The Brothers' War Part 5

The more I study the abolitionists whom I distinguish as root-and-branch, the more completely self-deceived as to facts, the wilder and more emotional I find them to be. I have just mentioned some of their misrepresentations; and in later chapters I shall dwell upon their cardinal mistake as to the place of the negro in the human scale. I have not sufficient s.p.a.ce for more of these things. I will give just one example of their wildness. They put in circulation that Toombs had said he expected some day to call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument,--a slander which they persisted in renewing after he had solemnly and publicly denied it.[40] In their excited imaginations they were sure that the south was cheris.h.i.+ng a scheme by which, under the help of the court that made the Dred Scott decision, slavery was to be established and protected by law everywhere in the north. The only parallel I can think of to this utterly groundless panic is that of some poor souls in the Confederate ranks in front of Richmond in 1862, who, when they learned that Jackson had got in the enemy's rear, expressed lively fears that he was going to drive McClellan's army over them.

And the fire-eaters,--how they got important facts wrong! They habitually said that the northern ma.s.ses were too untruthful and dishonest for us of the south to stay in the partners.h.i.+p without disgrace and loss of self-respect. I heard of one who was wont gravely to a.s.sert that prost.i.tutes and ice were all that the south was dependent upon the north for; and these were only luxuries which it was better to do without.

Perhaps the height of falsification by the hotspurs was the a.s.sertion, made everywhere again and again, that northerners were such cowards that, even if they were spurred into a war in defence of the union, any one average southerner would prove an overmatch for any five of them.

It is now high time that each section turn resolutely away from these fanatics, and the literature which they have made or informed, to seek right instruction as to slavery, the struggle over it, the characters of the ma.s.ses on each side and of their leaders, and all other belonging details, in the real facts. Especially must we understand the internecine duel between free labor and slavery, and what was the purpose of the directors of evolution placing the fanatical abolitionist and the fire-eater upon the stage. When we grasp that purpose clearly, how pretentious do we understand their claims and self-laudation to be, and how clearly we see that they are like the fly on the cart-wheel that became so vain of the great dust it was raising, and also like the little fice egging on the big dogs to do their fighting. I have still vivid recollections of hearing in amicable interviews of hostile pickets these characters denounced for keeping out of the war which, as was then said, they had caused,--the fanatical abolitionists denounced by the federals, the fire-eaters, original secessionists, the blue c.o.c.kade wearers, by the confederates.

CHAPTER VII

CALHOUN

After John Caldwell Calhoun, who was born March 18, 1782, the birth-year of Webster, had become large enough to go to the field, the most of his time until he was eighteen was spent in work on the plantation. His father had never had but six months' schooling. There were no schools in that region except a few "old field" ones, where the three R's only were taught. To one of these John went for a few months. The boy learned to read, and manifestly he had acquired some habit of reading. In his thirteenth year he was sent to school to his brother-in-law, Moses Waddell, who was an unusually good teacher. He found a circulating library in the house. This was his first access to books. He read old Rollin, and he probably moused about in Robertson's History of America and Life of Charles V, and Voltaire's Charles XII. Having laid Rollin aside, he a.s.sailed Locke's famous Essay; but when he got to the chapter on Infinity his health had become bad, doubtless due to his change from active to sedentary habits and from physical to mental activity. So he was taken back to his work at home. His father had died in the meanwhile, and his mother, who had great business talent, taught him, as we are told, "how to administer the affairs of a plantation."[41] It will appear in the sequel that he was superbly trained.[42] When he attained the age of eighteen the family had become convinced that he ought to be got ready for a profession. John, knowing himself to be the mainstay of his mother, and having resolved to be a planter, at first would not hear to this. But the family persisted. This doubtless influenced him to turn the subject carefully over in his mind; and the decision which he made showed an understanding of his own peculiar talents and needs, and also a prescience of his future which, when his youth, small opportunity of observation, and want of schooling are remembered, are very wonderful. He gave this family, who were not well-to-do, to understand he would not accept a limited and makes.h.i.+ft education. Naturally they asked what sort did he mean, and he answered, "The best school, college, and legal education to be had in the United States."[43] Then they asked, How long did he think all this would take, and he promptly answered seven years. To the average reader it seems that the time necessary to carry this unschooled lad through the course he proposed had been egregiously underestimated by him; but to the family, as they thought of the appertaining annual expenses, it must have looked very long. They had to give in. That irrefragable influence over his people which showed itself as soon as he came upon the public stage begins here.

