not the candor to avow, in later years, a complete change of opinion.
He could only go so far as to say, when opposing the purchase of the
Madison Papers in 1837, that, "at his entrance upon public life, he
had _inclined_ to that interpretation of the Constitution which
favored a latitude of powers." Inclined! He was a most enthusiastic
and thorough-going champion of that interpretation. His scheme of
internal improvements embraced a network of post-roads and canals from
"Maine to Louisiana," and a system of harbors for lake and ocean. He
kindled, he glowed, at the spectacle which his imagination conjured
up, of the whole country rendered accessible, and of the distant
farmer selling his produce at a price not seriously less than that
which it brought on the coast. On this subject he became animated,
interesting, almost eloquent. And, so far from this advocacy being
confined to the period of his "entrance upon political life," he
continued to be its very warmest exponent as late as 1819, when he had
been ten years in public life. In that year, having to report upon the
condition of military roads and fortifications, his flaming zeal for a
grand and general system of roads and canals frequently bursts the
bounds of the subject he had to treat. He tells Congress that the
internal improvements which are best for peace are best for war also;
and expatiates again upon his dazzling dream of "connecting Louisiana
by a durable and well-finished road with Maine, and Boston with
Savannah by a well-established line of internal navigation." The
United States, he said, with its vast systems of lakes, rivers, and
mountains, its treble line of sea-coast, its valleys large enough for
empires, was "a world of itself," and needed nothing but to be
rendered accessible. From what we know of the way things are managed
in Congress, we should guess that he was invited to make this report
for the very purpose of affording to the foremost champion of internal
improvements an opportunity of lending a helping hand to pending
bills.
Mr. Calhoun served six years in the House of Representatives, and grew
in the esteem of Congress and the country at every session. As it is
pleasing to see an old man at the theatre entering into the merriment
of the play, since it shows that his heart has triumphed over the
cares of life, and he has preserved a little of his youth, so is it
eminently graceful in a young man to have something of the seriousness
of age, especially when his conduct is even more austere than his
demeanor. Mr. Clay at this time was addicted to gaming, like most of
the Western and Southern members, and he was not averse to the bottle.
Mr. Webster was reckless in expenditure, fond of his ease, and loved a
joke better than an argument. In the seclusion of Washington, many
members lived a very gay, rollicking life. Mr. Calhoun never gambled,
never drank to excess, never jested, never quarrelled, cared nothing
for his ease, and tempered the gravity of his demeanor by an admirable
and winning courtesy. A deep and serious ambition impelled and
restrained him. Like boys at school, Clay and Webster were eager
enough to get to the head of the class, but they did not brood over it
all the time, and never feel comfortable unless they were conning
their spelling-book; while little Calhoun expended all his soul in the
business, and had no time or heart left for play. Consequently he
advanced rapidly for one of his size, and was universally pointed at
as the model scholar. Accidents, too, generally favor a rising man.
Mr. Calhoun made an extremely lucky hit in 1815, which gave members
the highest opinion of his sagacity. In opposing an ill-digested
scheme for a national bank, he told the House that the bill was so
obviously defective and unwise, that, if news of peace should arrive
that day, it would not receive fifteen votes. News of peace, which was
totally unexpected, did arrive that very hour, and the bill was
rejected the next day by about the majority which he had predicted. At
the next session, he won an immense reputation for firmness. An act
was passed changing the mode of compensating members of Congress from
six dollars a day to fifteen hundred dollars a year. We were a nation
of rustics then; and this harmless measure excited a disgust in the
popular mind so intense and general, that most of the members who had
voted for it declined to present themselves for re-election. Calhoun
was one of the guilty ones. Popular as he was in his district,
supported by two powerful family connections,--his own and his
wife's,--admired throughout the State as one who had done honor to it
upon the conspicuous scene of Congressional debate,--even he was
threatened with defeat. Formidable candidates presented themselves. In
these circumstances he mounted the stump, boldly justified his vote,
and defended the odious bill. He was handsomely re-elected, and when
the bill was up for repeal in the House he again supported it with all
his former energy. At the conclusion of his speech, a member from New
York, Mr. Grosvenor, a political opponent, with whom Calhoun had not
been on speaking terms for two years, sprang to his feet, enraptured,
and began to express his approval of the speech in ordinary
parliamentary language. But his feelings could not be relieved in that
manner. He paused a moment, and then said:--
"Mr. Speaker, I will not be restrained. No barrier shall
exist which I will not leap over for the purpose of offering
to that gentleman my thanks for the judicious, independent,
and national course which he has pursued in this House for
the last two years, and particularly upon the subject now
before us. Let the honorable gentleman continue with the
same manly independence, aloof from party views and local
prejudices, to pursue the great interests of his country,
and fulfil the high destiny for which it is manifest he was
born. The buzz of popular applause may not cheer him on his
way, but he will inevitably arrive at a high and happy
elevation in the view of his country and the world."
