John C. Calhoun

“ Andrew P. Calhoun, eldest son of John C. Calhoun, was President of the South Carolina Agricultural College and owner of large lands in Alabama and South Carolina. He took pride in raising everything consumed on his plantations. In the New York home of his son, Mr. Patrick Calhoun, three of his old servants live; his wife’s maid says proudly: “I have counted thirty things on my Miss’ dinner-table that were grown on the place.” Cotton and wool were grown on the place and carded, spun, dyed, woven into cloth by negro women ”

“ Sir, during the last five years I have seen the venerable John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, and Henry Clay pass from among us, the legislators of our country. The race of giants who ‘were on the earth in those days’ is well-nigh gone. Despite their skill, their genius, their might, they have sunk under the stroke of time. They were our admiration and our glory; a few linger with us, the monuments of former greatness, the beacon-lights of a past age. The death of Henry Clay cannot fail to suggest melancholy associations to each member of this house. ”

“ Calhoun saw the south in a minority in all branches of the government, and he desired, by giving to the south a concurrent and distinct voice in the organism of our system, to secure her against invasion of her rights by a hostile majority, and thus to make her safe in the union. When the abolition party was small in numbers and weak in organization, and public men treated its menaces with contempt, Mr. Calhoun saw the cloud like a man's hand which was to overspread our political heavens. ”

“ The leaders of this war party were Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. Clay was born in Virginia, but as a boy he had gone to Kentucky. He represented the spirit of the young and growing West. He was a true patriot and felt angry at the way the British spoke of America and Americans, and at the way they acted toward the United States. He was a very popular man and won men to him by his attractive qualities and by his energy. Calhoun was a South Carolinian who had been educated in Connecticut. He was a man of the highest personal character. ”

“ Henry Clay deserves great praise and glory for his persistent efforts at conciliation,--not only in matters pertaining to the tariff, but in the question of slavery to harmonize conflicting interests. But Calhoun--the greatest man whom the South has produced--would listen to no concessions, foreseeing that the slightest would endanger the institution with which the interests and pride of the Southern States were identified. At this crisis the country needed a man at the helm whose will was known to be inflexible. ”

“ GREAT AMERICAN ORATORS AND STATESMEN.
Calhoun, the Advocate of Slavery
The great supporter of the doctrine which Hayne advocated and which Webster tore into shreds and fragments, the indefatigable sustainer of the institution of slavery in the United States Congress, was John C. Calhoun. That this man was sincere in his conviction that slavery was morally and politically right, and beneficial alike to white and black, to North and South, no one has questioned. He was one of the most upright of men; one devoid of pretence or concealment ”

“ Mr. John B. Cleveland says in his pamphlet on the “Controversy between John C. Calhoun and Robert Y. Hayne:
“There can be no question as to the sincerity of purpose or integrity of character of Mr. Calhoun. At the same time as the common saying is ‘he was set in his ideas’ and he could not bear opposition.” [80]
Upon many questions he could change and did change his views, but these changes all seem to have proceeded from a certain development of the man himself, not from any contact with others. ”

“ But his gloomy predictions fortunately were not fulfilled, in spite of all the misrule and obstinacy of the man he intensely distrusted and disliked. The tendency has been to usurpations by Congress rather than by the Executive.
It is impossible not to admire the lofty tone, free from personal animus, which is seen in all Calhoun's speeches. They may have been sophistical, but they appealed purely to the intellect of those whom he addressed, without the rhetoric of his great antagonists. ”

“ * Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of it, there were men, even before his time, who caught glimpses of the shadow. John C. Calhoun said: “A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.” And that great humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . ”

“ At an early day his father purchased a slave, not a usual possession for an up-country man, and when John Calhoun grew to manhood he married a distant cousin of social standing and with some means, and thus the young man was connected with the social aristocracy and the slave-owning interests of the state. These simple facts stand out prominently in any effort to understand him in his development, because he became the learned and devoted advocate of the slave interests and defended, with his logic and his power in debate, the economical and social régime of the South. ”

“ The statue of Calhoun is full of power, simple, and majestic in attitude and expression. In busts Powers seems to me unrivalled; still, he ought not to spend his best years on an employment which cannot satisfy his ambition nor develop his powers. If our country loves herself, she will order from him some great work before the prime of his genius has been frittered away, and his best years spent on lesser things.
I saw at Florence the festivals of St. John, but they are poor affairs to one who has seen the Neapolitan and Roman people on such occasions. ”

“ If by war we become great, we can not be free; if we will be both great and free, our policy is peace.
Biographical: John C. Calhoun was a distinguished American statesman. He is noted for his advocacy of the annexation of Texas and his maintenance of the cause of peace, when war with Great Britain was threatened by the claims of the United States to Oregon. This selection is from one of his speeches in the Senate on that subject.
THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND
DANIEL WEBSTER
The hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this occasion will soon be passed. ”

“ In 1838 Calhoun introduced resolutions declaring that petitions relative to slavery in the District were "a direct and dangerous attack on the institutions of all the slave-holding States." In 1839 Henry Clay offered a petition for the repression of all agitation respecting slavery in the District. Calhoun saw and constantly denounced the danger. He knew the power of public opinion, and saw the rising tide. Conservatism heeded the warning, and the opposition to agitation intensified all over the South and the North; but to no avail. New societies were formed ”