Some one long afterwards said of him, that if he could but talk with every man he would always have the whole United States on his side. It is more than probable that in the five years after he had left Waddell's school he had, in plantation management and other interests of the family, convinced them that he always acted or advised wisely. Another comment is in place here. Study of the record of his early life convinces you that very soon after, if not before, the commencement of his legal studies, he decided to make law only a stepping-stone by which to enter public life and also acquire the means to plant. I cannot help inferring that this was--somewhat vaguely it may be--his intention already formed when he dictated terms to the family as just told. It is not at all impossible that to him who afterwards astonished the world by the sureness of his prophecy there had even then been revealed the career awaiting; and so he resolved to get ready for college in two years, and pa.s.s the rest of the seven where, besides competent instructors, he would have cultivated society, libraries, and the best of opportunities to qualify himself for public life. Be our conjecture true or not, in two years after he had opened his Latin grammar he entered the junior cla.s.s at Yale, and two years later he graduated with credit. After reading law in an office he took a year's course at the Litchfield law school in Connecticut, and then he went into an office again for a while. Some time in June, 1807, he hung out his s.h.i.+ngle at Abbeville Court-house, as it was called up to the time of reconstruction. A few days afterwards in that month occurred the attack on the Chesapeake, and when the news came it caused a public meeting in the town. Some good report of him must have been bruited about in the community in advance of his coming. It is almost certain that his education had greatly developed those powers of conversation mentioned above, and that many listeners had greatly approved his views of the outrage, and the patriotic indignation he uttered over it. It is not stretching probability too far to a.s.sert that, young as he was, he was by far the ablest man that could be found in the locality to advise upon the burning question which had arisen so suddenly. He was selected to draft appropriate resolutions and present them. There is no record of these or of his speech. But as we know that the resolutions carried, and that tradition still reports admiringly of the speech, we may be sure that his performance in both was extraordinarily good. Although there had been a strong popular prejudice in the county--or district, as it was then called--against lawyer representatives, October 13, 1807, less than four months after the meeting just described, he was elected to the legislature at the head of the ticket.

In that day presidential electors were appointed by the State legislatures. Shortly after the session of this legislature to which Calhoun had been elected opened, there was an informal meeting of the republican members to make nominations for president and vice-president.

The first was unanimously given to Madison. When the other was up, Calhoun declared his conviction that there was soon to be war with England. At such a time there should be no dissension in the party. He gave strong reasons why George Clinton should not be nominated, as had been proposed; and he suggested John Langdon of New Hamps.h.i.+re as the proper man. The thorough acquaintance with the grave situation which he manifested, the due respect he showed Clinton while opposing his nomination, and the ability with which he discussed the question, advanced him at once to a place among the most distinguished members of the legislature.

"Several important measures were originated by Mr. Calhoun while in the legislature which have become a permanent portion of the legislation of the State, and he soon acquired an extensive practice at the bar."[44] He kept in the very midst of the political swim. His reputation as an honest, true, and able adviser had become so great and influential that the people, in their warm approval of the strong measures he advocated as preparation for the threatened war, pushed him out as their candidate for congress and elected him most triumphantly in October, 1810. The first session of this, the twelfth congress, commenced November 4, 1811. Clay, then speaker of the house, evidently expecting much of him, gave him the second place in the committee on foreign relations. There came before the house a measure contemplating an increase of the army in view of the war which appeared to many to be nearer than ever. John Randolph was against it. In March, 1799, a year before Calhoun started to school, Randolph, then not twenty-six years old, had fearlessly met the great Patrick Henry in stump discussion, and had, in the opinion of his auditors, got the better of it. He was elected to congress in this year. Steadily since then he had developed, until he was now one of the most prominent figures upon the national stage. While his powers of discussion of a subject were great, the power that especially characterized him was that of nonplussing his antagonist with a snub or a sarcasm. Randolph made an earnest speech.

Calhoun replied. It is not enough to say of this speech that it evinces full mastery of the subject. It presents every important view most effectively, satisfactorily answering everything which had been said on the other side. And it is especially happy in the wise use made at each proper place of the commands of morality and patriotism.