Such scenes as this enhance the prestige of a rising man. Members weak
at home envied at once and admired a man who was strong enough to
bring over his constituents to his opinion. He was fortunate, too, in
this, that a triumph so striking occurred just before he left the
House for another sphere of public life. He had what the actors call a
splendid exit.
The inauguration of Mr. Monroe on the 4th of March, 1817, ushered in
the era of good feeling, and gave to Henry Clay the first of his long
series of disappointments. As Secretaries of State had usually
succeeded their chiefs in the Presidency, the appointment of Mr. Adams
to that office by Mr. Monroe was regarded almost in the light of a
nomination to the succession. To add to Mr. Clay's mortification, be
was tendered the post of Secretary of War, which he had declined a
year before, and now again declined. The President next selected
General Jackson, then in the undimmed lustre of his military renown,
and still holding his Major-General's commission. He received,
however, a private notification that General Jackson would not accept
a place in the Cabinet. The President then offered the post to the
aged Governor Isaac Shelby of Kentucky, who had the good sense to
decline it. There appear to have been negotiations with other
individuals, but at length, in October, 1817, the place was offered to
Mr. Calhoun, who, after much hesitation, accepted it, and entered upon
the discharge of its duties in December. His friends, we are told,
unanimously disapproved his going into office, as they believed him
formed to shine in debate rather than in the transaction of business.
Fortune favored him again. Entering the office after a long vacancy,
and when it was filled with the unfinished business of the war,--fifty
million dollars of deferred claims, for one item,--he had the same
easy opportunity for distinction which a steward has who takes charge
of an estate just out of chancery, and under a new proprietor who has
plenty of money. The sweeping up of the dead leaves, the gathering of
the fallen branches, and the weeding out of the paths, changes the
aspect of the place, and gives the passer-by a prodigious idea of the
efficiency of the new broom. The country was alive, too, to the
necessity of coast and frontier defences, and there was much building
of forts during the seven years of Mr. Calhoun's tenure of place.
Respecting the manner in which he discharged the multifarious and
unusual duties of his office, we have never heard anything but
commendation. He was prompt, punctual, diligent, courteous, and firm.
The rules which he drew up for the regulation of the War Department
remained in force, little changed, until the magnitude of the late
contest abolished or suspended all ancient methods. The claims of the
soldiers were rapidly examined and passed upon. It was Mr. Calhoun who
first endeavored to collect considerable bodies of troops for
instruction at one post. He had but six thousand men in all, but he
contrived to get together several companies of artillery at Fortress
Monroe for drill. He appeared to take much interest in the expenditure
of the ten thousand dollars a year which Congress voted for the
education of the Indians. He reduced the expenses of his office, which
was a very popular thing at that day. He never appointed nor removed a
clerk for opinion's sake. In seven years he only removed two clerks,
both for cause, and to both were given in writing the reasons of their
removal. There was no special merit in this, for at that day to do
otherwise would have been deemed infamous.
Mr. Calhoun, as a member of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet, still played the
part of a national man, and supported the measures of his party
without exception. Scarcely a trace of the sectional champion yet
appears. In 1819, he gave a written opinion favoring the cession of
Texas in exchange for Florida; the motive of which was to avoid
alarming the North by the prospective increase of Slave States. In
later years, Mr. Calhoun, of course, wished to deny this; and the
written opinions of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet on that question mysteriously
disappeared from the archives of the State Department. We have the
positive testimony of Mr. John Quincy Adams, that Calhoun, in common
with most Southern men of that day, approved the Missouri Compromise
of 1820, and gave a written opinion that it was a constitutional
measure. That he was still an enthusiast for internal improvements, we
have already mentioned.
