, father,
brother, son-in-law, brother-in-law, grandfather, etc., as everybody
wants. Some South Carolinian, adequately gifted, ought to tell befittingly
the tale of Calhoun's beautiful domestic life.
I must now mention some other facts which will further enlighten you as to
the man.
I was fourteen when Calhoun died. For four or five years before, and
afterwards until I went to the brothers' war, I heard much of Calhoun from
relatives in Abbeville county and the Court House. I still recall most
vividly what a paternal uncle habitually said of the brightness and
unexampled impressiveness of Calhoun's eyes, and the charm and
instructiveness of his conversation. In Georgia there was not a public man
whose course in politics commended itself to all of my acquaintances. I
had become accustomed to hearing much disparagement of Toombs and of
Stephens, with whom I was most familiar. But my South Carolina relatives,
and every man or woman of that State whose talk I listened to; every boy
or girl with whom I talked myself, yea, all of the negroes,--always warmly
maintained the rightfulness of Calhoun's politics, national or State. I
thought it a good hit when a Georgia aunt of mine dubbed the Palmetto
State "The Kingdom of Calhoun," and Abbeville Court House "its capital."
This universal political worship was a great surprise to me. But there was
a still greater one to come. That was, that according to all accounts, and
without any contradiction, in spite of his living away from home the most
of his time, he yet gave his planting interests and all else appertaining
the very best management, and with such unvarying financial success it
would be unkind to compare Webster's money-wasting and amateur farming at
Marshfield. In this community, where he seemed to be known as well as he
was before he removed to Fort Hill, some sixty miles distant, in 1825, he
had become a far greater authority in business than he had even attained
in politics. His acquaintances all sought his advice, which they followed
when they got it; thus making this busiest of public servants their
agricultural oracle.
The reader will find in Starke's memoir and the Correspondence ample
proofs of that diligent attention of Calhoun to his home affairs which
made him the exceptionally successful planter that he was. Starke happily
calls him "the great farmer-statesman of our country."[46]
Now let us see where he made his mark as an able business man in another
place. He was Monroe's secretary of war from 1817 to 1825. When he entered
the office he found something like $50,000,000 of unsettled accounts
outstanding, and jumble in every branch of the service. He soon brought
down the accounts to a few millions. And he reduced the annual expenditure
of four to two and a half millions, "without subtracting a single comfort
from either officer or soldier," as he says with becoming pride. He
established it, that the head of every subordinate department be
responsible for its disbursements. His economy was not parsimonious. He
was especially popular at West Point, for which he did great things, and
with the officers and men of the army.
And if one chose to look through the belonging parts of the Correspondence
and the other accessible pertinent records, he will find ample proofs that
he was ever alert to all the duties of his office, performing each one,
whether important or trivial, with the height of skill and diligence.
Consider, as to his career in the war department, this language of one of
the most inveterate of his disparagers:
"Many of his friends and admirers had with regret seen him abandon his
seat in the legislative hall for a place in the president's council.
They apprehended that he would, to a great extent, lose the renown
which he had gained as a member of congress, for they thought that the
didactic 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 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 his
successors, and proved itself capable of standing even the test of the
civil war."[47]
Now let us glance at his magnificent success in winning for the United
States the vast territory of Texas and Oregon. The latter had long been in
dispute between us and England. Ever since 1818 it had been jointly
occupied under agreement. We wanted all of it; and of course as our
settlements in the west approached nearer and nearer, our desire for it
mounted. And England wanted all of it too. Soon after Texas achieved her
independence she applied for admission into our union, but as the settlers
had carried slavery with them free-soil opposition kept her out. Texas got
in debt, and the only thing for her to do was to tie to some great power
willing to receive her. England, seeing her opportunity, was trying to
propitiate Mexico in order, with the favor of the latter, to get Texas for
herself. Of course the south wanted Texas to come in, but the free-soilers
did not. And the north wanted Oregon; and although its soil and climate
did not admit of slavery, the south was against its acquisition unless the
concession be made that it be permitted to slavery to occupy all the
suitable soil of the Territories. As early as 1843 Calhoun, with his
piercing vision, saw the situation clearly. If the dispute as to Oregon
provoked war, England could throw troops thither from China by a much
shorter route than ours, the latter going as it did from the States on the
Atlantic coast around Cape Horn. That would be bad enough for us. But
suppose England gets Texas. A hostile power, with a vast empire of land,
will spring up under the very nose of the States, where our adversary will
acquire a base of operations in the highest degree unfavorable to us. Then
England will rise in her demands as to Oregon, and perhaps win all of it
from us. In an affair of inter-dependent contingencies it is of the first
importance to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing first. Texas
was ripe, Oregon was not. Calhoun saw the first thing to do was to annex
Texas. For when England cannot secure that base of operations in Texas she
will shrink from making Oregon a cause of war, and while she is
hesitating, Oregon--which is near to us and far from her--is steadily
filling with population in which settlers from the United States more and
more preponderate; and at the same time the populous States are fast
approaching. After a while the inhabitants will all practically be on our
side, and they will have hosts of allies to the eastward in supporting
distance, which would give us an invincible advantage in case war for
Oregon does come. This is what Calhoun styled "masterly inactivity" on our
part, and which, had it been fully carried out as he advised, Oregon would
now extend much further north than it does. To sum up in a line, he saw
that activity as to Texas and inactivity as to Oregon was each masterly.