Mr. Pinkney has instructively and entertainingly ill.u.s.trated this speech by his excerpts.[45] To them I here add another, which I would have you consider,--Randolph had strenuously insisted that the cause of this war, said by the other side to be impending, should first be defined; and until this plain duty was done there should be no preparation. To this Calhoun said:

"The single instance alluded to, the endeavor of Mr. Fox to compel Mr.

Pitt to define the object of the war against France, will not support the gentleman from Virginia in his position. That was an extraordinary war for an extraordinary purpose. It was not for conquest, or for redress of injury, but to impose a government on France which she refused to receive--an object so detestable that an avowal dared not be made."

This is a thrust which Randolph especially could appreciate.

The more I examine this first speech of a very young member of congress upon a question of such transcendent importance to the people of the United States, the more sound, able, complete,--to sum up in one word,--the more statesmanly it appears. I am confident that whoever will weigh it carefully will agree with me. He will not be surprised to learn that it carried the house decisively. Even in Randolph's own State it drew great praise. But its fame went abroad everywhere, and it was revealed to America that she had found among her public men another giant.

In the year 1800 Calhoun was a lad of eighteen, without even a complete common school education. Represent to yourself clearly what he had accomplished in the interval from the year last mentioned to December 12, 1811, when, not yet thirty, he made the speech we have just considered. If any public man of America, burdened with such disadvantages, has surpa.s.sed, or even equalled, this meteoric stride, I do not now recall him. I am not emphasizing especially that he got to congress in such a short while. What I do especially emphasize is that he so early won place as an eminent statesman. In these eleven years he lost no time at all in idleness, or probation, or waiting.

January 8, 1811, some three months after his election to congress, he married his cousin, Floride Calhoun--not a first cousin, but a daughter of a first cousin. His letters of courts.h.i.+p, not to her, but, in the old style, to her mother; his only letter to her, written shortly before the marriage; and other letters from and to him afterwards, all of which you can read in the Correspondence,--show him to be such a lover, father, brother, son-in-law, brother-in-law, grandfather, etc., as everybody wants. Some South Carolinian, adequately gifted, ought to tell befittingly the tale of Calhoun's beautiful domestic life.

I must now mention some other facts which will further enlighten you as to the man.

I was fourteen when Calhoun died. For four or five years before, and afterwards until I went to the brothers' war, I heard much of Calhoun from relatives in Abbeville county and the Court House. I still recall most vividly what a paternal uncle habitually said of the brightness and unexampled impressiveness of Calhoun's eyes, and the charm and instructiveness of his conversation. In Georgia there was not a public man whose course in politics commended itself to all of my acquaintances. I had become accustomed to hearing much disparagement of Toombs and of Stephens, with whom I was most familiar. But my South Carolina relatives, and every man or woman of that State whose talk I listened to; every boy or girl with whom I talked myself, yea, all of the negroes,--always warmly maintained the rightfulness of Calhoun's politics, national or State. I thought it a good hit when a Georgia aunt of mine dubbed the Palmetto State "The Kingdom of Calhoun," and Abbeville Court House "its capital."

This universal political wors.h.i.+p was a great surprise to me. But there was a still greater one to come. That was, that according to all accounts, and without any contradiction, in spite of his living away from home the most of his time, he yet gave his planting interests and all else appertaining the very best management, and with such unvarying financial success it would be unkind to compare Webster's money-wasting and amateur farming at Marshfield. In this community, where he seemed to be known as well as he was before he removed to Fort Hill, some sixty miles distant, in 1825, he had become a far greater authority in business than he had even attained in politics. His acquaintances all sought his advice, which they followed when they got it; thus making this busiest of public servants their agricultural oracle.

The reader will find in Starke's memoir and the Correspondence ample proofs of that diligent attention of Calhoun to his home affairs which made him the exceptionally successful planter that he was. Starke happily calls him "the great farmer-statesman of our country."[46]

Now let us see where he made his mark as an able business man in another place. He was Monroe's secretary of war from 1817 to 1825. When he entered the office he found something like $50,000,000 of unsettled accounts outstanding, and jumble in every branch of the service. He soon brought down the accounts to a few millions. And he reduced the annual expenditure of four to two and a half millions, "without subtracting a single comfort from either officer or soldier," as he says with becoming pride. He established it, that the head of every subordinate department be responsible for its disburs.e.m.e.nts. His economy was not parsimonious. He was especially popular at West Point, for which he did great things, and with the officers and men of the army.

