John C. Calhoun

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CiopiglitN?-

AMERICAN STATESMEN

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Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. Youth 1

n. House of Repkesentatites . ... 12

Chapter I

Life is not only " stranger than fiction," but frequently also more tragical than any tragedy ever conceived by the most fervid imagination. Often in these tragedies of life there is not one drop of blood to make us shudder, nor a single event to compel the tears into the eye. A man endowed with an intellect far above the average, impelled by a high-soaring ambition, untainted by any petty or ignoble passion, and guided by a character of sterling firmness and more than common purity, yet, with fatal illusion, devoting all his mental powers, all his moral energy, and the whole force of his iron will to the service of a doomed and unholy cause, and at last sinking into the grave in the very moment when, under the weight of the top-stone, the towering pillars of the temple of his impure idol are rent to their very base, — can anything more tragical be conceived?

That is, in a few lines, the story of the life of John C. Calhoun. In spite of his grand career, South Carolina's greatest son has had a more hapless fate than any other of the illustrious men in the history of the United States. With few exceptions it is probable that the readers of these pages will consider this a strange or even an absurd assertion, and thereby themselves will furnish another proof of its truth. Alexander Hamilton, America's greatest political genius, has been obliged to wait three quarters of a century to have a statue erected to his memory, and then it had to be done by his own offspring. Calhoun has not had to complain of the same neglect, though nobody could have been justly accused of ingratitude if this honor had not been vouchsafed to him ; for he has no claims upon the gratitude of his country, although his name will forever remain one of the foremost in its records. But, in common with Alexander Hamilton, he is still waiting for the only monument worthy of his memory, a biography which does him full justice ; and he will probably have to wait much longer for such a memorial, — cere perennius, — which indeed, it is not unlikely, may never be erected. As yet it is hardly possible to pass an unbiased judgment upon him, because the wounds of the terrible conflict, in which he was during the lifetime of a whole generation the acknowledged leader, have not fully healed, and therefore those passions have not completely died away which were engendered by the catastrophe in which that conflict ended. Meanwhile, it becomes every day more difficult really to understand that struggle. Even the present generation, which has grown into manhood since the civil war, hardly realizes that it is not a soul-stirring romance, but sober history. The next generation will find it easier to form an adequate conception of the life of the ancient Indians and Egyptians than of that of their own grandfathers ; for there is no other instance in all the history of the world where the civilizations of two different ages, with their antagonistic principles and modes of thinking and feeling, have been so' intricately interwoven as in the United States during the times of the slavery conflict. It is only the part played by Calhoun in this conflict which puts him into the very first rank of the men who have acted on the political stage of the United States, though he has done enough else to secure for his name a permanent place in the annals of his country.

As the years roll on, the fame of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay is gradually growing dimmer, while the name of Calhoun has yet lost hardly anything of the lurid intensity with which it glowed on the political firmament of the United States towards the ejid of the first half of this century. Nor will it ever lose much of this. The fact is easily explained, though it may seem strange to the superficial student. The number of Calhoun's admirers in his later years was insignificant in comparison with the enthusiastic hosts who knew no more powerful charm than the captivating voice of the eloquent Kentuckian, and to-day it will not be seriously questioned that Webster was intellectually more than the peer of Calhoun. Neither of the three can lay claim to the name of a statesman in the highest acceptation of the term without more than one qualifying restriction, but Calhoun is certainly less entitled to it than either of his great rivals. Moreover, these had so many peculiar traits of character, habits, and fancies, that their lives are a rich source of pleasant anecdotes; and from the background of the general historical development, their figures spring forth in bold relief with a vividness equalling that of Washington, Jefferson, and John Adams. Of Calhoun the man, on the contrary, but very little is to be told. Even his contemporaries, with perhaps the exception of his nearest neighbors, did not know much of his doings as a private individual, or at least do not seem to have thought them of sufficient interest to be handed down to posterity.

Whether his private correspondence, which is still withheld from the public, will throw much light on this side of his life cannot be told. I have to state with regret that, according to my information, not very much is to be expected. I was assured in Charleston, by an intimate younger friend of Calhoun, that he had not been in the habit of carefully preserving his private letters, and that many of his papers, which are at present intrusted to Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, were lost during the civil war. However that may be, the newspapers of the times and the published private correspondences of his co-actors tell hardly anything of the personal relations and the home-life of the man whose slightest public act was watched with interest by the whole nation. We hear that he was a just and kind master to his slaves, that he was possessed of an uncommon conversational talent, and that he exercised an especial fascination upon young men. This is about all. From the historical standpoint it is, of course, deeply to be regretted that we are so little informed about the every-day life of so remarkable a man ; and yet one cannot help feeling at the same time a certain satisfaction that we learn no more about it. There is no better proof of the personal purity of a public man than the complete stillness of all gossiping tongues, among friends as well as foes. The consequence of this silence is, however, that so soon as the grave closes over such a public personage, the figure begins to assume a shadowy appearance. A well-read student of the history of the United States may often easily imagine himself seated next to Webster and Clay at the social board, or walking with them in the lanes of their farms, though he may have been born after their eyes had been closed forever. But no one who has not actually grasped Calhoun's hand and looked into the depth of those steady and keen eyes will ever be tempted to indulge for a single moment in such an illusion with regard to him. Twenty or thirty years hence there will not be a single person left to whom he is or ever has been fully a man of flesh and bone. The Representative, the Secretary of War, the Vice-President, the "great NuUifier," the Senator, our posterity like ourselves may be perfectly acquainted with ; but the Calhoun off the political stage, the Calhoun who ate and drank like other mortals, who laughed, chatted, and sorrowed, who enjoyed life and battled with its small and great cares, is long ago dead, and no pen will ever be able to recall him to life in the same sense in which Webster and Clay still are and will remain alive so long as the American people cherish the memory of their great men.