But the hotheads of the south and the fanatical wing of the anti-slavery
men at the north rose up, obstructing his way like mountains. At the same
time there was lack of vision in even the leaders of each section who
could rise to patriotism above prejudice. Polk blundered in not continuing
Calhoun as secretary of State, in which place he had made so good a
beginning that it soon accomplished the annexation of Texas. In his
inaugural Polk asserted that our title to Oregon was good, and to be
maintained by arms if need be; and he went further away from "masterly
inactivity" in his first annual message. He evoked great popular
excitement, and "Fifty-four forty or fight!" and "All of Oregon or none!"
came forth in passionate ejaculations in every corner of the land. Calhoun
had been called from retirement to take Texas and Oregon in hand, and when
Polk made a new secretary he went back into the retirement for which he
greatly longed. The record shows that the best men of all parties, north
and south, felt that as Tyler's secretary he was the man of all to manage
the two matters so vitally important to the United States, and they deeply
regretted that the place was not continued to him by Polk. And now
instead of the happy settlement they had been sure the master would
effect, the country was face to face with a war that portended direful
disaster to each section. The eyes of patriots turned to Calhoun again;
and as he cannot be secretary, he must be in the senate. And a way being
made, he was seated in due time. It needs not to go into much detail. The
situation had changed greatly. The especial thing to do now was to avoid
war. And as a resolution to terminate the joint occupation had been passed
by congress, and as the ire of Great Britain had been greatly aroused,
there must at once be a settlement of the Oregon controversy. And so the
controversy was compromised and averted, this good result being mainly due
to the efforts of Calhoun. Even Von Holst calls his speech of March 16,
1846, great. It will live forever. It is paying it gross disrespect to
treat it as mere oratory, even if one concede to it the highest eloquence.
It voices the ripest wisdom of the ablest practical statesman dealing with
a most momentous public affair, in a crisis delicate and perilous in the
extreme. The vindication of the true course of action is majestic. But to
my mind the great achievement of the speech is his sublime philanthropic
deprecation of war between England and America. When the papers told us at
the outbreak of our war with Spain that all the British subjects on the
warships of the latter had thrown up their places, it seemed to me that
nothing else could so fairly omen co-operation of England and America in
the near future to democratize and make happy the world. And I believe
that that inexpressibly sweet token of Anglo-American brotherhood would
have been postponed at least a half-century, if not much longer, had it
not been for that speech.
This speech likewise discomfited pro-slavery and anti-slavery fanatics
alike, and won the hearty approval of the wisest and best of every part of
the country.
Calhoun's self-education merits the closest attention. Railroaded through
school and college, as he was, his tuition was necessarily defective in
some important particulars. In the main he spelled accurately, but the
Correspondence shows that he wrote "sylable," "indisoluably," "weat" for
wet, "merical" for miracle, "sperit," "disappinted," "abeated," etc. It is
doubtless to be regretted that he did not have larger familiarity with
polite literature. Admitting these faults, still we must know he had been
uncommonly studious and thoughtful to win his degree in four years after
his start to school; but his systematic study, careful observation, and
hard thinking really commenced with his entrance of public life, and were
kept up to his very death. Note this pertinent excerpt from Webster's
memorial speech, in which I italicize a passage happily describing his
studies:
"I have not, in public nor private life, known a more assiduous person
in the discharge of his appropriate duties. I have known no man who
wasted less of life in what is called recreation, or employed less of
it in any pursuits not connected with the immediate discharge of his
duty. He seemed to have no recreation but the pleasure of conversation
with his friends. _Out of the chambers of congress, he was either
devoting himself to the acquisition of knowledge pertaining to the
immediate subject of the duty before him_, or else he was indulging in
those social interviews in which he so much delighted."
From his first speech in congress to the end of his life you note that he
has always mastered the pertinent facts, literature, and guiding
principles of whatever he has to do with, whether in speech or action.
This indicates continuous, most industrious, and most wise
self-instruction. I believe it was Mr. Parton who said that Jefferson was
the best educated man of his time. His full equipment from all belonging
learning and science was surpassed only by the versatility with which he
instantly solved all new questions. But Calhoun's was more of a special
training than Jefferson's. Having for some years learned by doing,--doing
after the best study and reflection, consistent with due promptness, that
he could give each thing he had to do,--his capital of knowledge and
developed faculty had become all-sufficient. Stephens, a profound student
of both Jefferson and Calhoun, makes this comparison:
"Amongst the many great men with whom he associated, Mr. Calhoun was
by far the most philosophical statesman of them all. Indeed, with the
exception of Mr. Jefferson, it may be questioned if in this respect
the United States has ever produced his superior."[48]
Government--that is, good democratic government--he studied all his life
with rare devotion. His two special works,[49] and the parallel parts of
his speeches, warmly commended by such a thinker and friend of democracy
as John Stuart Mill, are sufficing proof. In all the long tract from Plato
and Aristotle down to the popularization of direct legislation, which
commences with the publication of Mr. Sullivan's pamphlet a few years ago,
there is to be found nobody who has penetrated so deeply into the secrets
of those principles by which alone true democracy must be maintained. With
what clear vision does he read us lessons from the unanimous veto of the
Roman tribunes; the political history of the twelve tribes of Israel; the
balance of interests in the English constitution and our own, intended to
guarantee what he calls government of the concurrent majority. His
illustration from the confederacy of Indian Tribes is to be especially
emphasized as demonstration of his industry in collecting his materials
and of his great insight.[50]
I must give still another example, which I am sure will yet benignly
enlighten America.