And if one chose to look through the belonging parts of the Correspondence and the other accessible pertinent records, he will find ample proofs that he was ever alert to all the duties of his office, performing each one, whether important or trivial, with the height of skill and diligence.

Consider, as to his career in the war department, this language of one of the most inveterate of his disparagers:

"Many of his friends and admirers had with regret seen him abandon his seat in the legislative hall for a place in the president's council.

They apprehended that he would, to a great extent, lose the renown which he had gained as a member of congress, for they thought that the didactic turn of his mind rendered him unfit to become a successful administrator. He undeceived them in a manner which astonished even those who had not shared these apprehensions. The department of war was in a state of really astounding confusion when he a.s.sumed charge of it. Into this chaos he soon brought order, and the whole service of the department received an organization so simple and at the same time so efficient that it has, in the main, been adhered to by all his successors, and proved itself capable of standing even the test of the civil war."[47]

Now let us glance at his magnificent success in winning for the United States the vast territory of Texas and Oregon. The latter had long been in dispute between us and England. Ever since 1818 it had been jointly occupied under agreement. We wanted all of it; and of course as our settlements in the west approached nearer and nearer, our desire for it mounted. And England wanted all of it too. Soon after Texas achieved her independence she applied for admission into our union, but as the settlers had carried slavery with them free-soil opposition kept her out. Texas got in debt, and the only thing for her to do was to tie to some great power willing to receive her. England, seeing her opportunity, was trying to propitiate Mexico in order, with the favor of the latter, to get Texas for herself. Of course the south wanted Texas to come in, but the free-soilers did not. And the north wanted Oregon; and although its soil and climate did not admit of slavery, the south was against its acquisition unless the concession be made that it be permitted to slavery to occupy all the suitable soil of the Territories. As early as 1843 Calhoun, with his piercing vision, saw the situation clearly. If the dispute as to Oregon provoked war, England could throw troops thither from China by a much shorter route than ours, the latter going as it did from the States on the Atlantic coast around Cape Horn. That would be bad enough for us. But suppose England gets Texas. A hostile power, with a vast empire of land, will spring up under the very nose of the States, where our adversary will acquire a base of operations in the highest degree unfavorable to us. Then England will rise in her demands as to Oregon, and perhaps win all of it from us. In an affair of inter-dependent contingencies it is of the first importance to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing first. Texas was ripe, Oregon was not. Calhoun saw the first thing to do was to annex Texas. For when England cannot secure that base of operations in Texas she will shrink from making Oregon a cause of war, and while she is hesitating, Oregon--which is near to us and far from her--is steadily filling with population in which settlers from the United States more and more preponderate; and at the same time the populous States are fast approaching. After a while the inhabitants will all practically be on our side, and they will have hosts of allies to the eastward in supporting distance, which would give us an invincible advantage in case war for Oregon does come. This is what Calhoun styled "masterly inactivity" on our part, and which, had it been fully carried out as he advised, Oregon would now extend much further north than it does. To sum up in a line, he saw that activity as to Texas and inactivity as to Oregon was each masterly.

But the hotheads of the south and the fanatical wing of the anti-slavery men at the north rose up, obstructing his way like mountains. At the same time there was lack of vision in even the leaders of each section who could rise to patriotism above prejudice. Polk blundered in not continuing Calhoun as secretary of State, in which place he had made so good a beginning that it soon accomplished the annexation of Texas. In his inaugural Polk a.s.serted that our t.i.tle to Oregon was good, and to be maintained by arms if need be; and he went further away from "masterly inactivity" in his first annual message. He evoked great popular excitement, and "Fifty-four forty or fight!" and "All of Oregon or none!"

