A beginner's history

JOHN C. CALHOUN, THE CHAMPION OF NULLIFICATION

155. The Champion of the War of 1812. John C. Calhoun was born in the same year as Webster (1782) in South Carolina. His parents were Scotch-Irish. His father, a Revolutionary patriot, died soon after John was born. John spent his early years roaming in the fields and woods. He learned more there than from books, and he learned to think before the thoughts of other people filled his memory.

At eighteen he began to prepare for college, under the care of his brother-in-law, a Presbyterian minister. In two years he entered Yale College. When in college he studied hard, and was graduated with high honors.

Calhoun studied law diligently for three years, a year and a half of the time in his native state, and a year and a half in Connecticut. He began to practice law in South Carolina, but did not have great success. Perhaps it was because the law was too dry for him, or perhaps because he was soon elected to the legislature of his state.

In 1811 he was married, and was elected to Congress—two great events in his life. Henry Clay, as Speaker, immediately put Calhoun on an important committee. He quickly sounded a bugle call to war, declaring that it was the duty of "Congress to call forth the patriotism and resources of the country."

During the War of 1812 he worked hard in Congress for the success of the American army. After the war he favored a tariff to keep English goods out of the country.

President Monroe made him Secretary of War. He found the office in the utmost confusion, but, by hard and careful work, he left the war office a model for future secretaries.

156. Calhoun Favors Nullification. He was elected vice-president in 1824, and again in 1828. In the last-named year he wrote a paper called the "South Carolina Exposition." In this letter, and in others that he wrote, he told the people of South Carolina there would always be differences between the North and the South. He said the southern people, using slave labor, would raise more tobacco and cotton than they needed, and that the tariff was hurtful to the South. That the northern people, using free labor, would manufacture all kinds of things, and that the tariff would be helpful to them. This document took the ground that between the North and the South there always would be a conflict of interests. The South was devoted to agriculture, and the North to manufacturing. The South had slave and the North free labor.

Therefore, Calhoun concluded that to protect the South from the North a state has the right to nullify a law of Congress. A state has this right, because the state is above the nation. The states made the Constitution. He believed that nullification was a means of saving the country from secession.

South Carolina took the fatal step, and nullified the tariffs. This decision was to take effect February 1, 1833, provided the United States did not do something before that time to lower the tariff.

President Jackson warned the citizens of South Carolina against the men who had led them to take this step. He hinted that the tariff would be collected by the use of force, if necessary.

We have seen how Henry Clay rushed his Compromise Tariff through Congress. At the same time another bill was passed by Congress, which gave President Jackson the right to use the army and navy in forcing a collection of the tariff. South Carolina stopped her nullification, and the excitement passed away.

157. Opposed to the Abolitionists. The people who wished to do away with slavery entirely were called Abolitionists. The Abolitionists stirred Calhoun deeply by petitions in favor of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. He declared that "the petitions are a foul slander on nearly one half of the states of the Union.... The object is to humble and debase us in our own estimation ... to blast our reputation. This is the (manner) in which they are (trying) abolition ... and now is the time for all opposed to them to meet the attack.

"We love and cherish the Union. We remember with kindest feelings our common origin ... but origin (is) to us as nothing compared with this question.

"The relation which now exists between the two races in the slave-holding states has existed for two centuries.... We will not, we cannot, permit it to be destroyed.... Should it cost every drop of blood and every cent of property, we must defend ourselves.... It is not we, but the Union, which is in danger."

Not many in the Senate agreed with Calhoun then. In 1837 Calhoun went much farther in the defense of slavery than any of the other slaveholders would go. He declared in a great speech in the Senate that "slavery is a good, a positive good."

This was not the belief of the majority of even the slaveholders in Congress or in the nation. Much less had it been the view of the men who had fought out the Revolution, and who had made our Constitution.

The majority of slaveholders still looked upon slavery, at best, as a necessary evil and one to be gotten rid of sometime and somehow. Calhoun's view that "slavery is a good, a positive good," was an entirely new view of slavery.

Calhoun was made Secretary of State under President Tyler, and succeeded in annexing Texas to the United States. For this reason Mexico made war with the United States.

The result of the war with Mexico was the gaining of territory in the West and in the Southwest. Over this territory arose the great dispute that sent the aged Henry Clay back to the Senate with the Compromise of 1850.

Calhoun opposed that Compromise. He was too ill to speak, and a friend read his address to a hushed and listening Senate. He declared that the Union was in danger because the Abolitionists had stirred up strife. He wanted all agitation against slavery stopped. In the second place, he wanted an equal division of territory between the North and South. "If you of the North will not do this, then let our southern states separate, and depart in peace."

"Having faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability, both to the Union and my section ... I shall have the consolation ... that I am free from all responsibility."

On March 31, 1850, he breathed his last words: "The South! The poor South! God knows what will become of her!"

SUGGESTIONS INTENDED TO HELP THE PUPIL