Ever since Adam Smith fell into my hands in early manhood I have had a
strong predilection for political economy. My conviction during the
brothers' war that proper management of the currency of the confederacy
was indispensable to the success of our cause initiated me into an earnest
study of the science of money. And later intense interest in the greenback
question, and afterwards the silver question, added to the impetus. The
longer I observed the more plainly I saw a few private persons controlling
the coinage, the greenbacks, and the national bank currency of purpose to
monopolize government credit, and also fix the interest rate and the price
level, at any particular time, as suited their selfish interests. The
remedy became clear,--government must retake and fulfil all its money
functions. Especially must it keep the country supplied with a volume of
money which never becomes either redundant or contracted. How to do this
properly brought up the question, What is money? What is it that makes a
sheep, or cow, or coin, or piece of paper, money? For the true answer to
this question is the very beginning and foundation of all monetary
science. I took up Ricardo again, who, with a solitary exception mentioned
a little farther on, had, from the time I turned into him during my study
of the confederate currency, of all the economists by profession, showed
to me the best understanding of the real nature of money; and of course
John Stuart Mill, Jevons, Carl Marx, and others of less note, were
examined. The result confirmed Ricardo in his primacy; although I felt
that the true nature of money was assumed--rather vaguely--by him, and not
clearly expressed as it ought to be. I believed myself familiar with all
the important work of Calhoun. Somehow I had overlooked his contributions
to this subject. A few brief quotations from the more unimportant of these
I found in certain American books, which made me read the pertinent
speeches.[51] It was a most inexpressible surprise to me to find that he
had perfected Ricardo. Briefly stated, this is the true doctrine according
to Calhoun. It is not legal-tender laws, nor is it intrinsic value, which
makes even gold go as money. Well, what is it? Calhoun was not the first
to answer it, for others had given the true answer; but they ran away from
it as soon as they made it. He divined the full satisfactoriness of the
true answer, which he demonstrated to be true by a method as nearly
mathematical as the case admits of. And he lightens up what was dark
before by showing that that is money, and good money, whatever it may
be,--gold, silver, paper, property, what not,--which the government
receives in payment of its dues. The practice of the government,--not
laws, nor the market value of different materials of money,--this is the
great thing. If the United States should refuse to receive gold for its
dues, that would so greatly lessen the demand for gold as money that the
coin would depreciate and drop out of circulation. Nothing--not the
precious metals, not diamonds of the first water, not radium, not the
bills of the best bank, not greenbacks, not treasury notes can maintain
themselves as money if the government will not receive it. This is the
first half of the subject. Calhoun adds the other by showing that whatever
the government makes money, its volume can always be kept of the proper
quantity,--which proper quantity varies with the needs of commerce,--so as
to avoid the too much or too little. His illustration from the treasury
notes of North Carolina, which could not be a legal tender under the
federal constitution, but which circulated briskly and buoyantly and
stayed at par for many years, because they were received without discount
by the State, and also because their volume was kept within bounds, will
yet greatly help the cause of honest money.
In the achievement just told Calhoun not only excelled the economists of
his day, but he is yet in advance of all of the present except Del
Mar,[52]--the only economist who has excelled Ricardo in divining the
essence of money. These two alone explain clearly and fully why it is that
bankers keep such tenacious grip upon the money function of
government--they thereby so shape its practice that their wares shall be
money, with all the incidents of profit therefrom, and no others shall.
Del Mar never quotes him; and I almost know he has never studied his views
upon this subject.
America will yet have a "rational money," a term which Prof. Frank Parsons
has happily chosen as the name of his invaluable book.[53] To win it she
must fight many battles with the money power. When this war of the people
is waging by the people for the people, the doctrine of Calhoun will be
the banner of the right. After the sordid money oligarchy is overthrown
and the United States is blessed with a people's money, that benign
deliverance will add prodigiously to the fame of Calhoun.
My space does not admit of telling you how deeply Calhoun loathed the
spoils system. That must be borne in mind, and taken into account in any
true estimate of him as a statesman.