The real difficulty of the War Department, however, as of the State
Department, during the Monroe administration, was a certain
Major-General Andrew Jackson, commanding the Military Department of
the South. The popularity of the man who had restored the nation's
self-love by ending a disastrous war with a dazzling and most
unexpected victory, was something different from the respect which we
all now feel for the generals distinguished in the late war. The first
honors of the late war are divided among four chieftains, each of whom
contributed to the final success at least one victory that was
essential to it. But in 1815, among the military heroes of the war
that had just closed General Jackson stood peerless and alone. His
success in defending the Southwest, ending in a blaze of glory below
New Orleans, utterly eclipsed all the other achievements of the war,
excepting alone the darling triumphs on the ocean and the lakes. The
deferential spirit of Mr. Monroe's letters to the General, and the
readiness of every one everywhere to comply with his wishes, show that
his popularity, even then, constituted him a power in the Republic. It
was said in later times, that "General Jackson's popularity could
stand anything," and in one sense this was true: it could stand
anything that General Jackson was likely to do. Andrew Jackson could
never have done a cowardly act, or betrayed a friend, or knowingly
violated a trust, or broken his word, or forgotten a debt. He was
always so entirely certain that he, Andrew Jackson, was in the right,
his conviction on this point was so free from the least quaver of
doubt, that he could always convince other men that he was right, and
carry the multitude with him. His honesty, courage, and inflexible
resolution, joined to his ignorance, narrowness, intensity, and
liability to prejudice, rendered him at once the idol of his
countrymen and the plague of all men with whom he had official
connection. Drop an Andrew Jackson from the clouds upon any spot of
earth inhabited by men, and he will have half a dozen deadly feuds
upon his hands in thirty days.
Mr. Calhoun inherited a quarrel with Jackson from George Graham, his
_pro tempore_ predecessor in the War Department, This Mr. Graham was
the gentleman ("spy," Jackson termed him) despatched by President
Jefferson in 1806 to the Western country to look into the mysterious
proceedings of Aaron Burr, which led to the explosion of Burr's
scheme. This was enough to secure the bitterest enmity of Jackson, who
wholly and always favored Burr's design of annihilating the Spanish
power in North America, and who, as President of the United States,
rewarded Burr's followers, and covertly assisted Houston to carry out
part of Burr's project. Graham had sent orders to Jackson's
subordinates directly, instead of sending them through the chief of
the Department. Jackson, after due remonstrance, ordered his officers
not to obey any orders but such as were communicated by or through
himself. This was a high-handed measure; but Mr. Calhoun, on coming
into power, passed it by without notice, and conceded the substance of
Jackson's demand,--as he ought. This was so exquisitely pleasing to
General Jackson, that he was well affected by it for many years
towards Mr. Calhoun. Among the younger public men of that day, there
was no one who stood so high in Jackson's regard as the Secretary of
War.
The Florida war followed in 1818. When the report of General Jackson's
invasion of Florida, and of the execution of Arbuthnot and Armbrister
reached Washington, Mr. Calhoun was the only man in the Cabinet who
expressed the opinion that General Jackson had transcended his powers,
and ought to be brought before a court of inquiry. This opinion he
supported with ardor, until it was overruled by the President, who was
chiefly influenced by Mr. Adams, the Secretary of State. How keenly
General Jackson resented the course of Mr. Calhoun on this occasion,
when, eleven years afterwards, he discovered it, is sufficiently well
known. We believe, however, that the facts justify Calhoun and condemn
Jackson. Just before going to the seat of war, the General wrote
privately to the President, strongly recommending the seizure of
Florida, and added these words:
"This can be done without implicating the government. Let it
be signified to me through any channel (say, Mr. J. Rhea)
that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to
the United States, and in sixty days it will be
accomplished."
