Another powerful cause of his deterioration was the strange, strong, always increasing desire he had to be President. Any intelligent politician, outside of the circle of his own "friends," could have told him, and proved to him, that he had little more chance of being elected President than the most insignificant man in the Whig party. And the marvel is, that he himself should not have known it,—he who knew why, precisely why, every candidate had been nominated, from Madison to General Taylor. In the teeth of all the facts, he still cherished the amazing delusion that the Presidency of the United States, like the Premiership of England, is the natural and just reward of long and able public service. The Presidency, on the contrary, is not merely an accident, but it is an accident of the last moment. It is a game too difficult for mortal faculties to play, because some of the conditions of success are as uncertain as the winds, and as ungovernable. If dexterous playing could have availed, Douglas would have carried off the stakes, for he had an audacious and a mathematical mind; while the winning man in 1856 was a heavy player, devoid of skill, whose decisive advantage was that he had been out of the game for four years. Mr. Seward, too, was within an ace of winning, when an old quarrel between two New York editors swept his cards from the table.
No: the President of the United States is not prime minister, but chief magistrate, and he is subject to that law of nature which places at the head of regular governments more or less respectable Nobodies. In Europe this law of nature works through the hereditary principle, and in America through universal suffrage. In all probability, we shall usually elect a person of the non-committal species,—one who will have lived fifty or sixty years in the world without having formed an offensive conviction or uttered a striking word,—one who will have conducted his life as those popular periodicals are conducted, in which there are "no allusions to politics or religion." And may not this be part of the exquisite economy of nature, which ever strives to get into each place the smallest man that can fill it? How miserably out of place would be a man of active, originating, disinterested spirit, at the head of a strictly limited, constitutional government, such as ours is in time of peace, in which the best President is he who does the least? Imagine a live man thrust out over the bows of a ship, and compelled to stand as figure-head, lashed by the waves and winds during a four years' voyage, and expected to be pleased with his situation because he is gilt!
Daniel Webster so passionately desired the place, that he could never see how far he was from the possibility of getting it. He was not such timber as either Southern fire-eaters or Northern wire-pullers had any use for; and a melancholy sight it was, this man, once so stately, paying court to every passing Southerner, and personally begging delegates to vote for him. He was not made for that. An elephant does sometimes stand upon his head and play a barrel-organ, but every one who sees the sorry sight sees also that it was not the design of Nature that elephants should do such things.
A Marshfield elm may be for half a century in decay without exhibiting much outward change; and when, in some tempestuous night, half its bulk is torn away, the neighborhood notes with surprise that what seemed solid wood is dry and crumbling pith. During the last fifteen years of Daniel Webster's life, his wonderfully imposing form and his immense reputation concealed from the public the decay of his powers and the degeneration of his morals. At least, few said what perhaps many felt, that "he was not the man he had been." People went away from one of his ponderous and empty speeches disappointed, but not ill pleased to boast that they too had "heard Daniel Webster speak," and feeling very sure that he could be eloquent, though he had not been. We heard one of the last of his out-of-door speeches. It was near Philadelphia, in 1844, when he was "stumping the State" for Henry Clay, and when our youthful feelings were warmly with the object of his speech. What a disappointment! How poor and pompous and pointless it seemed! Nor could we resist the impression that he was playing a part, nor help saying to ourselves, as we turned to leave the scene, "This man is not sincere in this: he is a humbug." And when, some years later, we saw him present himself before a large audience in a state not far removed from intoxication, and mumble incoherence for ten minutes, and when, in the course of the evening, we saw him make a great show of approval whenever the clergy were complimented, the impression was renewed that the man had expended his sincerity, and that nothing was real to him any more except wine and office. And even then such were the might and majesty of his presence, that he seemed to fill and satisfy the people by merely sitting there in an arm-chair, like Jupiter, in a spacious yellow waistcoat with two bottles of Madeira under it.
All this gradual, unseen deterioration of mind and character was revealed to the country on the 7th of March, 1850. What a downfall was there! That shameful speech reads worse in 1867 than it did in 1850, and still exerts perverting power over timid and unformed minds. It was the very time for him to have broken finally with the "irreconcilable" faction, who, after having made President TylersnubDaniel Webster from his dearly loved office of Secretary of State, had consummated the scheme which gave us Texas at the cost of war with Mexico, and California as one of the incidents of peace. California was not down in their programme; and now, while claiming the right to make four slave States out of Texas, they refused to admit California to freedom.Thenwas it that Daniel Webster of Massachusetts rose in the Senate of the United States and said in substance this: These fine Southern brethren of ours have now stolen all the land there is to steal. Let us, therefore, put no obstacle in the way of their peaceable enjoyment of the plunder.
And the spirit of the speech was worse even than its doctrine. He went down upon the knees of his soul, and paid base homage to his own and his country's irreconcilable foes. Who knew better than Daniel Webster that John C. Calhoun and his followers had first created and then systematically fomented the hostile feeling which then existed between the North and the South? How those men must have chuckled among themselves when they witnessed the willing degradation of the man who should have arraigned them before the country as the conscious enemies of its peace! How was it that no one laughed outright at such billing and cooing as this?
* * * * *
Mr. Webster.—"An honorable member [Calhoun], whose health does not allow him to be here to-day—"
A Senator,—"He is here."
Mr. Webster.—"I am very happy to hear that he is; may he long be here, and in the enjoyment of health to serve his country!"
And this:—
Mr. Webster.—"The honorable member did not disguise his conduct or his motives."
Mr. Calhoun.—"Never, never."
Mr. Webster.—"What he means he is very apt to say."
Mr. Calhoun.—"Always, always."
Mr. Webster.—"And I honor him for it."
And this:—
Mr. Webster.—
"I see an honorable member of this body [Mason of Virginia] paying me the honor of listening to my remarks; he brings to my mind, Sir, freshly and vividly, what I learned of his great ancestor, so much distinguished in his day and generation, so worthy to be succeeded by so worthy a grandson."
