South Carolina Exposition and Protest, Part III: My Old Kentucky Home

As earth-shattering as John C. Calhoun’s South Carolina Exposition and Protest arguably was upon its publication in December of 1828 – specifically in the way that it threatened to dissolve the legal framework which had bound the various states together under the auspices of the federal government since 1789 – the fundamental principles which it espoused were not, in truth, wholly novel. While it was true that no one had ever before claimed that each of the individual states held the right to essentially veto a given piece of federal legislation, the notion that a state should determine to its own satisfaction whether or not the various branches of the federal government were performing their duties in accordance with the explicit terms of the Constitution had been articulated at least once before. Writing in 1798 in response to the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) had famously declared in his “Kentucky Resolutions” – so called because they were approved and published by the legislature of the state of Kentucky – that the federal government,

Was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

The exact significance of this assertion, it must be said, was not precisely repeated in Calhoun’s Exposition and Protest. Calhoun – as this present series will come to show – effectively sought to justify the nullification of federal law in any case in which the vital interests of a given state were threatened. Jefferson, by contrast, sought to apply the principle of nullification only in such instances as it could be shown that the federal government had violated the explicit terms of the United States Constitution. Notwithstanding this crucial disparity of application, however, it is very clear that Calhoun was still deeply influenced by Jefferson’s core argument. Like the Sage of Monticello, he also seemed to believe that the American republic was a compact of states formed for an explicit purpose beyond which it could not extend its authority, that the government thereof could not be permitted to serve as the final judge of its own actions, and that the arresting of federal power by the states was likely the only way to stave off a bloody dissolution of the aforementioned compact.

A belief in the principle of strict constructionism is undoubtedly one of the areas in which Calhoun’s Exposition and Protest most closely aligned with Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions. Indeed, it was probably the one aspect of Calhoun’s political convictions that was most heavily influenced by Jeffersonianism as an ideology and Thomas Jefferson as its originator. Consider, by way of example, the following statement made by Jefferson in his Kentucky Resolutions. The states, he declared, in ratifying the Constitution, “Constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government [.]” A plain enough doctrine, in theory. Now consider Calhoun’s statement made some thirty years later. “The General Government [,]” he wrote in his Exposition and Protest,

Is one of specific powers, and it can rightfully exercise only the powers expressly granted, and those that may be necessary and proper to carry them into effect, all others being reserved expressly to the States or to the people.

To Calhoun’s mind, it seemed, as to the Sage of Monticello’s, the United States Constitution represented both a grant of power and a restraint upon its exercise. According to its various articles, sections, and clauses, the separate branches of the federal government could do a great many things which the individual states could not. Congress could lay taxes, and borrow money, and declare war; the President commanded the armed forces, and made treaties, and appointed ambassadors; and the Supreme Court ruled on all such cases as involved the federal government directly, or pertained to maritime jurisdiction, or involved more than one state. But at the same time that all of these powers are granted by the Constitution, the strict constructionist line avows, all others not named are specifically forbidden. The logic behind this belief – as indicated by both Jefferson and Calhoun – is essentially twofold.

On the one hand, because the Constitution was drafted and ratified in order so that the various states could achieve together what they could not hope to achieve separately – a “special purpose,” one might say – anything which a state might accomplish on its own accordingly falls outside the purview of the resulting federal government. The states might indeed require a single federal authority to represent them in the realm of foreign affairs, for example, but it did not then follow that the states required that same authority to fund and build roads or to establish a national police force. Whatever the states could do for themselves, in essence, the states should do for themselves. And then, of course, there is the matter of the Tenth Amendment. Said addendum to the Constitution – ratified and effective as of December 15^th, 1791 – states very simply that, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” According to people like Jefferson and Calhoun – as indicated by their common reference to the same – the meaning of this clause is very, very simple. It is, in essence, that whatever powers which the Constitution does not specifically grant to the federal government cannot then be exercised by the federal government. The wording of the Necessary and Proper Clause of Article I, Section 8 might seem to complicate this somewhat, stating as it does that Congress possesses the power, “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States.” In practice, however – and which Calhoun seemed intend on pointing out – strict constructionism insists that there is no complication. The clause in question can only be invoked in order to justify the exercise of powers demonstrably incidental to the authority explicitly granted to Congress by the Constitution. If a clear connection cannot be demonstrated, the power in question is thus reserved to the states.