General Jackson dwells, in his "Exposition" of this matter, upon the
fact that Mr. Calhoun was the first man in Washington who read this
letter. But he does not say that Mr. Calhoun was aware that Mr. Rhea
had been commissioned to answer the letter, and had answered it in
accordance with General Jackson's wishes. And if the Rhea
correspondence justified the seizure of Florida, it did not justify
the execution of the harmless Scottish trader Arbuthnot, who, so far
from "instigating" the war, had exerted the whole of his influence to
prevent it. It is an honor to Mr. Calhoun to have been the only man in
the Cabinet to call for an inquiry into proceedings which disgraced
the United States and came near involving the country in war. We have
always felt it to be a blot upon the memory of John Quincy Adams, that
he did not join Mr. Calhoun in demanding the trial of General Jackson;
and we have not been able to attribute his conduct to anything but the
supposed necessities of his position as a candidate for the
succession.
Readers versed in political history need not be reminded that nearly
every individual in the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe had hopes of succeeding
him. Mr. Adams had, of course; for he was the premier. Mr. Crawford,
of course; for it had been "arranged" at the last caucus that he was
to follow Mr. Monroe, to whose claims he had deferred on that express
condition. Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
and De Witt Clinton of New York, had expectations. All these gentlemen
had "claims" which both their party and the public could recognize.
Mr. Calhoun, too, who was forty-two years of age in Mr. Monroe's last
year of service, boldly entered the lists; relying upon the united
support of the South and the support of the manufacturing States of
the North, led by Pennsylvania. That against such competitors he had
any ground at all to hope for success, shows how rapid and how real
had been his progress toward a first-rate national position. If our
readers will turn to the letters of Webster, Story, Wirt, Adams,
Jackson, and others of that circle of distinguished men, they will see
many evidences of the extravagant estimation in which he was held in
1824. They appear to have all seen in him the material for a
President, though not yet quite mature for the position. They all
deemed him a man of unsullied honor, of devoted patriotism, of perfect
sincerity, and of immense ability,--so assiduously had he played the
part of the good boy.
How the great popularity of General Jackson was adroitly used by two
or three invisible wire-pullers to defeat the aspirations of these too
eager candidates, and how from the general wreck of their hopes Mr.
Calhoun had the dexterity to emerge Vice-President of the United
States, has been related with the amplest detail, and need not be
repeated here. Mr. Calhoun's position seemed then to combine all the
advantages which a politician of forty-three could desire or imagine.
By withdrawing his name from the list of candidates in such a way as
to lead General Jackson to suppose that he had done so in _his_ favor,
he seemed to place the General under obligations to him. By secretly
manifesting a preference for Mr. Adams (which he really felt) when the
election devolved upon the House of Representatives, he had gained
friends among the adherents of the successful candidate. His
withdrawal was accepted by the public as an evidence of modesty
becoming the youngest candidate. Finally he was actually
Vice-President, as John Adams had been, as Jefferson had been, before
their elevation to the highest place. True, Henry Clay, as Secretary
of State, was in the established line of succession; but, as time wore
on, it became very manifest that the re-election of Mr. Adams, upon
which Mr. Clay's hopes depended, was itself exceedingly doubtful; and
we accordingly find Mr. Calhoun numbered in the ranks of the
opposition. Toward the close of Mr. Adams's Presidency, the question
of real interest in the inner circle of politicians was, not who
should succeed John Quincy Adams in 1829, but who should succeed
Andrew Jackson in 1833; and already the choice was narrowing to two
men,--Martin Van Buren and John C. Calhoun.
During Mr. Calhoun's first term in the Vice-Presidency,--1825 to
1829,--a most important change took place in his political position,
which controlled all his future career. While he was Secretary of
War,--1817 to 1824,--he resided with his family in Washington, and
shared in the nationalizing influences of the place. When he was
elected Vice-President, he removed to a plantation called Fort Hill,
in the western part of South Carolina, where he was once more
subjected to the intense and narrow provincialism of the planting
States. And there was nothing in the character or in the acquirements
of his mind to counteract that influence. Mr. Calhoun was not a
student; he probed nothing to the bottom; his information on all
subjects was small in quantity, and second-hand in quality. Nor was he
a patient thinker. Any stray fact or notion that he met with in his
hasty desultory reading, which chanced to give apparent support to a
favorite theory or paradox of his own, he seized upon eagerly, paraded
it in triumph, but pondered it little; while the weightiest facts
which controverted his opinion he brushed aside without the slightest
consideration. His mind was as arrogant as his manners were courteous.