And this:—
Mr. Webster.—
"An honorable member from Louisiana addressed us the other day on this subject. I suppose there is not a more amiable and worthy gentleman in this chamber, nor a gentleman who would be more slow to give offence to anybody, and he did not mean in his remarks to give offence. But what did he say? Why, Sir, he took pains to run a contrast between the slaves of the South and the laboring people of the North, giving the preference in all points of condition and comfort and happiness to the slaves."
In the course of this speech there is one most palpable contradiction. In the beginning of it, the orator mentioned the change of feeling and opinion that had occurred as to the institution of slavery,—"the North growing much more warm and strong against slavery, and the South growing much more warm and strong in its support." "Once," he said, "the most eminent men, and nearly all the conspicuous politicians of the South, held the same sentiments,—that slavery was an evil, a blight, a scourge, and a curse"; but now it is "a cherished institution in that quarter; no evil, no scourge, but a great religious, social, and moral blessing." He then asked how this change of opinion had been brought about, and thus answered the question: "I suppose, sir, this is owing to the rapid growth and sudden extension of the COTTON plantations in the South." And to make the statement more emphatic, he caused the wordcottonto be printed in capitals in the authorized edition of his works. But later in the speech, when he came to add his ponderous condemnation to the odium in which the handful of Abolitionists were held,—theéliteof the nation from Franklin's day to this,—then he attributed this remarkable change totheirzealous efforts to awaken the nobler conscience of the country. After giving his own version of their proceedings, he said:
"Well, what was the result? The bonds of the slaves were bound more firmly than before, their rivets were more strongly fastened. Public opinion, which in Virginia had begun to be exhibited against slavery, and was opening out for the discussion of the question, drew back and shut itself up in its castle."
But all would not do. He bent the knee in vain. Vain too were his personal efforts, his Southern tour, his Astor House wooings,—the politicians would have none of him; and he had the cutting mortification of seeing himself set aside for a Winfield Scott.
Let us not, however, forget that on this occasion, though Daniel Webster appeared for the first time in his life as a leader, he was in reality still only a follower,—a follower, not of the public opinion of the North, but of the wishes of its capitalists. And probably many thousands of well-meaning men, not versed in the mysteries of politics, were secretly pleased to find themselves provided with an excuse for yielding once more to a faction, who had over us the immense advantage of having made up their minds to carry their point or fight. If his was the shame of this speech, ours was the guilt. He faithfully represented the portion of his constituents whose wine he drank, who helped him out with his notes, and who kept his atmosphere hazy with incense; and he faithfully represented, also, that larger number who wait till the wolf is at their door before arming against him, instead of meeting him afar off in the outskirts of the wood. Let us own it: the North yearned for peace in 1850,—peace at almost any price.
One of the most intimate of Mr. Webster's friends said, in a public address:
"It is true that he desired the highest political position in the country,—that he thought he had fairly earned a claim to that position. And I solemnly believe that because that claim was denied his days were shortened."
No enemy of the great orator ever uttered anything so severe against him as this, and we are inclined to think it an error. It was probably the strength of his desire for the Presidency that shortened his life, not the mere disappointment. When President Fillmore offered him the post of Secretary of State, in 1850, it appears to have been his preference, much as he loved office, to decline it. He longed for his beautiful Marshfield, on the shore of the ocean, his herds of noble cattle, his broad, productive fields, his yachts, his fishing, his rambles in the forests planted by his own hand, his homely chats with neighbors and beloved dependents. "Oh!" said he, "if I could have my own will, never, never would I leave Marshfield again!" But his "friends," interested and disinterested, told him it was a shorter step from the office of Secretary of State to that of President than from the Senate-chamber. He yielded, as he always did, and spent a long, hot summer in Washington, to the sore detriment of his health. And again, in 1852, after he had failed to receive the nomination for the Presidency, he was offered the place of Minister to England. His "friends" again advised against his acceptance. His letter to the President, declining the offer, presents him in a sorry light indeed.
"I have made up my mind to think no more about the. English mission. My principal reason is, that I think it would be regarded as a descent I have been accustomed to give instructions to ministers abroad, and not to receive them."
Accustomed! Yes: for two years! It is probable enough that his acceptance of office, and his adherence to it, hastened his death. Four months after the words were written which we have just quoted, he was no more.
His last days were such as his best friends could have wished them to be,—calm, dignified, affectionate, worthy of his lineage. His burial, too, was singularly becoming, impressive, and touching. We have been exceedingly struck with the account of it given by Mr. George S. Hillard, in his truly elegant and eloquent eulogy upon Mr. Webster, delivered in Faneuil Hall. In his last will, executed a few days before his death, Mr. Webster requested that he might be buried "without the least show or ostentation, but in a manner respectful to my neighbors, whose kindness has contributed so much to the happiness of me and mine." His wishes were obeyed; and he was buried more as the son of plain, brave Captain Ebenezer Webster, than as Secretary of State. "No coffin," said Mr. Hillard,
"concealed that majestic frame. In the open air, clad as when alive, he lay extended in seeming sleep, with no touch of disfeature upon his brow,—as noble an image of reposing strength as ever was seen upon earth. Around him was the landscape that he had loved, and above him was nothing but the dome of the covering heavens. The sunshine fell upon the dead man's face, and the breeze blew over it. A lover of Nature, he seemed to be gathered into her maternal arms, and to lie like a child upon a mother's lap. We felt, as we looked upon him, that death had never stricken down, at one blow, a greater sum of life. And whose heart did not swell when, from the honored and distinguished men there gathered together, six plain Marshfield farmers were called forth to carry the head of their neighbor to the grave. Slowly and sadly the vast multitude followed, in mourning silence, and he was laid down to rest among dear and kindred dust."
