Famous Americans of Recent Times Part 8

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 a.s.sisted 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, pa.s.sed 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 compet.i.tors 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 a.s.siduously 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 quant.i.ty, 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 a.s.sailed. 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 l.u.s.ted 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, Ca.s.s, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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.

He was, of course, soon involved in a snarl of contradictions, from which he never could disentangle himself. Let us pa.s.s to the year 1828, a most important one in the history of the country and of Mr.

Calhoun; for then occurred the first of the long series of events which terminated with the surrender of the last Rebel army in 1865.

The first act directly tending to a war between the South and the United States bears date December 6, 1828; and it was the act of John C. Calhoun.

It was the year of that Presidential election which placed Andrew Jackson in the White House, and re-elected Mr. Calhoun to the Vice-Presidency. It was the year that terminated the honorable part of Mr. Calhoun's career and began the dishonorable. His political position in the canva.s.s was utterly false, as he himself afterwards confessed. On the one hand, he was supporting for the Presidency a man committed to the policy of protection; and on the other, he became the organ and mouthpiece of the Southern party, whose opposition to the protective principle was tending to the point of armed resistance to it. The tariff bill of 1828, which they termed the bill of abominations, had excited the most heated opposition in the cotton States, and especially in South Carolina. This act was pa.s.sed in the spring of the very year in which those States voted for a man who had publicly endorsed the principle involved in it; and we see Mr. Calhoun heading the party who were electioneering for Jackson, and the party who were considering the policy of nullifying the act which he had approved. His Presidential aspirations bound him to the support of General Jackson; but the first, the fundamental necessity of his position was to hold possession of South Carolina.

The burden of Mr. Calhoun's later speeches was the reconciliation of the last part of his public life with the first. The task was difficult, for there is not a leading proposition in his speeches after 1830 which is not refuted by arguments to be found in his public utterances before 1828. In his speech on the Force Bill, in 1834, he volunteered an explanation of the apparent inconsistency between his support of General Jackson in 1828, and his authors.h.i.+p of the "South Carolina Exposition" in the same year. Falsehood and truth are strangely interwoven in almost every sentence of his later writings; and there is also that vagueness in them which comes of a superfluity of words. He says, that for the strict-constructionist party to have presented a candidate openly and fully identified with their opinions would have been to court defeat; and thus they were obliged either to abandon the contest, or to select a candidate "whose opinions were intermediate or doubtful on the subject which divided the two sections,"--a candidate "who, at best, was but a choice of evils."

Besides, General Jackson was a Southern man, and it was hoped that, notwithstanding his want of experience, knowledge, and self-control, the advisers whom he would invite to a.s.sist him would compensate for those defects. Then Mr. Calhoun proceeds to state, that the contest turned chiefly upon the question of protection or free trade; and the strife was, which of the two parties should go farthest in the advocacy of protection. The result was, he says, that the tariff bill of 1828 was pa.s.sed,--"that disastrous measure which has brought so many calamities upon us, and put in peril the liberty and union of the country," and "poured millions into the treasury beyond the most extravagant wants of the country."

The pa.s.sage of this tariff bill was accomplished by the tact of Martin Van Buren, aided by Major Eaton, Senator from Tennessee. Mr. Van Buren was the predestined chief of General Jackson's Cabinet, and Major Eaton was the confidant, agent, and travelling manager of the Jacksonian wire-pullers, besides being the General's own intimate friend. The events of that session notified Mr. Calhoun that, however manageable General Jackson might be, he was not likely to fall into the custody of the Vice-President. General Jackson's election being considered certain, the question was alone interesting, who should possess him for the purposes of the succession. The prospect, as surveyed that winter from the Vice-President's chair, was not a.s.suring to the occupant of that lofty seat. If General Jackson could not be used as a fulcrum for the further elevation of Mr. Calhoun, would it not be advisable to begin to cast about for another?

The tariff bill of 1828 was pa.s.sed before the Presidential canva.s.s had set in with its last severity. There was time for Mr. Calhoun to withdraw from the support of the man whose nearest friends had carried it through the Senate under his eyes. He did not do so. He went home, after the adjournment of Congress, to labor with all his might for the election of a protectionist, and to employ his leisure hours in the composition of that once famous paper called the "South Carolina Exposition," in which protection was declared to be an evil so intolerable as to justify the nullification of an act founded upon it.