came forth in pa.s.sionate e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns in every corner of the land. Calhoun had been called from retirement to take Texas and Oregon in hand, and when Polk made a new secretary he went back into the retirement for which he greatly longed. The record shows that the best men of all parties, north and south, felt that as Tyler's secretary he was the man of all to manage the two matters so vitally important to the United States, and they deeply regretted that the place was not continued to him by Polk. And now instead of the happy settlement they had been sure the master would effect, the country was face to face with a war that portended direful disaster to each section. The eyes of patriots turned to Calhoun again; and as he cannot be secretary, he must be in the senate. And a way being made, he was seated in due time. It needs not to go into much detail. The situation had changed greatly. The especial thing to do now was to avoid war. And as a resolution to terminate the joint occupation had been pa.s.sed by congress, and as the ire of Great Britain had been greatly aroused, there must at once be a settlement of the Oregon controversy. And so the controversy was compromised and averted, this good result being mainly due to the efforts of Calhoun. Even Von Holst calls his speech of March 16, 1846, great. It will live forever. It is paying it gross disrespect to treat it as mere oratory, even if one concede to it the highest eloquence.

It voices the ripest wisdom of the ablest practical statesman dealing with a most momentous public affair, in a crisis delicate and perilous in the extreme. The vindication of the true course of action is majestic. But to my mind the great achievement of the speech is his sublime philanthropic deprecation of war between England and America. When the papers told us at the outbreak of our war with Spain that all the British subjects on the wars.h.i.+ps of the latter had thrown up their places, it seemed to me that nothing else could so fairly omen co-operation of England and America in the near future to democratize and make happy the world. And I believe that that inexpressibly sweet token of Anglo-American brotherhood would have been postponed at least a half-century, if not much longer, had it not been for that speech.

This speech likewise discomfited pro-slavery and anti-slavery fanatics alike, and won the hearty approval of the wisest and best of every part of the country.

Calhoun's self-education merits the closest attention. Railroaded through school and college, as he was, his tuition was necessarily defective in some important particulars. In the main he spelled accurately, but the Correspondence shows that he wrote "sylable," "indisoluably," "weat" for wet, "merical" for miracle, "sperit," "disappinted," "abeated," etc. It is doubtless to be regretted that he did not have larger familiarity with polite literature. Admitting these faults, still we must know he had been uncommonly studious and thoughtful to win his degree in four years after his start to school; but his systematic study, careful observation, and hard thinking really commenced with his entrance of public life, and were kept up to his very death. Note this pertinent excerpt from Webster's memorial speech, in which I italicize a pa.s.sage happily describing his studies:

"I have not, in public nor private life, known a more a.s.siduous person in the discharge of his appropriate duties. I have known no man who wasted less of life in what is called recreation, or employed less of it in any pursuits not connected with the immediate discharge of his duty. He seemed to have no recreation but the pleasure of conversation with his friends. _Out of the chambers of congress, he was either devoting himself to the acquisition of knowledge pertaining to the immediate subject of the duty before him_, or else he was indulging in those social interviews in which he so much delighted."

From his first speech in congress to the end of his life you note that he has always mastered the pertinent facts, literature, and guiding principles of whatever he has to do with, whether in speech or action.

This indicates continuous, most industrious, and most wise self-instruction. I believe it was Mr. Parton who said that Jefferson was the best educated man of his time. His full equipment from all belonging learning and science was surpa.s.sed only by the versatility with which he instantly solved all new questions. But Calhoun's was more of a special training than Jefferson's. Having for some years learned by doing,--doing after the best study and reflection, consistent with due promptness, that he could give each thing he had to do,--his capital of knowledge and developed faculty had become all-sufficient. Stephens, a profound student of both Jefferson and Calhoun, makes this comparison:

"Amongst the many great men with whom he a.s.sociated, Mr. Calhoun was by far the most philosophical statesman of them all. Indeed, with the exception of Mr. Jefferson, it may be questioned if in this respect the United States has ever produced his superior."[48]

Government--that is, good democratic government--he studied all his life with rare devotion. His two special works,[49] and the parallel parts of his speeches, warmly commended by such a thinker and friend of democracy as John Stuart Mill, are sufficing proof. In all the long tract from Plato and Aristotle down to the popularization of direct legislation, which commences with the publication of Mr. Sullivan's pamphlet a few years ago, there is to be found n.o.body who has penetrated so deeply into the secrets of those principles by which alone true democracy must be maintained. With what clear vision does he read us lessons from the unanimous veto of the Roman tribunes; the political history of the twelve tribes of Israel; the balance of interests in the English const.i.tution and our own, intended to guarantee what he calls government of the concurrent majority. His ill.u.s.tration from the confederacy of Indian Tribes is to be especially emphasized as demonstration of his industry in collecting his materials and of his great insight.[50]

I must give still another example, which I am sure will yet benignly enlighten America.