In surveying the life and works of this eminent and gifted man, we are continually struck with the evidences of his magnitude. He was, as we have said, a very large person. His brain was within a little of being one third larger than the average, and it was one of the largest three on record. His bodily frame, in all its parts, was on a majestic scale, and his presence was immense. He liked large things,—mountains, elms, great oaks, mighty bulls and oxen, wide fields, the ocean, the Union, and all things of magnitude. He liked great Rome far better than refined Greece, and revelled in the immense things of literature, such as Paradise Lost, and the Book of Job, Burke, Dr. Johnson, and the Sixth Book of the Aeneid. Homer he never cared much for,—nor, indeed, anything Greek. He hated, he loathed, the act of writing. Billiards, ten-pins, chess, draughts, whist, he never relished, though fond to excess of out-door pleasures, like hunting, fishing, yachting. He liked to be alone with great Nature,—alone in the giant woods or on the shores of the resounding sea,—alone all day with his gun, his dog, and his thoughts,—-alone in the morning, before any one was astir but himself, looking out upon the sea and the glorious sunrise. What a delicious picture of this large, healthy Son of Earth Mr. Lanman gives us, where he describes him coming into his bedroom, at sunrise, and startling him out of a deep sleep by shouting, "Awake, sluggard! and look upon this glorious scene, for the sky and the ocean are enveloped in flames!" He was akin to all large, slow things in nature. A herd of fine cattle gave him a keen, an inexhaustible enjoyment; but he never "tasted" a horse: he had no horse enthusiasm. In England he chiefly enjoyed these five things, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Smithfield Cattle Market, English farming, and Sir Robert Peel. Sir Robert Peel he thought was "head and shoulders above any other man" he had ever met. He greatly excelled, too, in describing immense things. In speaking of the Pyramids, once, he asked,
"Who can inform us by what now unknown machines mass was thus aggregated, to mass, and quarry piled on quarry, till solid granite seemed to cover the earth and reach the skies."
His peculiar love of the Union of these States was partly due, perhaps, to this habit of his mind of dwelling with complacency on vastness. He felt that he wanted and required a continent to live in: his mind would have gasped for breath in New Hampshire.
But this enormous creature was not an exception to the law which renders giants harmless by seaming them with weakness, but for which the giants would possess the earth. If he had been completed throughout on the plan on which he was sketched, if he had been as able to originate as he was powerful to state, if he had possessed will proportioned to his strength, moral power equal to his moral feeling, intellect on a par with his genius, and principle worthy of his intellect, he would have subjugated mankind, and raised his country to a point from which it would have dropped when the tyrannizing influence was withdrawn. Every sphere of life has its peculiar temptations, which there is only one thing that can enable a man to resist,—a religious, i.e. a disinterested devotion to its duties. Daniel Webster was one of those who fell before the seductions of his place. He was not one of those who find in the happiness and prosperity of their country, and in the esteem of their fellow-citizens, their own sufficient and abundant reward for serving her. He pined for something lower, smaller,—something personal and vulgar. He had no religion,—not the least tincture of it; and he seemed at last, in his dealings with individuals, to have no conscience. What he called his religion had no effect whatever upon the conduct of his life; it made him go to church, talk piously, puff the clergy, and "patronize Providence,"—no more. He would accept retaining fees, and never look into the bundles of papers which accompanied them, in which were enclosed the hopes and the fortune of anxious households. He would receive gifts of money, and toss into his waste-paper basket the list of the givers, without having glanced at its contents; thus defrauding them of the only recompense in his power to grant, and the only one they wished. It shocked him if his secretary came to the dinner-table in a frock-coat, and he would himself appear drunk before three thousand people. And yet, such was the power of his genius, such was the charm of his manner, such the affectionateness of his nature, such the robust heartiness of his enjoyment of life, that honorable men who knew his faults best loved him to the last,—not in spite of them, but partly in consequence of them. What in another man they would have pronounced atrocious, appeared in him a kind of graceful rollicking helplessness to resist.
Such, as it seems to our very imperfect judgment, was Daniel Webster, one of the largest and one of the weakest of men, of admirable genius and deplorable character; who began life well and served his-country well and often, but held not out faithful to the end. American statesmen are called to a higher vocation than those of other countries, and there is nothing in the politics of America whichcanreward a man of eminent ability for public service. If such a person feels that his country's happiness and greatness will not be a satisfying recompense for anything he can do for her, let him, as he values his peace and soul's health, cling to the safe obscurity of private life.
There were two ways of getting to South Carolina in Colonial times. The first immigrants, many of whom were men of capital, landed at Charleston, and, settling in the fertile low country along the coast, became prosperous planters of rice, indigo, and corn, before a single white inhabitant had found his way to the more salubrious upper country in the western part of the Province. The settlers of the upper country were plain, poorer people, who landed at Philadelphia or Baltimore, and travelled southward along the base of the Alleghanies to the inviting table-lands of the Carolinas. In the lower country, the estates were large, the slaves numerous, the white inhabitants few, idle, and profuse. The upper country was peopled by a sturdier race, who possessed farms of moderate extent, hewn out of the wilderness by their own strong arms, and tilled by themselves with the aid of few slaves. Between the upper and the lower country there was a waste region of sandy hills and rocky acclivities, uninhabited, almost uninhabitable, which rendered the two sections of one Province separate communities scarcely known to one another. Down almost to the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the farmers of the upper country were not represented in the Legislature of South Carolina, though they were then as numerous as the planters of the lower country. Between the people of the two sections there was little unity of feeling. The lordly planters of the lower country regarded their Western fellow-citizens as provincial or plebeian; the farmers of the upper country had some contempt for the planters as effeminate, aristocratic, and Tory. The Revolution abased the pride, lessened the wealth, and improved the politics of the planters; a revised Constitution, in 1790, gave preponderance to the up-country farmers in the popular branch of the Legislature; and thenceforth South Carolina was a sufficiently homogeneous commonwealth.
Looking merely to the public career of Calhoun, the special pleader of the Southern aristocracy, we should expect to find him born and reared among the planters of the low country. The Calhouns, on the contrary, were up-country people,—farmers, Whigs, Presbyterians, men of moderate means, who wielded the axe and held the plough with their own hands, until enabled to buy a few "new negroes," cheap and savage; called new, because fresh from Africa. A family party of them (parents, four sons, and a daughter) emigrated from the North of Ireland early in the last century, and settled first in Pennsylvania; then removed to Western Virginia; whence the defeat of Braddock, in 1755, drove them southward, and they found a permanent abode in the extreme west of South Carolina, then an unbroken wilderness. Of those four sons, Patrick Calhoun, the father of the Nullifier, was the youngest. He was six years old when the family left Ireland; twenty-nine, when they planted the "Calhoun Settlement" in Abbeville District, South Carolina.