This Exposition was the beginning of our woe,--the baleful egg from which were hatched nullification, treason, civil war, and the desolation of the Southern States. Here is Mr. Calhoun's own account of the manner in which what he correctly styles "_the double operation_" was "pushed on" in the summer of 1828:--

"This disastrous event [the pa.s.sage of the tariff bill of 1828] opened our eyes (I mean myself and those immediately connected with me) as to the full extent of the danger and oppression of the protective system, and the hazard of failing to effect the reform intended through the election of General Jackson. With these disclosures, it became necessary to seek some other ultimate, but more certain measure of protection. We turned to the Const.i.tution to find this remedy. We directed a more diligent and careful scrutiny into its provisions, in order to understand fully the nature and character of our political system. We found a certain and effectual remedy in that great fundamental division of the powers of the system between this government and its independent co-ordinates, the separate governments of the States,--to be called into action to arrest the unconst.i.tutional acts of this government by the interposition of the States,--the paramount source from which both governments derive their power. But in relying on this our ultimate remedy, we did not abate our zeal in the Presidential canva.s.s; we still hoped that General Jackson, if elected, would effect the necessary reform, and thereby supersede the necessity for calling into action the sovereign authority of the State, which we were anxious to avoid. With these views the two were pushed with equal zeal at the same time; which double operation commenced in the fall of 1828, but a few months after the pa.s.sage of the tariff act of that year; and at the meeting of the Legislature of the State, at the same period, a paper known as the South Carolina Exposition was reported to that body, containing a full development, as well on the const.i.tutional point as on the operation of the protective system, preparatory to a state of things which might eventually render the action of the State necessary in order to protect her rights and interest, and to stay a course of policy which we believed would, if not arrested, prove destructive of liberty and the Const.i.tution."--_Works_, II. 396.

Mr. Calhoun omits, however, to mention that the Exposition was not presented to the Legislature of South Carolina until after the Presidential election had been decided. Nor did he inform his hearers that the author of the paper was Mr. Vice-President Calhoun. Either there was a great dearth of literary ability in that body, or else Mr.

Calhoun had little confidence in it; for nearly all the ponderous doc.u.ments on nullification given to the world in its name were penned by Mr. Calhoun, and appear in his collected works. If the Legislature addressed its const.i.tuents or the people of the United States on _this_ subject, it was he who prepared the draft. The South Carolina Exposition was found among his papers in his own handwriting, and it was adopted by the Legislature with only a few alterations and suppressions. There never was a piece of mischief more completely the work of one man than the nullification troubles of 1833-34.

The South Carolina Exposition, when Mr. Calhoun had completed it, was brought before the public by one of the usual methods. The Legislature of South Carolina pa.s.sed the following resolutions:--

"_Resolved_, That it is expedient to protest against the unconst.i.tutional and oppressive operation of the system of protective duties, and to have such protest entered on the journals of the Senate of the United States. Also, to make a public exposition of our wrongs, and of the remedies within our power, to be communicated to our sister States, with a request that they will co-operate with this State in procuring a repeal of the tariff for protection, and an abandonment of the principle; and if the repeal be not procured, that they will co-operate in such measures as may be necessary for averting the evil.

"_Resolved_, That a committee of seven be raised to carry the foregoing resolution into effect."

The resolution having been carried, the following gentlemen were appointed to father Mr. Calhoun's paper: James Gregg, D.L. Wardlaw, Hugh S. Legare, Arthur P. Hayne, William C. Preston, William Elliott, and R. Barnwell Smith. The duty of this committee consisted in causing a copy of Mr. Calhoun's paper to be made and presenting it to the Legislature. This was promptly done; and the Exposition was adopted by the Legislature on the 6th of December, 1828. Whether any protest was forwarded to the Secretary of the United States Senate for insertion in the journal does not appear. We only know that five thousand copies of this wearisome and stupid Exposition were ordered to be printed, and that in the hubbub of the incoming of a new administration it attracted scarcely any attention beyond the little knot of original nullifiers. Indeed, Mr. Calhoun's writings on this subject were "protected" by their own length and dulness. No creature ever read one of them quite through, except for a special purpose.

The leading a.s.sertions of this Exposition are these:--1. Every duty imposed for protection is a violation of the Const.i.tution, which empowers Congress to impose taxes for revenue only. 2. The _whole_ burden of the protective system is borne by agriculture and commerce.