I deem it especially important to have you consider his standing with the
people of his State. Literally his word was law in South Carolina. Hayne
in 1832, and Huger in 1845, resigned their seats in the national senate to
give place to him. Everybody in his State always wanted him to lead, and
everybody always wanted him to lead according to his own will. This
unwonted influence, utterly without precedent, was due to the accurate
measure which the masses had taken of him. As he lived and aged among them
they knew him better and better to be irreproachable in private and public
life, the ablest of the able, the most diligent of the diligent, and the
truest of the true as a representative or official, and of that severe and
lofty virtue which scorns all popularity that is not the reward of
righteousness. And so he became example, model, worship, to all classes.
The forty years political ascendency of Pericles in the Athenian democracy
is the only befitting historical parallel which I can think of. Familiar
with the State from boyhood, I have long thought its people the most
advanced of the south. In spite of the revenge wreaked upon her in war,
and in spite of the direr devastation of the twelve years of negro rule
following the fall of the Confederate States, that little community, with
her dispensary and her system of really direct nomination,[54] to say
nothing of her wise management of all her material resources, is teaching
the nation lessons of the highest wisdom. These are the people from whom
Calhoun won a crown more resplendent than any other of our States has ever
bestowed upon a loved son. How eloquent were her last offices. Read Mr.
Pinkney's extracts from the "Carolina Tribute," narrating the reception of
his mortal remains in Charleston:[55] the novel procession of vessels,
displaying emblems of mourning, the solemn landing at noon, an imposing
train moving amid houses hung with black, "a Sabbath-like stillness"
resting on the city, "The solemn minute gun, the wail of the distant bell,
the far-off spires shrouded in the display of grief, the hearse and its
attendant mourners waiting on the spot, alone bore witness that the pulse
of life still beat within the city, that a whole people in voiceless woe
were about to receive and consign to earth all that was mortal of a great
and good citizen."
Appropriately and impressively Mr. Pinkney closes his description of this
forever memorable demonstration by quoting Carlyle's "How touching is the
loyalty of men to their sovereign man."[56]
Some men reserve out of the pillage of their fellows a great fund to
signalize their graves. Stronger cars must be made, bridges strengthened,
and too narrow passages avoided by long circuits in order that their huge
piles be transported to the conspicuous spot selected in a fashionable
cemetery. How the funerals which a weeping people give a Calhoun,
Liebknecht, Pingree, Altgeld, and other true ones dwindle such monuments
into smallness and contempt!
I must add something here to what has been said in the foregoing of
Calhoun's speeches. Somebody must after a while do for him what the
compilation called "The Great Speeches and Orations" has done so well for
Webster. His very greatest effort is that against the force bill,
delivered in the United States senate February 15 and 16, 1833. As an
appeal in behalf of the rights of the minority against the oppressive
majority it is unequalled. All through it, from its most befitting
exordium to the righteous indignation of the closing sentence, there are
passages which "the world will not willingly let die." No one who has ever
given it attention can forget the paragraph defending Carolina against the
charge of passion and delusion; that demolishing as by a tornado the
assertion of a senator that the bill was a measure of peace; the far-famed
one as to metaphysical reasoning; what is said as to the nature of the
contest between Persia and Greece; the rupture in the tribes of Israel
graphically expounded; the first mention of the government of "the
concurring majority" as distinct from and far better than that of the
absolute majority; the lesson to us of the Roman tribunes. To read this
speech becomingly, purge yourself of all prejudice; by an adequate effort
of the historical imagination see all the main things of the then
situation, and put yourself fully in Calhoun's place; so that you cannot
fail to feel all of his deep earnestness. You will have succeeded when you
can rightly appreciate this outburst:
"Will you collect money when it is acknowledged that it is not wanted?
He who earns the money, who digs it from the earth with the sweat of
his brow, has a just title to it against the universe. No one has a
right to touch it without his consent except his government, and this
only to the extent of its legitimate wants. To take more is robbery;
and you propose by this bill to enforce robbery by murder."
When I pronounced that against the force bill, the greatest of his
speeches, I was not unmindful of his last, that of March 4, 1850, not
four weeks before his death. I can hardly class it as a speech. It was a
revelation of the woe in store for America if the abolition movement was
not checked. Its analysis and demonstration of the preponderant power of
the north, and its retrospection over the progressive stages by which the
former equilibrium of the sections had been destroyed, are as
clear-sighted as its prediction. Never in all history has an actor in a
revolution described its course behind him so understandingly, nor its
future course with such true prophecy.
Let us give you the fewest possible selected brief passages that will do
something towards possessing you of the core of Calhoun's valedictory to
the United States and the South.
This is first in order: "How can the union be saved? There is but one way
by which it can with any certainty; and that is by a full and final
settlement, on the principles of justice, of all the questions at issue
between the two sections. The south asks for justice, simple justice, and
less she ought not to take. She has no compromise to offer but the
constitution, and no concession or surrender to make."
The vital concern of his section against abolition, and what it must do to
avoid it, he tells in these passages:
"[The South] regards the relation [of master and slave] as one which
cannot be destroyed without subjecting the two races to the greatest
calamity, and the section to poverty, desolation, and wretchedness,
and accordingly she feels bound, by every consideration of interest
and safety, to defend it."