Ever since Adam Smith fell into my hands in early manhood I have had a strong predilection for political economy. My conviction during the brothers' war that proper management of the currency of the confederacy was indispensable to the success of our cause initiated me into an earnest study of the science of money. And later intense interest in the greenback question, and afterwards the silver question, added to the impetus. The longer I observed the more plainly I saw a few private persons controlling the coinage, the greenbacks, and the national bank currency of purpose to monopolize government credit, and also fix the interest rate and the price level, at any particular time, as suited their selfish interests. The remedy became clear,--government must retake and fulfil all its money functions. Especially must it keep the country supplied with a volume of money which never becomes either redundant or contracted. How to do this properly brought up the question, What is money? What is it that makes a sheep, or cow, or coin, or piece of paper, money? For the true answer to this question is the very beginning and foundation of all monetary science. I took up Ricardo again, who, with a solitary exception mentioned a little farther on, had, from the time I turned into him during my study of the confederate currency, of all the economists by profession, showed to me the best understanding of the real nature of money; and of course John Stuart Mill, Jevons, Carl Marx, and others of less note, were examined. The result confirmed Ricardo in his primacy; although I felt that the true nature of money was a.s.sumed--rather vaguely--by him, and not clearly expressed as it ought to be. I believed myself familiar with all the important work of Calhoun. Somehow I had overlooked his contributions to this subject. A few brief quotations from the more unimportant of these I found in certain American books, which made me read the pertinent speeches.[51] It was a most inexpressible surprise to me to find that he had perfected Ricardo. Briefly stated, this is the true doctrine according to Calhoun. It is not legal-tender laws, nor is it intrinsic value, which makes even gold go as money. Well, what is it? Calhoun was not the first to answer it, for others had given the true answer; but they ran away from it as soon as they made it. He divined the full satisfactoriness of the true answer, which he demonstrated to be true by a method as nearly mathematical as the case admits of. And he lightens up what was dark before by showing that that is money, and good money, whatever it may be,--gold, silver, paper, property, what not,--which the government receives in payment of its dues. The practice of the government,--not laws, nor the market value of different materials of money,--this is the great thing. If the United States should refuse to receive gold for its dues, that would so greatly lessen the demand for gold as money that the coin would depreciate and drop out of circulation. Nothing--not the precious metals, not diamonds of the first water, not radium, not the bills of the best bank, not greenbacks, not treasury notes can maintain themselves as money if the government will not receive it. This is the first half of the subject. Calhoun adds the other by showing that whatever the government makes money, its volume can always be kept of the proper quant.i.ty,--which proper quant.i.ty varies with the needs of commerce,--so as to avoid the too much or too little. His ill.u.s.tration from the treasury notes of North Carolina, which could not be a legal tender under the federal const.i.tution, but which circulated briskly and buoyantly and stayed at par for many years, because they were received without discount by the State, and also because their volume was kept within bounds, will yet greatly help the cause of honest money.

In the achievement just told Calhoun not only excelled the economists of his day, but he is yet in advance of all of the present except Del Mar,[52]--the only economist who has excelled Ricardo in divining the essence of money. These two alone explain clearly and fully why it is that bankers keep such tenacious grip upon the money function of government--they thereby so shape its practice that their wares shall be money, with all the incidents of profit therefrom, and no others shall.

Del Mar never quotes him; and I almost know he has never studied his views upon this subject.

America will yet have a "rational money," a term which Prof. Frank Parsons has happily chosen as the name of his invaluable book.[53] To win it she must fight many battles with the money power. When this war of the people is waging by the people for the people, the doctrine of Calhoun will be the banner of the right. After the sordid money oligarchy is overthrown and the United States is blessed with a people's money, that benign deliverance will add prodigiously to the fame of Calhoun.

My s.p.a.ce does not admit of telling you how deeply Calhoun loathed the spoils system. That must be borne in mind, and taken into account in any true estimate of him as a statesman.