3. The _whole_ of the advantages of protection accrue to the manufacturing States. 4. In other words, the South, the Southwest, and two or three commercial cities, support the government, and pour a stream of treasure into the coffers of manufacturers. 5. The result must soon be, that the people of South Carolina will have either to abandon the culture of rice and cotton, and remove to some other country, or else to become a manufacturing community, which would only be ruin in another form.

Lest the reader should find it impossible to believe that any man out of a lunatic asylum could publish such propositions as this last, we will give the pa.s.sage. Mr. Calhoun is endeavoring to show that Europe will at length retaliate by placing high duties upon American cotton and rice. At least that appears to be what he is aiming at.

"We already see indications of a commercial warfare, the termination of which no one can conjecture, though our fate may easily be. The last remains of our great and once flouris.h.i.+ng agriculture must be annihilated in the conflict.

In the first instance we will[1] be thrown on the home market, which cannot consume a fourth of our products; and, instead of supplying the world, as we would with free trade, we would be compelled to abandon the cultivation of three fourths of what we now raise, and receive for the residue whatever the manufacturers, who would then have their policy consummated by the entire possession of our market, might choose to give. Forced to abandon our ancient and favorite pursuit, to which our soil, climate, habits, and peculiar labor are adapted, at an immense sacrifice of property, we would be compelled, without capital, experience, or skill, and with a population untried in such pursuits, to attempt to become the rivals, instead of the customers, of the manufacturing States. The result is not doubtful. If they, by superior capital and skill, should keep down successful compet.i.tion on our part, we would be doomed to toil at our unprofitable agriculture,--selling at the prices which a single and very limited market might give. But, on the contrary, if our necessity should triumph over their capital and skill, if, instead of raw cotton we should s.h.i.+p to the manufacturing States cotton yarn and cotton goods, the thoughtful must see that it would inevitably bring about a state of things which could not long continue. _Those who now make war on our gains would then make it on our labor_.

They would not tolerate that those who now cultivate our plantations, and furnish them with the material and the market for the product of their arts, should, by becoming their rivals, take bread from the mouths of their wives and children. The committee will not pursue this painful subject; but as they clearly see that the system if not arrested, must bring the country to this hazardous extremity, neither prudence nor patriotism would permit them to pa.s.s it by without raising a warning voice against an evil of so menacing a character."--_Works_, VI. 12.

The only question which arises in the mind of present readers of such pa.s.sages (which abound in the writings of Mr. Calhoun) is this: Were they the chimeras of a morbid, or the utterances of a false mind?

Those who knew him differ in opinion on this point. For our part, we believe such pa.s.sages to have been inserted for the sole purpose of alarming the people of South Carolina, so as to render them the more subservient to his will. It is the stale trick of the demagogue, as well as of the false priest, to subjugate the mind by terrifying it.

Mr. Calhoun concludes his Exposition by bringing forward his remedy for the frightful evils which he had conjured up. That remedy, of course, was nullification. The State of South Carolina, after giving due warning, must declare the protective acts "null and void" in the State of South Carolina after a certain date; and then, unless Congress repealed them in time, refuse obedience to them. Whether this should be done by the Legislature or by a convention called for the purpose, Mr. Calhoun would not say; but he evidently preferred a convention. He advised, however, that nothing be done hastily; that time should be afforded to the dominant majority for further reflection. Delay, he remarked, was the more to be recommended, because of

"the great political revolution which will displace from power, on the 4th of March next, those who have acquired authority by setting the will of the people at defiance, and which will bring in an eminent citizen, distinguished for his services to his country and his justice and patriotism";

under whom, it was hoped, there would be "a complete restoration, of the pure principles of our government." This pa.s.sage Mr. Calhoun could write _after_ witnessing the manoeuvres of Mr. Van Buren and Mr.

Eaton! If the friends of Mr. Adams had set the will of the people at defiance on the tariff question, what had the supporters of General Jackson done? In truth, this menace of nullification was the second string to the bow of the Vice-President. It was not yet ascertained which was going to possess and use General Jackson,--the placid and flexible Van Buren, or the headstrong, short-sighted, and uncomfortable Calhoun. Nullification, as he used daily to declare, was a "reserved power."