Patrick Calhoun was a strong-headed, wrong-headed, very brave, honest, ignorant man. His whole life, almost, was a battle. When the Calhouns had been but five years in their forest home, the Cherokees attacked the settlement, destroyed it utterly, killed one half the men, and drove the rest to the lower country; whence they dared not return till the peace of 1763. Patrick Calhoun was elected to command the mounted rangers raised to protect the frontiers, a duty heroically performed by him. After the peace, the settlement enjoyed several years of tranquillity, during which Patrick Calhoun was married to Martha Caldwell, a native of Virginia, but the daughter of an Irish Presbyterian emigrant. During this peaceful interval, all the family prospered with the settlement which bore its name; and Patrick, who in his childhood had only learned to read and write, availed himself of such leisure as he had to increase his knowledge. Besides reading the books within his reach, which were few, he learned to survey land, and practised that vocation to advantage. He was especially fond of reading history to gather new proofs of the soundness of his political opinions, which were Whig to the uttermost. The war of the Revolution broke in upon the settlement, at length, and made deadly havoc there; for it was warred upon by three foes at once,—the British, the Tories, and the Cherokees. The Tories murdered in cold blood a brother of Patrick Calhoun's wife. Another of her brothers fell at Cowpens under thirty sabre-wounds. Another was taken prisoner and remained for nine months in close confinement at one of the British Andersonvilles of that day. Patrick Calhoun, in many a desperate encounter with the Indians, displayed singular coolness, courage, adroitness, and tenacity. On one memorable occasion, thirteen of his neighbors and himself maintained a forest fight for several hours with a force of Cherokees ten times their number. When seven of the white men had fallen, the rest made their escape. Returning three days after to bury their dead, they found upon the field the bodies of twenty-three Indian warriors. At another time, as his son used to relate, he had a very long combat with a chief noted for the certainty of his aim,—the Indian behind a tree, the white man behind a fallen log. Four times the wily Calhoun drew the Indian's fire by elevating his hat upon his ramrod. The chief, at last, could not refrain from looking to see the effect of his shot; when one of his shoulders was slightly exposed. On the instant, the white man's rifle sent a ball through it; the chief fled into the forest, and Patrick Calhoun. bore off as a trophy of the fight his own hat pierced with four bullets.
This Patrick Calhoun illustrates well the North-of-Ireland character; one peculiarity of which is the possession ofwilldisproportioned to intellect. Hence a man of this race frequently appears to striking advantage in scenes which demand chiefly an exercise of will; while in other spheres, which make larger demands upon the understanding, the same man may be simply mischievous. We see this in the case of Andrew Jackson, who at New Orleans was glorious; at Washington almost wholly pernicious; and in the case of Andrew Johnson, who was eminently useful to his country in 1861, but obstructive and perilous to it in 1866. For these Scotch-Irishmen, though they are usually very honest men, and often right in their opinions, are an uninstructable race, who stick to a prejudice as tenaciously as to a principle, and really suppose they are battling for right and truth, when they are only wreaking a private vengeance or aiming at a personal advantage. Patrick Calhoun was the most radical of Democrats; one of your despisers of conventionality; an enemy of lawyers, thinking the common sense of mankind competent to decide what is right without their aid; a particular opponent of the arrogant pretensions of the low-country aristocrats. When the up-country people began to claim a voice in the government, long since due to their numbers, the planters, of course, opposed their demand. To establish their right to vote, Patrick Calhoun and a party of his neighbors, armed with rifles, marched across the State to within twenty-three miles of Charleston, and there voted in defiance of the plantation lords. Events like this led to the admission of members from the up-country; and Patrick Calhoun was the first to represent that section in the Legislature. It was entirely characteristic of him to vote against the adoption of the Federal Constitution, on the ground that it authorized other people to tax Carolinians; which he said was taxation without' representation. That was just like a narrow, cranky, opinionative, unmanageable Calhoun.
Devoid of imagination and of humor, a hard-headed, eager politician, he brought up his boy upon politics. This was sorry nourishment for a child's mind, but he had little else to give him. Gambling, hunting, whiskey, and politics were all there was to relieve the monotony of life in a Southern back settlement; and the best men naturally threw themselves upon politics. Calhoun told Miss Martineau that he could remember standing between his father's knees, when he was only five years old, and listening to political conversation. He told Duff Green that he had a distinct recollection of hearing his father say, when he was only nine, that that government is best which allows to each individual the largest liberty compatible with order and tranquillity, and that improvements in political science consist in throwing off needless restraints. It was a strange child that could remember such a remark. As Patrick Calhoun died in 1795, when his son was thirteen years old, the boy must have been very young when he heard it, even if he were mistaken as to the time. Whether Patrick Calhoun ever touched upon the subject of slavery in his conversations with his children, is not reported. We only know that, late in the career of Mr. Calhoun, he used to be taunted by his opponents in South Carolina with having once held that slavery was good and justifiable only so far as it was preparatory to freedom. He was accused of having committed the crime of saying, in a public speech, that slavery was like the "scaffolding" of an edifice, which, after having served its temporary purpose, would be taken down, of course. We presume he said this; becauseeverythingin his later speeches is flatly contradicted in those of his earlier public life. Patrick Calhoun was a man to give a reason for everything. He was an habitual theorizer and generalize!', without possessing the knowledge requisite for safe generalization. It is very probable that this apology for slavery was part of his son's slender inheritance.
John Caldwell Calhoun—born in 1782, the youngest but one in a family of five children—was eighteen years old before he had a thought of being anything but a farmer. His father had been dead five years. His only sister was married to that famous Mr. Waddell, clergyman and schoolmaster, whose academy in North Carolina was for so many years a great light in a dark place. One of his brothers was a clerk in a mercantile house at Charleston; another was settled on a farm near by; another was still a boy. His mother lived upon the paternal farm; and with her lived her son John, who ploughed, hunted, fished, and rode, in the manner of the farmers' sons in that country. At eighteen he could read, write, and cipher; he had read Rollin, Robertson, Voltaire's Charles XII., Brown's Essays, Captain Cook, and parts of Locke. This, according to his own account, was the sum of his knowledge, except that he had fully imbibed his father's decided republican opinions. He shared to some degree his father's prejudice, and the general prejudice of the upper country, against lawyers; although a cousin, John Ewing Calhoun, had risen high in that profession, had long served in the Legislature of South Carolina, and was about to be elected United States Senator on the Jeffersonian side. As late as May 1800, when he was past eighteen, preference and necessity appeared to fix him In the vocation of farmer. The family had never been rich. Indeed, the great Nullifier himself was a comparatively poor man all his life, the number of his slaves never much exceeding thirty; which is equivalent to a working force of fifteen hands or less.