Every one who ever conversed with him must remember his positive,
peremptory, unanswerable "_Not at all, not at all_" whenever one of
his favorite positions was assailed. He was wholly a special pleader;
he never summed up the testimony. We find in his works no evidence
that he had read the masters in political economy; not even Adam
Smith, whose reputation was at its height during the' first half of
his public life. In history he was the merest smatterer, though it was
his favorite reading, and he was always talking about Sparta, Athens,
and Rome. The slenderness of his far tune prevented his travelling. He
never saw Europe; and if he ever visited the Northern States, after
leaving college, his stay was short. The little that he knew of life
was gathered in three places, all of which were of an exceptional and
artificial character,--the city of Washington, the up-country of South
Carolina, and the luxurious, reactionary city of Charleston. His mind,
naturally narrow and intense, became, by revolving always in this
narrow sphere and breathing a close and tainted atmosphere, more and
more fixed in its narrowness and more intense in its operations.
This man, moreover, was consumed by a poor ambition: he lusted after
the Presidency. The rapidity of his progress in public life, the high
offices he had held, the extravagant eulogiums he had received from
colleagues and the press, deceived him as to the real nature of his
position before the country, and blinded him to the superior chances
of other men. Five times in his life he made a distinct clutch at the
bawble, but never with such prospect of success that any man could
discern it but himself and those who used his eyes. It is a
satisfaction to know that, of the Presidency seekers,--Clay, Webster,
Calhoun, Douglas, Wise, Breckenridge, Tyler, Fillmore, Clinton, Burr,
Cass, Buchanan, and Van Buren,--only two won the prize, and those two
only by a series of accidents which had little, to do with their own
exertions. We can almost lay it down as a law of this Republic, that
no man who makes the Presidency the principal object of his public
life will ever be President. The Presidency is an accident, and such
it will probably remain.
Mr. Vice-President Calhoun found his Carolina discontented in 1824,
when he took up his abode at Fort Hill. Since the Revolution, South
Carolina had never been satisfied, and had never had reason to be. The
cotton-gin had appeased her for a while, but had not suspended the
operation of the causes which produced the stagnation of the South.
Profuse expenditure, unskilful agriculture, the costliest system of
labor in the world, and no immigration, still kept _Irelandizing_ the
Southern States; while the North was advancing and improving to such a
degree as to attract emigrants from all lands. The contrast was
painful to Southern men, and to most of them it was mysterious.
Southern politicians came to the conclusion that the cause at once of
Northern prosperity and Southern poverty was the protective tariff and
the appropriations for internal improvements, but chiefly the tariff.
In 1824, when Mr. Calhoun went home, the tariff on some leading
articles had been increased, and the South was in a ferment of
opposition to the protective system. If Mr. Calhoun had been a wise
and honest man, he would have reminded his friends that the decline of
the South had been a subject of remark from the peace of 1783, and
therefore could not have been caused by the tariff of 1816, or 1820,
or 1824. He would have told them that slavery, as known in the
Southern States, demands virgin lands,--must have, every few years,
its cotton-gin, its Louisiana, its Cherokee country, its _something_,
to give new value to its products or new scope for its operations. He
might have added that the tariff of 1824 was a grievance, did tend to
give premature development to a manufacturing system, and was a fair
ground for a national issue between parties. The thing which he did
was this: he adopted the view of the matter which was predominant in
the extreme South, and accepted the leadership of the extreme
Southern, anti-tariff, strict-constructionist wing of the Democratic
party. He echoed the prevailing opinion, that the tariff and the
internal improvement system, to both of which he was fully committed,
were the _sole_ causes of Southern stagnation; since by the one their
money was taken from them, and by the other it was mostly spent where
it did them no good.