“ It is legitimate legislation for members of Congress to maintain their local and sectional interest at any cost, short of disunion; only, it may be neither wise nor patriotic, since men who are supposed to be statesmen would by so doing acknowledge themselves to be mere politicians, bound hand and foot in subjection to selfish constituents, and indifferent to the general good.
Mr. Calhoun became blind to general interests in his zeal to perpetuate slavery, or advance whatever would be desirable to the South, indifferent to the rest of the country ”

“ How can a young man, however gifted, be infallible? But whatever the changes through which his mind passed, they did not result from self-interest or ambition, but were the result of more enlightened views and enlarged experience. Political wisdom is not a natural instinct, but a progressive growth, like that of Burke,--the profoundest of all the intellects of his generation.
Calhoun made several great speeches in the Senate of the United States, besides those in reference to a banking system connected with the government, which, whether wise or erroneous, contained some important truths. ”

“ He doubtless added to his reputation, else he would not have been talked about as a candidate for the presidency, selected as a candidate for the vice-presidency, and chosen to that position by Northern votes, as he was in 1824, when the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, and the friends of Henry Clay made Adams, instead of Jackson, President. Calhoun's popularity with all parties resulted in his election as vice-president by a very large popular vote. He deserved it. The day had not come for the ascendency of mere politicians, and their division of the spoils of office. ”

“ Said he: "With money we will get partisans, with partisans votes, and with votes money, is the maxim of our political pilferers." He regarded the measure as a part of the "spoils system" which marked Jackson's departure from the policy of his predecessors.
Calhoun detested the system of making politics a game, since it would throw the government into the hands of political adventurers and mere machine-politicians. He was too lofty a man to encourage anything like this, and here we are compelled to do him honor. Whatever he said or did was in obedience to his convictions. ”

“ Clay the great leader, Webster the great orator, Calhoun the great thinker. John Stuart Mill speaks of the great ability of his posthumous work, and of its author as “a man who has displayed powers as a speculative political thinker superior to any who has appeared in American politics since the authors of 'The Federalist.'” It has been said that Calhoun labored to destroy the Union, that he might be the chief of a southern confederacy because he could not be president of the Union. ”

“ The South raged, and the North blazed with indignation,--especially over the Fugitive-Slave Bill.
Meanwhile Calhoun was dying. His figure was bent, his voice was feeble, his face was haggard, but his superb intellect still retained its vigor to the last. Among the multitude of ringing appeals to the reason and moral sense of the North was a newspaper article from The Independent of New York, by a young Congregational minister, Henry Ward Beecher. It was entitled "Shall we Compromise?" and made clear and plain the issue before the people: "Slavery is right; Slavery is wrong: Slavery shall live ”

“ Further, it was divulged by Crawford, who had been Secretary of the Treasury in Monroe's cabinet when Calhoun was Secretary of War, that the latter had in 1818 favored a censure of Jackson for his unauthorized seizure of Spanish territory in the Florida campaign during the Seminole War; and this increased the growing animosity. What had been an alienation between the two highest officers of the government ripened into intense hatred, which was fatal to the aspirations of Calhoun for the presidency; for no man could be President against the overpowering influence of Jackson. ”

“ The territory had once been ours; its people were of our own flesh and blood; emigration pressed into its fields from the south; the government of Great Britain was threatening to keep Texas independent, and, by procuring the abolition of slavery there, to operate to stop slavery extension toward the southwest, and place an abolition frontier upon the borders of Louisiana and Arkansas. Mr. Calhoun was too sagacious not to see the hostile policy of England. In a series of papers he exposed the scheme, and negotiated a treaty with Texas for her incorporation into the union. ”

“ This attitude was generally maintained by them till the October election. But when by that vote they saw their faction overwhelmed with defeat, they and others undertook to maintain themselves in power by an unprecedented piece of political jugglery. Calhoun, who was surveyor-general of the Territory, employed a large number of subordinates, and was one of the most able and unscrupulous leaders in the pro-slavery cabal. A large majority of the convention favored the establishment of slavery; only the question of a popular vote on ratification or rejection excited controversy. ”

“ I make that offer now to the advocates of the protective system; but I must, in candor, inform them that such an adjustment would distribute the revenue between the protected and unprotected articles more favorably to the State, and to the South, and less to the manufacturing interest, than an average uniform ad valorem, and, accordingly, more so than that now proposed by Carolina through her convention. After such an offer, no man who values his candor will dare accuse the State, or those who have represented her here, with inconsistency in reference to the point under consideration. ”

“ Calhoun invited me to a luncheon which he gave to one of the daughters of Governor Curtin. He started A. Wilson Norris, afterward Auditor General of the State, upon his career, giving him the opportunity to make his first public address. Grant, when President, appointed Calhoun Pension Agent in Philadelphia, in which office he had to give a bond in $600,000. Among his bondsmen were Ario Pardee, Simon Cameron, John F. Hartranft, Bayard Taylor, and I persuaded my grandfather to go upon it for $30,000. ”

“ New political combinations were made to express the general indignation against the responsible party in power, and the Whig party arose, joined by many leading Democrats like Rives of Virginia and Tallmadge of New York, while Calhoun went over to Van Buren, and dissolved his alliance with Clay, which in reality for several years had been hollow. In the presidential election of 1840 Mr. Van Buren was defeated by an overwhelming majority, and the Whigs came into power under the presidency of General Harrison, chosen not for talents or services, but for his availability. ”