In May, 1800, Calhoun's elder brother came home from Charleston to spend the summer, bringing with him his city notions. He awoke the dormant ambition of the youth, urged him to go to school and become a professional man. But how could he leave his mother alone on the farm? and how could the money be raised to pay for a seven years' education? His mother and his brother conferred upon these points, and satisfied him upon both; and in June, 1800, he made his way to the academy of his brother-in-law, Waddell, which was then in Columbia County, Georgia, fifty miles from the home of the Calhouns. In two years and a quarter from the day he first opened a Latin grammar, he entered the Junior Class of Yale College. This was quick work. Teachers, however, are aware that late beginners, who have spent their boyhood ingrowing, often stride past students who have passed theirs in stunting the growth of mind and body at school. Calhoun, late in life, often spoke of the immense advantage which Southern boys had over Northern in not going so early to school, and being so much on horseback and out of doors. He said one day, about the year 1845:
"At the North you overvalue intellect; at the South we rely upon character; and if ever there should be a collision that shall test the strength of the two sections, you will find that character is stronger than intellect, and will carry the day."
The prophecy has been fulfilled.
Timothy Dwight, Calvinist and Federalist, was President of Yale College during Calhoun's residence there, and Thomas Jefferson, Democrat and freethinker, was President of the United States. Yale was a stronghold of Federalism. A brother of the President of the College, in his Fourth-of-July oration delivered at New Haven four months after the inauguration of Jefferson and Burr, announced to the students and citizens, that "the great object" of those gentlemen and their adherents was "to destroy every trace of civilization in the world, and to force mankind back into a savage state." He also used the following language:
"We have now reached the consummation of democratic blessedness. We have a country governed by blockheads and knaves; the ties of marriage, with all its felicities, are severed and destroyed; our wives and daughters are thrown into the stews; our children are cast into the world from the breast forgotten; filial piety is extinguished; and our surnames, the only mark of distinction among families, are abolished. Can the imagination paint anything more dreadful this side hell?"
These remarkable statements, so far from surprising the virtuous people of New Haven, were accepted by them, it appears, as facts, and published with general approval. From what we know of President Dwight, we may conclude that he would regard his brother's oration as a pardonable flight of hyperbole, based on truth. He was a Federalist of the deepest dye.
Transferred to a scene where such opinions prevailed, it cost the young republican no great exertion either of his intellect or his firmness or his family pride to hold his ground. Of all known men, he had the most complete confidence in the infallibility of his own mind. He used to relate, that in the Senior year, when he was one of very few in a class of seventy who maintained republican opinions, President Dwight asked him, "What is the legitimate source of power?" "The people," answered the student. Dr. Dwight combated this opinion; Calhoun replied; and the whole hour of recitation was consumed in the debate. Dr. Dwight was so much struck with the ability displayed by the student, that he remarked to a friend that Calhoun had talent enough to be President of the United States, and that we should see him President in due time. In those innocent days, an observation of that nature was made of every young fellow who showed a little spirit and a turn for debate. Fathers did notthensay to their promising offspring, Beware, my son, of self-seeking and shallow speaking, lest you should be consigned to the White House, and be devoured by office-seekers. People then regarded the Presidency as a kind of reward of merit, the first step toward which was to get "up head" in the spelling-class. There is reason to believe that young Calhoun took the prediction of the Doctor very seriously. He took everything seriously. He never made a joke in his life, and was totally destitute of the sense of humor. It is doubtful if he was ever capable of unbending so far as to play a game of football.
The ardent political discussions then in vogue had one effect which the late Mr. Buckle would have pronounced most salutary; they prevented Dr. Dwight's severe theology from taking hold of the minds of many students. Calhoun wholly escaped it. In his speeches we find, of course, the stock allusions of a religious nature with which all politicians essay to flatter their constituents; but he was never interested in matters theological. A century earlier, he might have been the Jonathan Edwards of the South, if there had been a South then. His was just the mind to have revelled in theological subtilties, and to have calmly, closely, unrelentingly argued nearly the whole human race into endless and hopeless perdition. His was just the nature to have contemplated his argument with complacency, and its consequences without emotion.
Graduating with credit in 1804, he repaired to the famous Law School at Litchfield in Connecticut, where he remained a year and a half, and won general esteem. Tradition reports him a diligent student and an admirable debater there. As to his moral conduct, that was always irreproachable. That is to say, he was at every period of his life continent, temperate, orderly, and out of debt. In 1806, being then twenty-four years of age, he returned to South Carolina, and, after studying a short time in a law office at Charleston, he went at last to his native Abbeville to complete his preparation for the bar. He was still a law student at that place when the event occurred which called him into public life.
June 22d, 1807, at noon, the United States frigate Chesapeake, thirty-eight guns, left her anchorage at Hampton Roads, and put to sea, bound for the Mediterranean. The United States being at peace with all the world, the Chesapeake was very far from being in proper man-of-war trim. Her decks were littered with furniture, baggage, stores, cables, and animals. The guns were loaded, but rammers, matches, wadding, cannon-balls, were all out of place, and not immediately accessible. The crew were merchant sailors and landsmen, all undrilled in the duties peculiar to an armed ship. There had been lying for some time at the same anchorage the British frigate Leopard, fifty guns; and this ship also put to sea at noon of the same day. The Leopard being in perfect order, and manned by a veteran crew, took the lead of the Chesapeake, and kept it until three in the afternoon, when she was a mile in advance. Then she wore round, came within speaking distance, lowered a boat, and sent a lieutenant on board the American ship. This officer bore a despatch from the admiral of the station, ordering any captain who should fall in with the Chesapeake to search her for deserters. The American commander replied that he knew of no deserters on board his ship, and could not permit a search to be made, his orders not authorizing the same. The lieutenant returned. As soon as he had got on board, and his boat was stowed away, the Leopard fired a full broadside into the American frigate. The American commodore, being totally unprepared for such an event, could not return the fire; and therefore, when his ship had received twenty-one shot in her hull, when her rigging was much cut up, when three of her crew were killed and eighteen wounded, the commodore himself among the latter, he had no choice but to lower his flag. Then the search was made, and four men, claimed as deserters, were taken; after which the Leopard continued her course, and the crippled Chesapeake returned to Hampton Roads. The American commander was sentenced by a court-martial to five years' suspension for going to sea in such a condition. The English government recalled the admiral who ordered, and deprived of his ship the captain who committed, this unparalleled outrage, but made no other reparation.