As plain as this all might seem – and as plain the likes of Jefferson and Calhoun believed it to be – there is a rather thorny presupposition at the core of strict constructionism which its proponents so often take for granted. If their respective treatises on the subject are any indication, Jefferson and Calhoun most certainly did. Writing in 1798, Jefferson declared that the state of Kentucky, “Faithful to that compact, according to the plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded to by the several parties, […] is sincerely anxious for its preservation [.]” Writing thirty years later in 1828, Calhoun said much the same. “The only safe rule is the Constitution itself [,]” he avowed, “Or, if that be doubtful, the history of the times. In this case, if doubts existed, the journals of the Convention itself would remove them.” While the exact wording of their respective assertions differs significantly, the meaning which both men sought to convey is essentially the same. Both Jefferson and Calhoun – and any number of strict constructionists writing before, during, or since that time – believed that the “intent and meaning” of the Constitution was plain, that it was plain at the time that said document was ratified, and that any doubts as to same may be cleared up by application to, “The history of the times [,]” or, “The journals of the Convention itself [.]” In actual fact, of course, very little about the intentions of the Framers can truly be described as “plain,” and any attempt to reconstruct the same is doomed to come up frustratingly short.

Consider, to that end, exactly what it was Jefferson and Calhoun were saying. Jefferson wrote, in his Kentucky Resolutions, that the Constitution should at all times be adhered to, “According to the plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded to by the several parties [.]” The biggest problem with this statement is that it presupposes a quality of agreement among the Framers at the time the Constitution was drafted and among the delegates to the various ratifying conventions in the states that quite simply never existed. Not only did the state conventions fixate upon different aspects of the proposed constitution in the course of their respective debates, but the Framers themselves held famously divergent opinions as to how the resulting national government was supposed to function. Granted, most of these people did ultimately agree as to the specific words by which the government in question was to be ordered and described, but this cannot be said to prove the existence of anything like a shared understanding.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, to use a particularly famous example, were both present for the whole of the Philadelphia Convention (1787), both participated substantially in the debates which occurred therein, and both authored essays in support of ratification under the common title of “The Federalist.” But while the fact of these shared endeavors might lead one to believe that Hamilton and Madison must have harbored essentially the same conception of the Constitution and its significance, subsequent events show quite clearly that this was not at all the case. Hamilton, as one of the principle members of the Washington Administration, went on to demonstrate a very firm belief in the expansive nature of federal power. The authority at the disposal of Congress and the President was not limited solely to what was written in the Constitution, he argued, but rather included all such powers as might become “necessary and proper” to servicing the responsibilities laid out by the same. Madison, in stark contrast, went on to advocate for a very limited view of federal power. As a Congressmen from Virginia, he vehemently asserted that federal authority, if permitted to expand, would very quickly present an imminent danger to the states. It therefore fell to the states themselves to monitor federal activity and speak with a common voice upon observing infractions upon their liberties.

Marking this drastic contrast in the manner in which Hamilton and Madison respectively viewed the Constitution, how could anyone claim that there was such a thing as a, “Plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded [?]” The fact that Jefferson had not attended the Philadelphia Convention himself – having at that point been assigned to serve as United States Minister to France – might seem like a rather juicy detail to point out just now, but in truth it is entirely immaterial. To say that Jefferson couldn’t really speak to what the Framers intended because he hadn’t been in the room during the debates in question – while quite probably true – rather misses the point. Even people who had been in the room, and who had contributed significantly to the end result, couldn’t agree on the meaning and implications of the common product of their work. Was it just that some of them right and some of them wrong? Jefferson probably would have said so. Indeed, he did say so, siding time and again with the Madisonian interpretation of the constitutional balance of power. But who was Jefferson to say what was right and what was wrong? How had he arrived at his determination? How had Madison? In actual fact, there was not – is not, can never be – a “plain intent and meaning” to any part of the United States Constitution. Some clauses, on balance, are fairly unambiguous, requiring little in the way of interpretation. But others are comparatively broad, necessitating some degree of analysis before their significance can be determined. Exactly why this is the case can never be known with absolute certainty. Regardless of what the Framers said and wrote at the time and thereafter, their truest intentions were known only to themselves. All that matters, then, is what can be argued, or reasoned, or justified at any given time.