"Is it not certain that if something is not done to arrest it [the
abolition movement], the south will be forced to choose between
abolition and secession?"
If the south must choose secession, he justifies her by the example of
Washington, with a calm and repose that prove his deepest conviction of
its rightfulness, and with a power that cannot be confuted. He says:
["The Union cannot] be saved by invoking the name of the illustrious
southerner whose mortal remains repose on the western bank of the
Potomac. He was one of us--a slaveholder and a planter. We have
studied his history, and find nothing in it to justify submission to
wrong. On the contrary, his great fame rests on the solid foundation
that, while he was careful to avoid doing wrong to others, he was
prompt and decided in repelling wrong. I trust that, in this respect,
we have profited by his example.
Nor can we find anything in his history to deter us from seceding from
the union should it fail to fulfil the objects for which it was
instituted, by being permanently and hopelessly converted into a means
of oppressing instead of protecting us. On the contrary, we find much
in his example to encourage us should we be forced to the extremity of
deciding between submission and disunion.
There existed then as well as now a union,--that between the parent
country and her then colonies. It was a union that had much to endear
it to the people of the colonies. Under its protecting and
superintending care the colonies were planted, and grew up and
prospered, through a long course of years, until they became populous
and wealthy. Its benefits were not limited to them. Their extensive
agricultural and other productions gave birth to a flourishing
commerce which richly rewarded the parent country for the trouble and
expense of establishing and protecting them. Washington was born and
grew up to manhood under that union. He acquired his early distinction
in its service; and there is every reason to believe that he was
devotedly attached to it. But his devotion was a rational one. He was
attached to it, not as an end, but as a means to an end. When it
failed to fulfil its end, and, instead of affording protection, was
converted into the means of oppressing the colonies, he did not
hesitate to draw his sword and head the great movement by which that
union was forever severed, and the independence of these States
established. This was the great and crowning glory of his life, which
has spread his fame over the whole globe, and will transmit it to the
latest posterity."
With what moving entreaty does he thus adjure the victorious north:
The north "has only to wish it to accomplish it--to do justice by
conceding to the south an equal right in the acquired territory, and
to do her duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves
to be faithfully fulfilled, to cease the agitation of the slavery
question, and to provide for the insertion of a provision in the
constitution, by an amendment, which will restore to the south, in
substance, the power she possessed of protecting herself before the
equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the action of the
government. There will be no difficulty in devising such a
provision--one that will protect the south and which at the same time
will improve and strengthen the government instead of impairing and
weakening it."
"The responsibility of saving the union rests on the north, and not on
the south. The south cannot save it by any act of hers, and the north
may save it without any sacrifice whatever, unless to do justice and
to perform her duties under the constitution should be regarded by her
as a sacrifice."
This sleepless watchman since 1835 had again and again blown the trumpet
as the sword of disunion was coming upon the land. Now, the grave yawning
before him, he sees that sword nearer and sharper, and conscious that it
is his last public duty he sends forth to all his country a blast of
warning more earnest and more solemn than ever. Warning that the bloodiest
of all wars is coming, and that between brothers. Warning--it is the whole
of this dread deliverance. Here is the first paragraph:
"I have, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the
subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and
effective measure, end in disunion. Entertaining this opinion, I have
on all proper occasions endeavored to call the attention of both the
two great parties which divide the country to adopt some measure to
prevent so great a disaster, but without success. The agitation has
been permitted to proceed, with almost no attempt to resist it, until
it has reached a point where it can no longer be disguised or denied
that the union is in danger. You have thus had forced upon you the
greatest and the gravest question that can ever come under your
consideration,--How can the union be preserved?"
And this is the last paragraph:
"I have now, senators, done my duty in expressing my opinions fully
and candidly on this solemn occasion. In doing so, I have been
governed by the motives which have governed me in all stages of the
agitation of the slavery question since its commencement. I have
exerted myself during the whole period to arrest it with the intention
of saving the union, if it could be done, and if it could not, to save
the section where it has pleased providence to cast my lot, and which
I sincerely believe has justice and the constitution on its side.
Having faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability both to the
union and my section, throughout this agitation, I shall have the
consolation, let what will come, that I am free from all
responsibility."
Had abolition been in charge of men, Calhoun, claiming, as appeared to
them, the most palpable rights under current views of justice, under the
constitution, under the law, and under patriotic duty, would have
prevailed. He never understood, no more than the abolitionists themselves
did, that providence was making an instrument of abolition to remove the
only danger to the American union, and that providence was not under human
constitutions, laws, and convictions of duty. As you meditate this
superhuman achievement of the true citizen in his last stand for his
doomed section, does it not help you to appreciate better the high saying
of the Greeks, that the struggle of a good man against fate is the most
elevating of all spectacles?
The speeches that will find place in the selection suggested above will
not enrapture the reader with the proud diction, learning, ornateness, and
exquisite finish of Webster, but he will find them everywhere to be proofs
of the dictum of Faust:
"Es traegt Verstand and rechter Sinn
Mit wenig Kunst sich selber vor;
Und wenn's euch Ernst ist, was zu sagen,
Ist's noethig, Worten nachzujagen?"[57]
He will also note that many of the wisest and most eloquent passages are
almost the extreme of choice, but chaste and severe, expression. Here read
aloud the passage as to Washington quoted above from the speech of March
4, 1850, and you will hardly dissent.