At the time of General Jackson's inauguration, it would have puzzled an acute politician to decide which of the two aspirants had the best chance of succeeding the General. The President seemed equally well affected toward both. One was Secretary of State, the other Vice-President. Van Buren, inheriting the political tactics of Burr, was lord paramount in the great State of New York, and Calhoun was all-powerful in his own State and very influential in all the region of cotton and rice. In the Cabinet Calhoun had two friends, and one tried and devoted ally (Ingham), while Van Buren could only boast of Major Eaton, Secretary of War; and the tie that bound them together was political far more than personal. In the public mind, Calhoun towered above his rival, for he had been longer in the national councils, had held offices that drew upon him the attention of the whole country, and had formerly been distinguished as an orator. If any one had been rash enough in 1829 to intimate to Mr. Calhoun that Martin Van Buren stood before the country on a par with himself, he would have pitied the ignorance of that rash man.

Under despotic governments, like those of Louis XIV. and Andrew Jackson, no calculation can be made as to the future of any public man, because his future depends upon the caprice of the despot, which cannot be foretold. Six short weeks--nay, not so much, not six--sufficed to estrange the mind of the President from Calhoun, and implant within him a pa.s.sion to promote the interests of Van Buren.

Our readers, we presume, all know how this was brought to pa.s.s. It was simply that Mr. Calhoun would _not_, and Mr. Van Buren _would_ call upon Mrs. Eaton. All the other influences that were brought to bear upon the President's singular mind were nothing in comparison with this. Daniel Webster uttered only the truth when he wrote, at the time, to his friend Dutton, that the "Aaron's serpent among the President's desires was a settled purpose of making out the lady, of whom so much has been said, a person of reputation"; and that this ridiculous affair would "probably determine who should be the successor to the present chief magistrate." It had precisely that effect. We have shown elsewhere the successive manoeuvres by which this was effected, and how vigorously but unskillfully Calhoun struggled to avert his fate. We cannot and need not repeat the story; nor can we go over again the history of the Nullification imbroglio, which began with the South Carolina Exposition in 1828, and ended very soon after Calhoun had received a private notification that the instant news reached Was.h.i.+ngton of an overt act of treason in South Carolina, the author and fomenter of that treason would be arrested and held for trial as a traitor.

One fact alone suffices to prove that, in bringing on the Nullification troubles, Calhoun's motive was factious. When General Jackson saw the coming storm, he did two things. First, he prepared to maintain the authority of the United States by force. Secondly, he used all his influence with Congress to have the cause of Southern discontent removed. General Jackson felt that the argument of the anti-tariff men, in view of the speedy extinction of the national debt, was unanswerable. He believed it was absurd to go on raising ten or twelve millions a year more than the government could spend, merely for the sake of protecting Northern manufactures. Accordingly, a bill was introduced which aimed to do just what the nullifiers had been clamoring for, that is, to reduce the revenue to the amount required by the government. If Mr. Calhoun had supported this measure, he could have carried it. He gave it no support; but exerted all his influence in favor of the Clay Compromise, which was expressly intended to save as much of the protective system as could be saved, and which reduced duties gradually, instead of suddenly. Rather than permit the abhorred administration to have the glory of pacificating the country, this lofty Roman stooped to a coalition with his personal enemy, Henry Clay, the champion and the soul of the protectionist party.

No words can depict the bitterness of Calhoun's disappointment and mortification at being distanced by a man whom he despised so cordially as he did Van Buren. To comprehend it, his whole subsequent career must be studied. The numerous covert allusions to the subject in his speeches and writings are surcharged with rancor; and it was observed that, whenever his mind reverted to it, his manner, the tone of his voice, and every gesture testified to the intensity of his feelings. "Every Southern man," said he on one occasion,

"who is true to the interests of his section, and faithful to the duties which Providence has allotted him, will be forever excluded from the honors and emoluments of this government, which will be reserved only for those who have qualified themselves by political prost.i.tution for admission into the Magdalen Asylum."

His face, too, from this time, a.s.sumed that haggard, cast-iron, intense, introverted aspect which struck every beholder.

Miss Martineau, in her Retrospect of Western Travel, has given us some striking and valuable glimpses of the eminent men of that period, particularly of the three most eminent, who frequently visited her during her stay in Was.h.i.+ngton. This pa.s.sage, for example, is highly interesting.

