JOHN C. CALHOUN

John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), one of America's most distinguished statesmen, came of Scotch-Irish ancestry. He was born and brought up in South Carolina, which hon

ored him many times by electing him a member of one of the houses of Congress. The young lad was early taught to rely on his own resources, and it became necessary for him to provide in great part for his own education. He was fitted for college under private tutors, and entered Yale with so much advanced standing as to enable him to graduate in two years. During one of his recitations with President Dwight the two

took up almost the whole hour in an earnest discussion of some political question. The president was so impressed by his strength and precocity that he remarked afterwards to a friend, “That young man has talent enough to become President of the United States." Following his graduation from Yale he entered upon a course at the Litchfield Law School, and after completing his course he began the practice of law in his native state.

But Calhoun was not long to remain in active practice. His skill in law and his interest in legislation were to be employed for his native commonwealth. Within nine years of the time he began the practice of law he had served in the state legislature and been elected to a seat in Congress, and not until his death did he relinquish public service, having served as representative, as senator, as cabinet officer, and as Vice President.

Personally he was striking in appearance, tall, erect, slender, with a severe countenance, features harsh and angular, hawklike eyes, beetling brows, and a full head of bristling, irongray hair. His voice was somewhat harsh, his gestures were stiff, and he lacked the ease and charm of manner common with public men of the South.

In character he was irreproachable. No one ever questioned his sincerity. There was no concealment or pretense on his part, but unfailing devotion to his every conviction. His uprightness of character and his constant course in what he believed to be the right gave him great influence in the councils of the nation. His firmness, his determination to carry forward his theories of government, and his ability in holding his followers to his purpose gave him the sobriquet of the "Cast-iron Man."

But how did Calhoun gain this quality of persuasiveness and leadership? The first element was his thoroughness of preparation. He strove to find the truth, the exact truth, and as much of it as possible. His superior knowledge, his preparedness, inspired others to confide in him and follow him. His power of analysis was his leading faculty. Intense as a student in college, his powers of concentration were enhanced by his work as a statesman. His habit of reasoning enabled him to reach with alertness and accuracy conclusions which others had to go through a more laborious process to find out.

He cultivated this prime gift of oratory in the literary societies at Yale and the Litchfield Law School. Questions of public interest were debated with great energy and persistency. He thus gained the ability to reason consistently and discuss questions with calmness and judgment. Plain and direct in manner, he sought above all to be understood and to impress his thought. Colloquial in style, cared little for grace and polish. Rigidly intellectual, intensely logical, chaste in expression, there was more of the sap and juiciness of thought than of the poetry and splendor of eloquence. He gathered statistics to support and work up his theories of government. His preparation of material was complete. Unceasing in mental activity and in his endeavor to be lucid and to gain adherents to his ideas of public policy, he often overreached himself and became the hairsplitter in argument.

The most striking feature of his oratory was his earnestness. It enabled him to sway the feelings of men and control their action. His enunciation was incisive, his delivery rapid, his look piercing, his voice shrill and loud and not well modulated; his bearing, his looks, and his impetuosity riveted attention and awed into acquiescence. His attack was fierce, blunt, and terrible, his sentences short and incisive, He seems to have made Demosthenes his model, for his style bears repeated evidence of severe study of the orations of the great Athenian. Von Holst says of his oratory: "He did not speak with arrogance, and still less was there anything personally offensive in what he said, or in the manner in which he said it. He observed the parliamentary proprieties with the rigor and naturalness of the born gentleman, and always attacked the argument of his adversary and not his person."

Daniel Webster, who had so often clashed with Calhoun in debate and who found it more difficult to cope with him than with any other antagonist, thus spoke in praise of Calhoun's

wonderful gifts as an orator: "The eloquence of Calhoun was part of his intellectual character. . . . It was plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise, sometimes impassioned, still always severe. His power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of his manner. . . He had the basis, the indispensable basis, of all high character, and that was unspotted integrity, unimpeached honor and character."

Professor Sears says: "Calhoun is an orator who cannot be overlooked in any account of American oratory. His mind was of the order that belongs preeminently to statecraft. He made great speeches, but they were great in the closeness of their reasoning and the plainness of their propositions, coupled at times with an impassioned delivery, oftener with a severity and dignity of manner which men respected, but over which they did not go wild with enthusiasm nor drift far from their well-formed judgments.”

Mathews, in comparing the oratory of Clay and Calhoun, says: "Clay's words when assailing an enemy were usually courteous and polished, while Calhoun's were fierce, blunt, and rudely terrible. The one hit his man with a keen rapier, like a courtier of the old régime; the other knocked him down with a sledge hammer, like a Scandinavian giant. Clay allows you to die, like Lord Chester, in a becoming attitude, while Calhoun breaks your bones and leaves you sprawling on the floor. The one stabs you with a smile, the other smashes you with a frown. Clay is even more dangerous than Calhoun, as the graceful leopard is, perhaps, an antagonist more to be feared than the grizzly bear."

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Some of his great speeches are." The War with England" (1811), "The Tariff Bill" (1816), "The Force Bill" (1832), Incendiary Publications" (1836), "Abolition Petitions (1837), "The Oregon Question" (1846), "Slavery" (1850).

COMPROMISE MEASURES

This speech was prepared by Calhoun for the session of the Senate of March 4, 1850. But as he was too ill to deliver it, another senator read it, Calhoun himself being present. The senator from South Carolina sat pale and emaciated and listened intently to his own words. The historian, Von Holst, speaks of this as an "extraordinary scene, which had something of the impressive solemnity of a funeral ceremony"; and adds that, when the Senate adjourned, Calhoun, "supported on the shoulders of two of his friends, tottered out of the Senate chamber," never to return. Less than a month saw the end of the distinguished senator.

I. SLAVERY AND DISUNION

Mr. Calhoun urges that the rapid increase of the senators and representatives from the North, on account of the growing population in that section, gives predominance to the North, disturbs the equilibrium of government, and therefore endangers the tranquillity of the Union by centering power in a sectional majority.

I have, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion. Entertaining this opinion, I have, on all proper occasions, endeavored to call the attention of both the two great parties which divide the country, to adopt some measure to prevent so great a disaster, but without success. The agitation has been permitted to proceed with almost no attempt to resist it, until it has reached a point when it can no longer be disguised or denied that the Union is in danger. You have thus had forced upon you the greatest and gravest question that can ever come under your consideration: How can the Union be preserved?

To give a satisfactory answer to this mighty question, it is indispensable to have an accurate and thorough knowledge of the nature and the character of the cause by which the Union is endangered. Without such knowledge it is impossible to pronounce with any certainty by what measure it can be saved; just as it would be impossible for a physician to pronounce in the case of some dangerous disease, with any certainty, by what remedy the patient could be saved, without similar knowledge of the nature