    

Calhoun, of course, was of like mind with Jefferson. Granted, he may not have said that there existed a “plain intent and meaning” by which the Constitution was “understood and acceded,” but his assertion that uncertainty might be easily dispelled by paying heed to “the history of the times” and, “the journals of the Convention itself” amounts to much the same thing. By using the phrase “the history of the times,” Calhoun was essentially implying that there existed among his fellow Americans – circa 1828, at least – a common understanding of the culture, philosophy, and politics of the Founding era. If one merely kept this understanding in mind, he seemed to be saying, one could successfully reason though any doubts as to the meaning and intent of the United States Constitution. There are, on cursory examination, at least two problems with this assumption. First, it presumes that everyone living in what for Calhoun was the present – again, 1828 – would possess substantially the same understanding of the Founding era. Depending the age, occupation, or social standing of the individual in question, there are a great many reason why this might not have been the case. People who have had different experiences with concepts like wealth, and social privilege, and work are bound to make different assumptions as to why people in the past acted the way that they did.

Second, the notion that there is a common –i.e. correct way – to understand any given era in the history of humanity would effectively seem to preclude the possible existence of historical outliers. Perhaps, as Calhoun would seem to have it, the Founders were exactly representative of the era in which they lived, their priorities having been wholly shaped by the mores and customs of society as it then existed. But what if they weren’t? These men, after all, were famous for having defied some of the most entrenched customs of their age. What if that same sense of defiance which they expressed very publicly by daring to take up arms against British authorities colored their private convictions as well? Most of the Founders’ Southern cohort did own slaves. And most of this same group endeavored to protect the institution as a result. But did this mean that they were pro-slavery in every sense of the term? That they never harbored any uneasiness as to the moral dimensions of the practice? That they didn’t feel personal guilt and shame at the same time that they expressed public support for its continuation? In actual fact, such a division between personal feeling and public posture was quite common. Men like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, whose livelihoods – as they knew them – depended on the existence of chattel slavery, also freely admitted that the practice was immoral, shameful, and should at length have been done away with. Reference to “the history of the times” likely would not capture this dichotomy. From a broad historical perspective – of the sort to which Calhoun seemed to be appealing – Southerners in the late 18^th century United States were resolutely in favor of slavery and would not have countenanced any attacks against it. This is true, to be sure, but only partially. Such a perspective is accordingly bound to create a misleading image of the past for those who attempt to apply it. One could read the Constitution in the belief that all of its Southern authors were resolutely in favor of slavery, but this might lead accordingly to a mistaken impression as to their feelings in the present and their intentions for the future.

And then, of course, there is Calhoun’s appeal to, “The journals of the Convention itself.” These, as discussed previously, were the firsthand accounts of the Philadelphia Convention recorded primarily by James Madison over the summer of 1787. Conscious, it would seem, of the significance of what he and his fellow delegates were attempting, Madison in particular took very careful note of the subject and progression of each day’s debate, identifying speakers by name, recording votes, and quite rigorously charting the process by which the Constitution was constructed. But while these accounts, among the most complete as regards the events of the Constitutional Convention, are rightly regarded for their meticulousness, their ability to offer truly objective insight into the intentions of the Framers regarding this or that passage of the Constitution is rather called into doubt when one pays heed to a certain complicating factors. For one thing, it is by now well known that James Madison became fairly obsessed, in the final years of his life in the 1820s and 1830s, with what he believed would be his legacy as one of the founders of the American republic. To a large extent, this obsession merely took the form of locating, collating, cataloging, and condensing the various papers he had accumulated over the course of his lengthy public career. But in some cases – evidently those in which Madison feared his youthful mistakes might not be understood as such – he went a fair bit further. He started modifying documents. He changed names, dates, deleted whole passages, and even forged the handwriting of past correspondents. For a man who had lived practically his entire adult life in service to his county, it was a remarkable expression of intellectual vanity. But however one might choose to reconcile it – that Madison was merely self-advocating, or that his advanced age was the cause of some form of psychological agitation – the fact itself remains. Madison’s account of the Philadelphia Convention was quite probably subject to preferential editing. And if Madison could not be trusted, what of his contemporaries who had been less scrupulous in their dedication to the public good? What of their accounts? What of their objectivity?