"Mr. Clay sitting upright on the sofa, with his snuffbox ever in his hand, would discourse for many an hour in his even, soft, deliberate tone, on any one of the great subjects of American policy which we might happen to start, always amazing us with the moderation of estimate and speech which so impetuous a nature has been able to attain. Mr.

Webster, leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking jokes, shaking the sofa with burst after burst of laughter, or smoothly discoursing to the perfect felicity of the logical part of one's const.i.tution, would illuminate an evening now and then. Mr. Calhoun, the cast-iron man, who looks as if he had never been born and could never be extinguished, would come in sometimes to keep our understandings on a painful stretch for a short while, and leave us to take to pieces his close, rapid, theoretical, ill.u.s.trated talk, and see what we could make of it. We found it usually more worth retaining as a curiosity, than as either very just or useful. His speech abounds in figures, truly ill.u.s.trative, if that which they ill.u.s.trate were true also. But his theories of government (almost the only subject upon which his thoughts are employed), the squarest and compactest that ever were made, are composed out of limited elements, and are not, therefore, likely to stand service very well. It is at first extremely interesting to hear Mr. Calhoun talk; and there is a never-failing evidence of power in all that he says and does, which commands intellectual reverence; but the admiration is too soon turned into regret, into absolute melancholy. It is impossible to resist the conviction, that all this force can be at best but useless, and is but too likely to be very mischievous. _His mind has long lost all power of communicating with any other_. I know of no man who lives in such utter intellectual solitude. He meets men and harangues by the fireside as in the Senate; he is wrought like a piece of machinery, set going vehemently by a weight, and stops while you answer; he either pa.s.ses by what you say, or twists it into a suitability with what is in his head, and begins to lecture again. Of course, a mind like this can have little influence in the Senate, except by virtue, perpetually wearing out, of what it did in its less eccentric days; but its influence at home is to be dreaded.

There is no hope that an intellect so cast in narrow theories will accommodate itself to varying circ.u.mstances; and there is every danger that it will break up all that it can in order to remould the materials in its own way. Mr.

Calhoun is as full as ever of his Nullification doctrines; and those who know the force that is in him, and his utter incapacity of modification by other minds, (after having gone through as remarkable a revolution of political opinion as perhaps any man ever experienced,) will no more expect repose and self-retention from him than from a volcano in full force. Relaxation is no longer in the power of his will. I never saw any one who so completely gave me the idea of possession. Half an hour's conversation with him is enough to make a necessitarian of anybody. Accordingly, he is more complained of than blamed by his enemies. His moments of softness by his family, and when recurring to old college days, are hailed by all as a relief to the vehement working of the intellectual machine,--a relief equally to himself and others. These moments are as touching to the observer as tears on the face of a soldier."

Of his appearance in the Senate, and of his manner of speaking, Miss Martineau records her impressions also:--

"Mr. Calhoun's countenance first fixed my attention; the splendid eye, the straight forehead, surmounted by a load of stiff, upright, dark hair, the stern brow, the inflexible mouth,--it is one of the most remarkable heads in the country."

"Mr. Calhoun followed, and impressed me very strongly. While he kept to the question, what he said was close, good, and moderate, though delivered in rapid speech, and with a voice not sufficiently modulated. But when he began to reply to a taunt of Colonel Benton's, that he wanted to be President, the force of his speaking became painful. He made protestations which it seemed to strangers had better have been spared, 'that he would not turn on his heel to be President,' and that 'he had given up all for his own brave, magnanimous little State of South Carolina.' While thus protesting, his eyes flashed, his brow seemed charged with thunder, his voice became almost a bark, and his sentences were abrupt, intense, producing in the auditory a sort of laugh which is squeezed out of people by the application of a very sudden mental force. I believe he knew not what a revelation he made in a few sentences. _They were to us strangers the key, not only to all that was said and done by the South Carolina party during the remainder of the session, but to many things at Charleston and Columbia which would otherwise have pa.s.sed un.o.bserved and unexplained_."

This intelligent observer saw the chieftain on his native heath:--

"During my stay in Charleston, Mr. Calhoun and his family arrived from Congress, and there was something very striking in the welcome he received, like that of a chief returned to the bosom of his clan. He stalked about like a monarch of the little domain, and there was certainly an air of mysterious understanding between him and his followers."