No words of ours could convey any adequate idea of the rage which this event excited in the people of the United States. For a time, the Federalists themselves were ready for war. There were meetings everywhere to denounce it, and especially in the Southern States, always more disposed than the Northern to begin the shedding of blood, and already the main reliance of the Republican party. Remote and rustic Abbeville, a very Republican district, was not silent on this occasion; and who so proper to draw and support the denunciatory resolutions as young Calhoun, the son of valiant Patrick, fresh from college, though now in his twenty-sixth year? The student performed this duty, as requested, and spoke so well that his neighbors at once concluded that he was the very man, lawyer as he was, to represent them in the Legislature, where for nearly thirty years his father had served them. At the next election, in a district noted for its aversion to lawyers, wherein no lawyer had ever been chosen to the Legislature, though many had been candidates, he was elected at the head of his ticket. His triumph was doubtless owing in a great degree to the paramount influence of his family. Still, even we, who knew him only in his gaunt and sad decline, can easily imagine that at twenty-six he must have been an engaging, attractive man. Like most of his race, he was rather slender, but very erect, with a good deal of dignity and some grace in his carriage and demeanor. His eyes were always remarkably fine and brilliant. He had a well-developed and strongly set nose, cheek-bones high, and cheeks rather sunken. His mouth was large, and could never have been a comely feature. His early portraits show his hair erect on his forehead, as we all remember it, unlike Jackson, whose hair at forty still fell low over his forehead. His voice could never have been melodious, but it was always powerful. At every period of his life, his manners, when in company with his inferiors in age or standing, were extremely agreeable, even fascinating. We have heard a well-known editor, who began life as a "page" in the Senate-chamber, say that there was no Senator whom the pages took such delight in serving as Mr. Calhoun. "Why?"—"Because he was so democratic."—"How democratic?"—"He was as polite to a page as to the President of the Senate, and as considerate of his feelings." We have heard another member of the press, whose first employment was to report the speeches of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, bear similar testimony to the frank, engaging courtesy of his intercourse with the corps of reporters. It is fair, therefore, to conclude that his early popularity at home was due as much to his character and manners as to his father's name and the influence of his relatives.
He served two years in the Legislature, and in the intervals between the sessions practised law at Abbeville. At once he took a leading position in the Legislature. He had been in his seat but a few days when the Republican members, as the custom then was, met in caucus to nominate a President and Vice-President of the United States. For Mr. Madison the caucus was unanimous, but there was a difference with regard to the Vice-Presidency, then filled by the aged George Clinton of New York, who represented the anti-Virginian wing of the party in power. Mr. Calhoun, in a set speech, opposed the renomination of Governor Clinton, on the ground that in the imminency of a war with England the Republican party ought to present an unbroken front. He suggested the nomination of John Langdon of New Hampshire for the second office. At this late day we cannot determine whether this suggestion was original with Mr. Calhoun. We only know that the caucus affirmed it, and that the nomination was afterwards tendered to Mr. Langdon by the Republican party, and declined by him. Mr. Calhoun's speech on this occasion was the expression of Southern opinions as to the foreign policy of the country. The South was then nearly ready for war with England, while Northern Republicans still favored Mr. Jefferson's non-intercourse policy. In this instance, as in so many others, we find the Slave States, which used to plume themselves upon being the conservative element in an else unrestrainable democracy, ready for war first, though far from being the worst sufferers from England's piracy's. We should have hadnowar from 1782 to 1865, but for them. We also find Mr. Calhoun, in this his first utterance as a public man, the mouthpiece of his "section." He has been styled the most inconsistent of our statesmen; but beneath the palpable contradictions of his speeches, there is to be noticed a deeper consistency. Whatever opinion, whatever policy, he may have advocated, he always spoke the sense of what Mr. Sumner used to call the Southern oligarchy. Ifitchanged,hechanged. If he appeared sometimes to lead it, it was by leading it in the direction in which it wanted to go. He was doubtless as sincere in this as any great special pleader is in a cause in which all his powers are enlisted. Calhoun's mind was narrow and provincial. He could not have been the citizen of a large place. As a statesman he was naturally the advocate of something special and sectional, something not the whole.
Distinguished in the Legislature, he was elected, late in 1810, by a very great majority, to represent his district in Congress. In May, 1811, he was married to a second-cousin, Floride Calhoun, who brought a considerable accession to his slender estate. November 4, 1811, he took his seat in the House of Representatives. Thus, at the early age of twenty-nine, he was fairly launched into public life, with the advantage, usually enjoyed then by Southern members, of being independent in his circumstances. Though unknown to the country, his fame had preceded him to Washington; and the Speaker, Mr. Clay, gave him a place on the Committee on Foreign Relations. This Committee, considering that Congress had been summoned a month earlier than usual for the express purpose of dealing with foreign relations, was at once the most important and the most conspicuous committee of the House.