That fact that these kinds of questions could not – indeed, cannot – be answered is precisely the reason why Calhoun’s cited assertion is such a troubling one. If the most complete “journal” of the Philadelphia Convention, recorded by one of the most intelligent, insightful, and conscientious individuals among the Founders was still very likely subject to ex post facto modification, then there would seem to be no point in hoping that any firsthand account recorded in the moment might serve the purpose of revealing the “true” meaning of the various articles and clauses of the United States Constitution. If the debates in question had all been recorded and transcribed exactly, then perhaps they might be of some use. But there is, in fact, no reason to believe that they were. The selfless, public-spirited Framers of 1787 – if ever they were as selfless as they claimed – almost to a man became the petty, self-interested politicians whose inability to agree on the purpose and scope of the federal government gave rise to a series of bitter partisan conflicts that lasted from the early 1790s through the late 1810s. Why should anyone trust anything they had to say on the subject of the Constitution just because they had a hand in drafting it? What gave credence to their interpretation above any and all others? Even if the records could be trusted, they were not what Calhoun seemed to affirm. They were not clear, unambiguous statements as to the meaning and significance of the Constitution in its various parts. Rather, they were the accounts of a whole series debates within which disagreement was common and consensus quite rare. People agreed here, clashed there, were of like minds again a little later, and came out somewhere in the middle when all was said and done. There was room for nuance, in as much as the floor was open to any and all who wished to make themselves known, but the final vote was always either for or against, and almost nothing that was ultimately agreed on was to everybody’s satisfaction.

Consider, by way of example, the events of September 12, 1787 as recorded by the aforementioned Virginia delegate, James Madison. It was a productive day, by and large. Much was agreed upon that made it into the final draft. But inevitably, understandably, debate eventually broke out. First, the assembled delegates discussed amending a clause they had previously settled requiring a three-fourths majority in Congress for the purpose of overturning a presidential veto to instead require a two-thirds majority. Some of those present – including North Carolina’s Hugh Williamson (1735-1819), who introduced the motion – believed that three-fourths placed too much power in the hands of the President. Others, like Pennsylvania’s Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816) and New York’s Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), argued that the proposed two-thirds requirement would disadvantage more distant states whose representatives would be less often present in Congress and who were accordingly in need of, “The interposing check of the President.” In the end, as always, the matter came to a vote. The delegations from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia voted no. Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia voted yes. New Hampshire was divided. The motion was carried, six to four in favor. 

Later that same day, resulting from another motion by Hugh Williamson on the question of guaranteed jury trials in civil as well as criminal cases, a debate began on the subject of drafting a national Bill of Rights. Virginia’s George Mason (1725-1792) introduced the idea, stating that, “A general principle laid down on this and some other points would be sufficient [,]” and that the resulting document, “Would give great quiet to the people [.]”  Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814) of Massachusetts concurred, moving that a committee be formed to consider and draft a national Bill of Rights. Connecticut’s Roger Sherman (1721-1793) countered by claiming that, “The State Declarations of Rights are not repealed by this Constitution; and being in force are sufficient [.]” Mason disagreed with this assessment, pointing out that, “The Laws of the U. S. are to be paramount to State Bills of Rights.” Again, the matter came to a vote. New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia all voted no. Massachusetts abstained. The motioned failed, ten to zero against.

Now consider, for a moment, the dynamics of these two debates and what they reveal about the relationship between the Framers and the Constitution of the United States. The accounts of the Philadelphia Convention may indeed be an invaluable source of information as to the motivations and intentions of the delegates who served therein, but they also make it quite clear that the intentions of individual delegates did not always have much bearing on the final result. Recall the outcome of the first debate. Williamson was from North Carolina and was in favor of the motion, and North Carolina did vote in favor. And Morris was from Pennsylvania and was against the motion, and Pennsylvania did vote against it. But Hamilton was from New York and was against the motion, and he didn’t vote at all. Granted, there exists a clear enough explanation as to why this was the case. Hamilton’s fellow New Yorker’s John Lansing (1754-1829) and Robert Yates (1738-1801) having departed Philadelphia quite early in the proceedings of the Convention, he likely felt it improper to vote entirely on his home state’s behalf. All the same, the end result is striking in its effect. Reading Madison’s account of the events of September 12^th, 1787, one indeed gains some insight into Hamilton’s intentions vis-à-vis the operation of the presidential veto. But in the end, regardless of what he may have felt about the subject, Hamilton had no effect on the final form which it assumed.

Further recall, with this same phenomenon in mind, the outcome of the second debate. Mason, of Virginia, and Gerry, of Massachusetts, were both in favor of the motion for a national bill of rights, but neither of their states ultimately voted as they would have preferred. Indeed, Massachusetts was the only state which did not vote against the motion. While one may interpret this outcome to mean that Mason and Gerry were ultimately outvoted within their respective state delegations, no more may reasonably be said than that. Who among the Virginia delegation disagreed with Mason, and why? Was the vote close, or overwhelming? How many of the Massachusetts delegates agreed with Gerry? Did they abstain because they were divided, or did they come to a consensus not to record a vote? The plain account, as recorded my Madison, cannot answer any of these questions, and thus cannot provide much in the way of insight into the intentions of the Framers regarding the suitability of a bill of rights. Such an addendum was made eventually, of course, thanks in large part to Madison’s efforts as a member of the 1^st United States Congress. Evidently the representatives chosen by the American people over the winter of 1788/89 were more inclined towards the creation of a national bill of rights than were the representatives chosen by the states in 1787. But regardless of what may have been recorded of the relevant debates in Congress – a topic, most assuredly, for another day – the record of the relevant debate during the Philadelphia Convention has very little to say as to why this was the case.