I deem it especially important to have you consider his standing with the people of his State. Literally his word was law in South Carolina. Hayne in 1832, and Huger in 1845, resigned their seats in the national senate to give place to him. Everybody in his State always wanted him to lead, and everybody always wanted him to lead according to his own will. This unwonted influence, utterly without precedent, was due to the accurate measure which the ma.s.ses had taken of him. As he lived and aged among them they knew him better and better to be irreproachable in private and public life, the ablest of the able, the most diligent of the diligent, and the truest of the true as a representative or official, and of that severe and lofty virtue which scorns all popularity that is not the reward of righteousness. And so he became example, model, wors.h.i.+p, to all cla.s.ses.

The forty years political ascendency of Pericles in the Athenian democracy is the only befitting historical parallel which I can think of. Familiar with the State from boyhood, I have long thought its people the most advanced of the south. In spite of the revenge wreaked upon her in war, and in spite of the direr devastation of the twelve years of negro rule following the fall of the Confederate States, that little community, with her dispensary and her system of really direct nomination,[54] to say nothing of her wise management of all her material resources, is teaching the nation lessons of the highest wisdom. These are the people from whom Calhoun won a crown more resplendent than any other of our States has ever bestowed upon a loved son. How eloquent were her last offices. Read Mr.

Pinkney's extracts from the "Carolina Tribute," narrating the reception of his mortal remains in Charleston:[55] the novel procession of vessels, displaying emblems of mourning, the solemn landing at noon, an imposing train moving amid houses hung with black, "a Sabbath-like stillness"

resting on the city, "The solemn minute gun, the wail of the distant bell, the far-off spires shrouded in the display of grief, the hea.r.s.e and its attendant mourners waiting on the spot, alone bore witness that the pulse of life still beat within the city, that a whole people in voiceless woe were about to receive and consign to earth all that was mortal of a great and good citizen."

Appropriately and impressively Mr. Pinkney closes his description of this forever memorable demonstration by quoting Carlyle's "How touching is the loyalty of men to their sovereign man."[56]

Some men reserve out of the pillage of their fellows a great fund to signalize their graves. Stronger cars must be made, bridges strengthened, and too narrow pa.s.sages avoided by long circuits in order that their huge piles be transported to the conspicuous spot selected in a fas.h.i.+onable cemetery. How the funerals which a weeping people give a Calhoun, Liebknecht, Pingree, Altgeld, and other true ones dwindle such monuments into smallness and contempt!

I must add something here to what has been said in the foregoing of Calhoun's speeches. Somebody must after a while do for him what the compilation called "The Great Speeches and Orations" has done so well for Webster. His very greatest effort is that against the force bill, delivered in the United States senate February 15 and 16, 1833. As an appeal in behalf of the rights of the minority against the oppressive majority it is unequalled. All through it, from its most befitting exordium to the righteous indignation of the closing sentence, there are pa.s.sages which "the world will not willingly let die." No one who has ever given it attention can forget the paragraph defending Carolina against the charge of pa.s.sion and delusion; that demolis.h.i.+ng as by a tornado the a.s.sertion of a senator that the bill was a measure of peace; the far-famed one as to metaphysical reasoning; what is said as to the nature of the contest between Persia and Greece; the rupture in the tribes of Israel graphically expounded; the first mention of the government of "the concurring majority" as distinct from and far better than that of the absolute majority; the lesson to us of the Roman tribunes. To read this speech becomingly, purge yourself of all prejudice; by an adequate effort of the historical imagination see all the main things of the then situation, and put yourself fully in Calhoun's place; so that you cannot fail to feel all of his deep earnestness. You will have succeeded when you can rightly appreciate this outburst:

"Will you collect money when it is acknowledged that it is not wanted?

He who earns the money, who digs it from the earth with the sweat of his brow, has a just t.i.tle to it against the universe. No one has a right to touch it without his consent except his government, and this only to the extent of its legitimate wants. To take more is robbery; and you propose by this bill to enforce robbery by murder."

When I p.r.o.nounced that against the force bill, the greatest of his speeches, I was not unmindful of his last, that of March 4, 1850, not four weeks before his death. I can hardly cla.s.s it as a speech. It was a revelation of the woe in store for America if the abolition movement was not checked. Its a.n.a.lysis and demonstration of the preponderant power of the north, and its retrospection over the progressive stages by which the former equilibrium of the sections had been destroyed, are as clear-sighted as its prediction. Never in all history has an actor in a revolution described its course behind him so understandingly, nor its future course with such true prophecy.