Mr. Calhoun's first session gave him national reputation, and made him a leader of the war party in Congress. We could perhaps saytheleader, since Mr. Clay was not upon the floor. After surveying the novel scene around him for six weeks, he delivered his maiden speech,—a plain, forcible, not extraordinary argument in favor of preparing for war. It was prodigiously successful, so far as the reputation of the speaker was concerned. Members gathered round to congratulate the young orator; and Father Ritchie (if he was a father then) "hailed this young Carolinian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names upon the age in which they live." This speech contains one passage which savors of the "chivalric" taint, and indicates the provincial mind. In replying to the objection founded on the expenses of a war, he said:
"I enter my solemn protest against this low and 'calculating avarice' entering this hall of legislation. It isonly fit for shops and counting-houses, and ought not to disgrace the seat of power by its squalid aspect. Whenever it touches sovereign power, the nation is ruined. It is too short-sighted to defend itself. It is a compromising spirit, always ready to yield a part to save the residue. It is too timid to have in itself the laws of self-preservation. Sovereign power is never safe but under the shield of honor."
This was thought very fine talk in those simple days among the simpleSouthern country members.
As the session progressed, Mr. Calhoun spoke frequently, and with greater effect. Wisely he never spoke. In his best efforts we see that something which we know not what to name, unless we call itSouthernism. If it were allowable to use a slang expression, we should style the passages to which we refer effective bosh. The most telling passage in the most telling speech which he delivered at this session may serve to illustrate our meaning. Imagine these short, vigorous sentences uttered with great rapidity, in a loud, harsh voice, and with energy the most intense:—
"Tie down a hero, and he feels the puncture of a pin; throw him into battle, and he is almost insensible to vital gashes. So in war. Impelled alternately by hope and fear, stimulated by revenge, depressed by shame, or elevated by victory, the people become invincible. No privation can shake their fortitude; no calamity break their spirit. Even when equally successful, the contrast between the two systems is striking. War and restriction may leave the country equally exhausted; but the latter not only leaves you poor, but, even when successful, dispirited, divided, discontented, with diminished patriotism, and the morals of a considerable portion of your people corrupted. Not so in war. In that state, the common danger unites all, strengthens the bonds of society, and feeds the flame of patriotism. The national character mounts to energy. In exchange for the expenses and privations of war, you obtain military and naval skill, and a more perfect organization of such parts of your administration as are connected with the science of national defence. Sir, are these advantages to be counted as trifles in the present state of the world? Can they be measured by moneyed valuation? I would prefer a single victory over the enemy, by sea or land, to all the good we shall ever derive from the continuation of the Non-importation act. I know not that a victory would produce an equal pressure on the enemy; but I am certain of what is of greater consequence, it would be accompanied by more salutary effects to ourselves. The memory of Saratoga, Princeton, and Eutaw is immortal. It is there you will find the country's boast and pride,—the inexhaustible source of great and heroic sentiments. But what will history say of restriction? What examples worthy of imitation will it furnish to posterity? What pride, what pleasure will our children find in the events of such times? Let me not be considered romantic. This nation ought to be taught to rely on its courage, its fortitude, its skill and virtue, for protection. These are the only safeguards in the hour of danger. Man was endued with these great qualities for his defence. There is nothing about him that indicates that he is to conquer by endurance. He is not incrusted in a shell; he is not taught to rely upon his insensibility, his passive suffering, for defence. No, sir; it is on the invincible mind, on a magnanimous nature, he ought to rely. Here is the superiority of our kind; it is these that render man the lord of the world. Nations rise above nations, as they are endued in a greater degree with these brilliant qualities."
This passage is perfectly characteristic of Calhoun, whose speeches present hundreds of such inextricable blendings of truth and falsehood.
We have the written testimony of an honorable man, still living, Commodore Charles Stewart, U. S. N., that John C. Calhoun was a conscious traitor to the Union as early as 1812. In December of that year, Captain Stewart's ship, the Constitution, was refitting at the Washington Navy Yard, and the Captain was boarding at Mrs. Bushby's, with Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun, and many other Republican members. Conversing one evening with the new member from South Carolina, he told him that he was "puzzled" to account for the close alliance which existed between the Southern planters and the Northern Democracy.
"You," said Captain Stewart,
"in the South and Southwest, are decidedly the aristocratic portion of this Union; you are so in holding persons in perpetuity in slavery; you are so in every domestic quality, so in every habit in your lives, living, and actions, so in habits, customs, intercourse, and manners; you neither work with your hands, heads, nor any machinery, but live and have your living, not in accordance with the will of your Creator, but by the sweat of slavery, and yet you assume all the attributes, professions, and advantages of democracy."
Mr. Calhoun, aged thirty, replied thus to Captain Stewart, aged thirty-four:—
"I see you speak through the head of a young statesman, and from the heart of a patriot, but you lose sight of the politician and the sectional policy of the people. I admit your conclusions in respect to us Southrons. That we are essentially aristocratic, I cannot deny; but we can and do yield much to democracy. This is our sectional policy; we are from necessity thrown upon and solemnly wedded to that party, however it may occasionally clash with our feelings, for the conservation of our interests. It is through our affiliation with that party in the Middle and Western States that we hold power; but when we cease thus to control this nation through a disjointed democracy, or any material obstacle in that party which shall tend to throw us out of that rule and control, we shall then resort to the dissolution of the Union. The compromises in the Constitution, under the circumstances, were sufficient for our fathers, but, under the altered condition of our country from that period, leave to the South no resource but dissolution; for no amendments to the Constitution could be reached through a convention of the people under their three-fourths rule."
Probably all of our readers have seen this conversation in print before. But it is well for us to consider it again and again. It is the key to all the seeming inconsistencies of Mr. Calhoun's career. He came up to Congress, and took the oath to support the Constitution, secretly resolved to break up the country just as soon as the Southern planters ceased to control it for the maintenance of their peculiar interest. The reader will note, too, the distinction made by this young man, who was never youthful, between the "statesman" and the "politician," and between the "heart of a patriot" and "the sectional policy of the people."
Turning from his loathsome and despicable exposition to the Congressional career of Mr. Calhoun, we find no indication there of the latent traitor. He was merely a very active, energetic member of the Republican party; supporting the war by assiduous labors in committee, and by intense declamation of the kind of which we have given a specimen. In all his speeches there is not a touch of greatness. He declared that Demosthenes was his model,—an orator who was a master of all the arts? all the artifices, and all the tricks by which a mass of ignorant and turbulent hearers can be kept attentive, but who has nothing to impart to a member of Congress who honestly desires to convince his equals. Mr. Calhoun's harangues in the supposed Demosthenean style gave him, however, great reputation out of doors, while his diligence, his dignified and courteous manners, gained him warm admirers on the floor. He was a messmate of Mr. Clay at this time. Besides agreeing in politics, they were on terms of cordial personal intimacy. Henry Clay, Speaker of the House, was but five years older than Calhoun, and in everything but years much younger. Honest patriots pointed to these young men with pride and hope, congratulating each other that, though the Revolutionary statesmen were growing old and passing away, the high places of the Republic would be filled, in due time, by men worthy to succeed them.