America owes it to Calhoun to publish a cheap edition of his best
speeches, and also of his "Dissertation on Government."
A word as to the "Dissertation" and the "Discourse on the Constitution of
the United States." The project of these two books lay close to his heart
for many years. He intended them as his last admonitions to the people of
the great republic. Doubtless the special object of his retirement was to
finish them, but he had to return to the senate. What we have of the books
was written in the little leisure which he snatched from the pressure of
public duties, domestic affairs, and ill-health. The resoluteness with
which, in the midst of these difficulties, he worked at the self-imposed
task proves a lofty and unselfish love. He did not finish them to his
satisfaction. Darwin did not do that with his epoch-making "Origin of
Species," for he found there was no need to do so. I believe that, as the
essentials of the belonging part of evolution are all to be found in the
"Origin of Species," so all the essentials of Calhoun's great doctrine of
government are fully set forth in his two books. To me the "Dissertation"
seems complete. I note with pleasure that, though slowly, it is steadily
climbing to the lofty height which is its due place in the world's
estimation. And the "Discourse"--of which he did not live to finish the
final draft--surely leads all the productions of the State sovereignty
school. The providence which opposed his wishes was kind to his country,
to the world, and to himself in calling him from his desk; for it allowed
him to get Texas and Oregon for us, to give mankind his Oregon speech, and
his last, and thus to finish his good work and make his fame full.
The foregoing is intended to influence my readers to turn away from Von
Holst, who wrote Calhoun's life, with the smoke and dust of the brothers'
war still in his eyes, and from Trent, who merely says ditto to Mr. Burke,
to Stephens, to the great Webster, to the touching "Carolina Tribute," to
the happy and appreciative sketch of Pinkney, to the man himself and his
grand career, in order to find the facts and principles by which one of
America's very greatest ought to be judged. And I do hope that they now
begin to discern that Calhoun was nothing at all of a doctrinaire, nor
chop-logic, nor fanatic, nor professional politician, nor ignorant and
over-zealous partisan, but was the very height of practical talent and an
extraordinarily successful man of affairs, of more than Roman integrity,
conscientious and diligent beyond almost all others in the duties of his
place, and a foremost statesman of wide and profound culture. Whether I
have accomplished my design or not, let me beg you to read for yourself
with careful attention what Webster said of him in the United States
senate just after his death. Remember two things as you read: (1) The
speaker and the dead had been opposed to one another in politics for more
than twenty years, the former being the great exponent of free-labor
nationalization and the other the great exponent of slave-labor
nationalization; (2) nobody ever weighed his public utterances more
carefully than did Webster, and that he would not say anything which he
did not believe, even as a politeness.
Let us now try to follow with proper discernment this man whom we hope we
have proved to be good and wise through his titanic defence of the cause
which fate had decreed must fail. As our explanation of how evolution, and
not the north on one side nor the south on the other, brought forward the
crisis in which slavery, the sole menace of American dismemberment, was to
perish, is so nearly complete, we can be much briefer in the rest of the
chapter.
The true beginning here is with the proposition that everything which
Calhoun did as the southern leader was prompted by a righteous conscience
and the highest and most unselfish patriotism. He was the very first to
discern the full menace of abolition to the welfare of the people he
represented. And when years afterwards the situation became darker and
more serious, and more and more importunately put to him the question, If
abolition can be avoided only by leaving the union, what ought the south
to do? he answered to himself, with the fullest approval of his
conscience, she must go out; for manifestly it is her paramount duty to
protect her citizens against any such invasion of their rights as
abolition. But he had no illusion as to peaceable secession; and he
likewise worshipped the union, believing with deepest conviction that it
is far better for neighboring communities to be federated than
independent. And the memories of the great American history were as sweet
to him as they were to Webster. To sum up, only one thing in his opinion
could justify secession. That was control of the federal government by the
abolitionists. If that comes, the south must seek her independence, even
if it is beyond a sea of blood.
Abolition was on its way then to overturn the supports of comfort and
domestic peace in the south, as it afterwards did. Suppose Webster had
seen the imminence of such a dreadful evil to New England, would he not
have felt that his duty to his section was now the great thing? My brother
who wore the blue, ought he not to have so felt? If the union had been
turned into a course which would not only impoverish and beggar the people
of New England, but would for long years actually deprive the masses of
those modes of business and labor by which they were subsisting themselves
and their families, can it be thought that Webster, with his exalted
admiration of the fathers, who endured all privations to win liberty from
their oppressors, would not have been heart and soul for secession?
The only actual difference between the two great patriots was that to
Calhoun the dread alternative of looking outside the union for defence and
protection of home and fireside was commended by a cruel fate, while a
kind fate withheld it from Webster.