Yet it is unquestionably true, as it was asserted before, that the name of Calhoim already conveys a much more definite idea to the American people than that of either Webster or Clay, and that this difference will be steadily increased in his favor. The simple explanation of this remarkable fact is, that Calhoun is in an infinitely higher degree the representative of an idea^ and this idea is the pivotal point on which the history of the United States has turned from 1819 to nearly the end of the first century of their existence as an independent republic. From about 1830 to the day of his death, Calhoun may be called the very impersonation of the slavery question. From the moment when he assumes this character, his figure towers far above all his contemporari^, even Jackson not excepted ; while up to that time he is, in spite of his uncommonly brilliant career, only an able politician of the higher and nobler order, having many peers and even a considerable number of superiors among the statesmen of the United States. These introductory remarks seem necessary in order to justify the brevity with which we are compelled to treat the youth of Calhoun and the first period of his public life.

In 1733 James Calhoun is said to have emigrated from Donegal in Ireland to the United States. He first went to Pennsylvania, then settled on the Kanawha, in Virginia, and at last, in 1756, removed to South Carolina. In 1770 his son Patrick married Martha Caldwell, the daughter of a Presbyterian emigrant from Ireland. John Caldwell Calhoun, the third son of Patrick and Martha, was born March 18, 1782, in the AbbeviUe District, South Carolina. Though his father died while he was still a boy, the ardent temper of the zealous revolutionary patriot seems to have exercised a marked influence on the formation of the character of the son. John remained with his mother on the farm. There he led a quiet and simple life, for his father had left the family in very modest circumstances. No opportunity was offered him to attend regularly a good school, and his solitary rambles in the woods had to serve in lieu of systematic instruction. Being from his early childhood of a meditative turn of mind, the youth learned to think before his memory had become burdened with the thoughts of other people. This defective education in his boyhood made itself felt through his whole life. In spite of the diligence with which he applied himself later, for some years, to his books, the stock of positive knowledge which he had to fall back upon was never large, and the peculiar kind of narrowness which is inseparable from one-sidedness was among the most prominent traits in his mental and moral structure. But what he lacked in breadth of view he fully made up by penetrating intensity, bold independence of thinking, and a keen instinct for the true nature of the things which fell within the limited circle in which his mind moved.

Calhoun had completed his eighteenth year, when he began an uninterrupted course of systematic study in order to fit himself for the higher walks of life. Under the direction of his brother-in-law, Dr. Waddel, a Presbyterian clergyman, he prepared himself for college, and after two short years he was able to enter the junior class at Yale. In 1804 he was graduated with high honors, and then devoted himself for three years to the study of law, spending eighteen months of the time at the law school at Litchfield, Connecticut. Of much more importance than the often-repeated story, that while at Yale he had been declared fit and likely to become some day President of the United States, is the unmistakable fact that his prolonged sojourn in New England exercised a marked influence upon the formation of the political opinions which he held in the beginning of his political career.

Having returned to Abbeville, he began to practise law; but it does not appear that the public were especially eager to avail themselves of his services as an attorney and counsellor, nor that he distinguished himself in any case of importance. A man of his general ability and uncommon logical acuteness could not have failed to acquire a prominent standing in this calling if he had devoted himself to it with his whole energy. Yet he would undoubtedly never have become a great lawyer, because he was not objective enough to examine his premises with sufacient care, while he built his argument upon them with undeviating and most incisive logic, thereby frequently arriving at most shocking conclusions with nothing to stand upon except a basis of false postulates. Moreover, such natures never attain greatncvss, unless they pursue an aim which fills the whole head and heart with the force of a burning passion, a frame of mind into which but few men can be put by the common law ; and of these few Calhoun certainly was not one. He was a born leader of men, and nature had destined him for a political career. While at college the exciting questions of the day had engrossed his whole attention, and the intelligence and earnestness with which he discussed them proved that he would try to have a hand in shaping the events of the future. Sooner and in a higher degree than he himself had probablydared to anticipate, this wish was to be fulfiUed.

He had barely had time to get again familiar with the surroundings of his youth, when he was sent by his district to the state Legislature. The stage was too small to draw the eyes of the nation upon the young man, but it was the right place to prove his fitness for a larger one. In 1811 he was elected a member of Congress, and in the same year he married his cousin, Floride Calhoun. She was possessed of a modest fortune, which enabled him to steer with all sails set into the open sea of politics. On November 4 he took his seat in the House of Representatives, having previously removed to Bath on the Savannah.