When the war was over, a strange thing was to be noted in the politics of the United States: the Federal party was dead, but the Republican party had adopted its opinions. The disasters of the war had convinced almost every man of the necessity of investing the government with the power to wield the resources of the country more readily; and, accordingly, we find leading Republicans, like Judge Story, John Quincy Adams, and Mr. Clay, favoring the measures which had formerly been the special rallying-cries of the Federalists. Judge Story spoke the feeling of his party when he wrote, in 1815:
"Let us extend the national authority over the whole extent of power given by the Constitution. Let us have great military and naval schools, an adequate regular army, the broad foundations laid of a permanent navy, a national bank, a national bankrupt act,"
etc., etc. The strict-constructionists were almost silenced in the general cry, "Let us be a Nation." In the support ofallthe measures to which this feeling gave rise, especially the national bank, internal improvements, and a protective tariff, Mr. Calhoun went as far as any man, and farther than most; for such at that time was the humor of the planters.
To the principle of a protective tariff he was peculiarly committed. It had not been his intention to take part in the debates on the Tariff Bill of 1816. On the 6th of April, while he was busy writing in a committee-room, Mr. Samuel D. Ingham of Pennsylvania, his particular friend and political ally, came to him and said that the House had fallen into some confusion while discussing the tariff bill, and added, that, as it was "difficult to rally so large a body when once broken on a tax bill," he wished Mr. Calhoun would speak on the question in order to keep the House together. "What can I say?" replied the member from South Carolina. Mr. Ingham, however, persisted, and Mr. Calhoun addressed the House. An amendment had just been introduced to leave cotton goods unprotected, a proposition which had been urged on the ground that Congress had no authority to impose any duty except for revenue. On rising to speak, Mr. Calhoun at once, and most unequivocally, committed himself to the protective principle. He began by saying, that,if the right to protect had not been called in question, he would not have spoken at all. It was solely to assist in establishingthatright that he had been induced, without previous preparation, to take part in the debate. He then proceeded to deliver an ordinary protectionist speech; without, however, entering upon the questioner constitutional right. He merely dwelt upon the great benefits to be derived from affording to our infant manufactures "immediate and ample protection." That the Constitution interposed no obstacle, was assumed by him throughout. He concluded by observing, that a flourishing manufacturing interest would "bind together more closely our widely-spread republic," since
"it will greatly increase our mutual dependence and intercourse, and excite an increased attention to internal improvements,—a subject every way so intimately connected with the ultimate attainment of national strength and the perfection of our political institutions."
He further observed, that "the liberty and union of this country are inseparable," and that the destruction of either would involve the destruction of the other. He concluded his speech with these words: "Disunion,—this single word comprehends almost the sum of our political dangers, and against it we ought to be perpetually guarded."
The time has passed for any public man to claim credit for "consistency." A person who, after forty years of public life, can truly say that he has never changed an opinion, must be either a demigod or a fool. We do not blame Mr. Calhoun for ceasing to be a protectionist and becoming a free-trader; for half the thinking world has changed sides on that question during the last thirty years. A growing mind must necessarily change its opinions. But thereisa consistency from which no man, public or private, can ever be absolved,—the consistency of his statements with fact. In the year 1833, in his speech on the Force Bill, Mr. Calhoun referred to his tariff speech of 1816 in a manner which excludes him from the ranks of men of honor. He had the astonishing audacity to say:
"I am constrained in candor to acknowledge, for I wish to disguise nothing, that the protective principle was recognized by the Act of 1816. How this was overlooked at the time, it is not in my power to say.It escaped my observation, which I can account for only on the ground that the principle was new, and that my attention was engaged by another important subject."
The charitable reader may interpose here, and say that Mr. Calhoun may have forgotten his speech of 1816. Alas! no. He had that speech before him at the time. Vigilant opponents had unearthed it, and kindly presented a copy to the author. We do not believe that, in all the debates of the American Congress, there is another instance of flat falsehood as bad as this. It happens that the speech of 1816 and that of 1833 are both published in the same volume of the Works of Mr. Calhoun (Vol. II. pp. 163 and 197). We advise our readers who have the time and opportunity to read both, if they wish to see how a false position necessitates a false tongue. Those who take our advice will also discover why it was that Mr. Calhoun dared to utter such an impudent falsehood: his speeches are such appallingly dull reading, that there was very little risk of a busy people's comparing the interpretation with the text.
It was John C. Calhoun who, later in the same session, introduced the bill for setting apart the dividends and bonus of the United States Bank as a permanent fund for internal improvements. His speech on this bill, besides going all lengths in favor of the internal improvement system, presents some amusing contrasts with his later speeches on the same subject. His hearers of 1835 to 1850 must have smiled on reading in the speech of 1817 such sentences as these:—
"I am no advocate forrefined argumentson the Constitution. The instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his ingenuity on. It ought to be construed with plain good-sense." "If we are restricted in the use of our money to the enumerated powers, on what principle can the purchase of Louisiana be justified?" "The uniform sense of Congress and the country furnishes better evidence of the true interpretation of the Constitution than the most refined and subtle arguments."
Mark this, too:—
"In a country so extensive and so various in its interests, what is necessary for the common interest may apparently be opposed to the interest of particular sections.It must be submitted to as the condition of our greatness."
Well might he say, in the same speech:—
"We may reasonably raise our eyes to a most splendid future, if we only act in a manner worthy of our advantages. If, however, neglecting them, we permit a low, sordid, selfish,sectionalspirit to take possession of this House, this happy scene will vanish. We will divide; and, in its consequences, will follow misery and despotism."
With this speech before him and before the country, Mr. Calhoun had 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 hadinclinedto 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.