I shall corroborate the foregoing by some pertinent excerpts from
Calhoun's speeches in the United States senate. And as my purpose is to
build everywhere in this book, as far as possible, upon only the most
obvious facts and to vouch therefor the most accessible authorities, I
take the excerpts from quotations made by Von Holst:
"It is to us a vital question. It involves not only our liberty, but,
what is greater (if to freeman anything can be), existence itself. The
relation which now exists between the two races in the slaveholding
States has existed for two centuries. It has grown with our growth,
and strengthened with our strength. It 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
property, we must defend ourselves; and if compelled, we should stand
justified by all laws, human and divine; ... we would act under an
imperious necessity. There would be to us but one alternative,--to
triumph or perish as a people."[58]
* * * * *
"To destroy the existing relations would be to destroy 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 in the diversity of the races.... Social
and political equality between them is impossible. The causes lie too
deep in the principles of our nature to be surmounted. But, without
such equality, to change the present condition of the African race,
were it possible, would be but to change the form of slavery."[59]
"He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive that the subversion
of a relation which must be followed with such disastrous consequences
can be effected only by convulsions that would devastate the country,
burst asunder the bonds of union, and engulf in a sea of blood the
institutions of the country. It is madness to suppose that the
slaveholding States would quietly submit to be sacrificed. Every
consideration--interest, duty, and humanity, the love of country, the
sense of wrong, hatred of oppressors and treacherous and faithless
confederates, and, finally, despair--would impel them to the most
daring and desperate resistance in defence of property, family,
country, liberty, and existence."[60]
The student unfamiliar with the confederate side of the brothers' war can
find the whole of it clearly stated in these short passages re-enforced by
the cognate ones quoted above from the speech of March 4, 1850. The
maintenance of the then existing relations between white and black was
vital both to liberty and existence. Because of the world-wide diversity
of the two races they cannot be socially or politically equal (a subject
which we will deal with specially after a while). And it was the duty of
the south to fight to the bitter end "in defence of property, family,
country, liberty, and existence." This is the marrow of the quotations.
They convincingly show not only the grasp of the statesman, but the
prescience of the prophet, as has been plainly proved by the brothers' war
and what followed in its track.
Opposition to the tariff, which in his judgment favored the manufacturing
at the expense of the staple States, seems to have been the first thing
that led Calhoun to take a pro-Southern stand in politics.[61] It finally
produced the famous nullification episode, which we have already somewhat
discussed. In this his platform was simply anti-tariff. But the current,
without his being aware of it, was carrying him resistlessly and rapidly
on into the anti-abolition career in which his life ended. It was the
petition presented in 1835 to congress against slavery in the District of
Columbia which, it seems, was the first thing that opened his eyes to the
menace of abolition. Note his wonderful foresight. Compare him with Cicero
just before the outbreak of the war between Pompey and Caesar; or with
Demosthenes before Philip discloses his purpose towards Greece; or with
Carl Marx, predicting the future of co-operative enterprise. Cicero almost
foresees nothing--he mostly fears; Marx is utterly mistaken. The
divination of Demosthenes is far superior, and it is clear; yet it is
belated when it comes. But Calhoun sees with "appalling clearness," as Von
Holst says, all the storm-cloud from which tempest and tornado will ravage
the entire land, just as its first speck shows on the horizon; and nobody
else will see that. If this abolition movement is not stopped in its
incipiency, it will soon get beyond all control. This he says over and
over in his public place. What a horrible spectre of the future haunted
him for the rest of his life! The south in her self-defence forced out of
the union, and then perhaps overcome in war. After her braves have
perished, and their dear ones at home have been plunged in the depths of
want, the triumphant abolitionists will have the former slaves to lord it
over them.
His conscience commanded him to stand by slavery as the fundamental
condition of his people's well-being; it also at the same time commanded
him to strain all his energies to save the union by making it the
protector instead of the assailant of slavery. This was the insuperable
task which the powers in the unseen put him in the treadmill to do. From
the time he commenced the discussion of the anti-slavery petitions until
his exclamation over the "poor south," on his death-bed, life was to him
but a deepening agony of solicitude and utmost effort,--solicitude for his
country and section, effort to avert the danger that became greater and
more awful to him every day. He strove after remedies under the
constitution. The more he recalled the success of the single stand of
South Carolina against the tariff, the prouder he became of being the
author of nullification. Its dearness to him was that it was peaceable as
well as efficient. The better opinion of the State-rights school is that
nullification is an absurdity, and that South Carolina's only true remedy
against the tariff was to secede if it were not repealed. But he knew
better than everybody else that secession meant internecine war between
the sections, and this influenced him to exalt peaceable nullification
above bloody secession.
It needs not to consider each barrier, whether party combinations,
admission of new slave States, legislation, etc., that he tried to erect
against the incoming oceanic wave. But we must briefly consider the
amendment of the constitution which he proposed. He wanted the north and
the south each to have a president, as he said, "to be so elected, as that
the two should be constituted the special organs and representatives of
the respective sections in the executive department of the government; and
requiring each to approve all the acts of congress before they shall
become laws."[62] Do this, he urged, and neither section can use the
powers of government to injure the other, for whatever proposed law
menaces a section will be vetoed by its president. It profits the student
of the science of government to consider the historical examples which
Calhoun adduced here. They are indeed so apt that the hearing which has
ever been denied him should be granted him at least academically. He says:
"The two most distinguished constitutional governments of antiquity both
in respect to permanence and power had a dual executive. I refer to those
of Sparta and Rome."[63]
It is interesting to be informed that those same wise Iroquois from whom
our fathers probably got the precedent of the old confederation, put in
practice something very like what Calhoun advises. We append both the
account and instructive comment of Morgan:
"When the Iroquois confederacy was formed, or soon after that event,
two permanent war-chiefships were created and named.... As general
commanders they had charge of the military affairs of the confederacy,
and the command of its joint forces when united in a general
expedition.... The creation of two principal war-chiefs instead of
one, and with equal power, argues a subtle and calculating policy to
prevent the domination of a single man even in their military affairs.
They did without experience precisely as the Romans did in creating
two consuls instead of one, after they had abolished the office of
_rex_. Two consuls would balance the military power between them, and
prevent either from becoming supreme. Among the Iroquois this office
never became influential."[64]
But Calhoun lays much more stress upon another example,--that of the
protection which the Roman plebeians got in tribunes elected from their
own order alone, which tribunes could veto any act of the lawmaking
organs, all of which were then actually in the hands of their oppressors,
that is, the order of patricians; the result being that in course of time
the plebeians achieved equality.[65]
Of course the inevitable could not be put off. And yet ought we not to
admire the inventive genius of the statesman who of all proposed the
remedy that promised the best? And ought we not also to cherish in
affectionate memory this last and high effort of Calhoun to avert a
dreadful brothers' war at hand, the end and consequences of which nobody
could then forecast?
The situation of Rome granting tribunes to the plebs was widely different
from ours. That was a case of giving a veto to one class only, and to a
class which belonged to the entire body politic. Calhoun proposed not a
single veto, but two; neither one to be given such a class as we have just
mentioned, but a veto to each one of two geographical divisions, in one of
which there was a developed, and in the other a nascent and almost
complete, nationality, these two nationalities already closed with each
other in a life and death grapple. His hope must have been to confine the
combatants to an arena which could be effectually policed by the civil
power, and in which all fighting except with buttoned foils be prevented.
We may be almost sure that his heart broke when that presentiment which
often comes to the dying as clear as sunlight revealed the bloody war that
was quickening its approach.
O the unutterable pathos of his life from 1835 to 1850! During this time
he was like the mother of a boy whom consumption has marked for its own.
In advance of all others she reads the first symptom, nay, she anticipates
it. All those who believe that they know him as well as she does, laugh at
her fears with unsympathetic incredulity. But her eyes never fail to see
grim death at the door, although bravely she hopes against hope, and
fights, fights, fights. Inexorably, relentlessly the end, which others now
begin to discern, comes on, but until the last breath of her darling she
has ever some suggestion of change of place or climate, of a new remedy,
of something else to be done. It is the supreme tragedy of her trial that
while outwardly she is all self-gratifying love, inwardly she is all
self-consuming misery. We say the love of a mother is greater than all
other. But we know that she loves her country better than she does her
child. Patriotism is as yet the strongest love of all. Realize that our
exalted patriot was tending and nursing the cause of his country. Think of
the noble Lee, his career of victory over, wearing away the winter at
Petersburg, hourly expecting his line, so tensely stretched in order to
face overwhelming odds, to break; think of him after it does break, on the
retreat, when he has discovered that his supplies have gone wrong; and
think of him when he must yield the sword as ever memorable as Hannibal's.
The world has given Lee, and will long give him, rains of gracious tears.
But he was never plagued with Calhoun's sharpened eyes to future disaster,
and he was confident that he would reach the mountains almost until the
very moment of surrender. Think rather of the great sufferers for high
causes,--Bonnivard, wearing a pathway over the stone floor of his prison;
Lear, of all of Shakspeare's heroes, in the deepest gulf of misfortune;
and especially of Calvary and the crucifixion, for Jesus travailed for his
brothers and sisters. It is here you must look for the like of Calhoun.
For fifteen years that "mass of moan" which was coming to his dear ones
pierced his ears plainer and plainer and made his heart sicker and sicker,
and during this long bloody sweat he gave the rarest devotion and
self-sacrifice to his country which he feared more and more was to plunge
over the precipice. As we recall the scene of his death it makes us
rejoice to know that the cross he had borne so long has at last been cast
off and he has entered into the rest of the martyr-patriot. Then it
occurs to us that he carried with him his affections,--too lofty not to be
immortal,--and we cannot believe that the sad spirit ever smiled until
Wade Hampton, twenty-six years afterwards, re-erected white domination in
South Carolina.
Dixie will never forget that one who of all her sons loved her best and
suffered for her the most. And it is my conviction that each noblest soul
of the north will after a while revere in Calhoun the American parallel to
the moral grandeur of Dante, of whom Michaelangelo said he would
cheerfully endure his exile and all his misfortunes for his glory.