This is, in essence, the central problem at the heart of Calhoun’s cited insistence that the “journals of the Convention itself” offer all the insight one should require into the intentions of the Framers as regards the Constitution. As useful as the source in question may be, and as lucky as the American people are that Madison in particular made a point of taking such detailed notes, they are nonetheless woefully inadequate to the task of relaying the “true” meaning this or that clause from their originators to the individual inquirer. The debates which they document are interesting, at times even insightful, but always, always limited in their usefulness. What can be said of Alexander Hamilton’s contributions if he participated in discussions but did not vote? Was he a Framer in the same sense as Madison or Gerry? Should his potential influence be entirely discounted? Who knows why George Mason’s fellow Virginians disagreed with him? Or why the other members of the Massachusetts delegation disagreed with Gerry? In many ways, it would seem, the records raise more questions than they answer.

Even if one discounts the outcomes of the individual debates and focuses solely on the fact that a final draft was approved and signed by the delegates yet present in Philadelphia in September of 1787 – thus seeming to signify that the majority of the delegates present ultimately agreed with the end result of their collective labors – there remains a great deal left unsaid. How many appended their name to the finished document because they actually thought it was perfect? How many did so because they thought it was just good enough? How many would not even have gone that far, but figured at worst that if the thing proved inadequate another convention could be summoned to make such changes as practical experience proved necessary? Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), speaking on the final day of the Convention, offered a rather ambivalent view as to the value of the document which he had just helped to draft. “I confess,” he said, “That there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them [...] I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution.” But while this may have accurately summed up the general feeling harbored by most of the delegates then present in Philadelphia, it offers little in the way of insight into the opinions of the individual Framers themselves. All that may be said for certain, evidently, is that while the men who drafted the Constitution indeed had a great deal to say as to the purpose of this or that section or clause of the same, all that they ever seemed to agree on as a whole was that five months spent at the height of summer in Philadelphia was long enough, and that the document which resulted was good enough. To claim any more than that would be to indulge in speculation.

South Carolina Exposition and Protest, Part II: Context, contd.

Beyond what he happened to absorb of contemporary New England particularism, John C. Calhoun’s time at Yale was fruitful in the more expected sense as well. He read voraciously, formed a great many lasting friendships, became a member of the Brothers in Unity debating club – now, like Skull and Bones or Mace and Chain, one of Yale’s vaunted “secret societies” – and graduated as valedictorian for the Class of 1804. Shortly thereafter he enrolled in what would come to be known as the Litchfield Academy, founded in 1784 by lawyer Tapping Reeve (1744-1823) as the first independent law school in the United States of America. Three years later, in 1807, he was admitted to the South Carolina bar, and three years after that, in 1810, he won election to his first term in the House of Representatives. It was a quick rise, to be sure, from undergraduate to Congressmen, at the conclusion of which Calhoun was not yet thirty years old. Fortunately for him, he found like minds in fellow Democratic-Republicans Henry Clay (1777-1852), William Lowndes (1782-1822), and Langdon Cheves (1776-1857) and a cause into which he could pour all the impulses of his youthful conviction.

At the time Calhoun first took his post representing South Carolina’s 6^th District in Congress, the United States was in the midst of a period of heightened tensions with what had previously been its largest trading partner, the United Kingdom. Owing to the state of war which then existed between the UK and Napoleon’s French Empire – and corresponding attempts by both belligerents to cut off their rival’s access to international commerce – American trade with Europe had suffered tremendously between the 1790s and the 1810s, and President Jefferson’s heavy-handed attempt to force the responsible parties to come to some sort of arrangement as regarded “neutral” vessels like those belonging to American merchants had entirely failed to yield results. On the contrary, far from prompting either British or French cooperation, Jefferson’s multi-year embargo on all manner of American trade had wrought significant damage to the American economy. Some kind of policy change was desperately awaited. It accordingly fell to the newly elected President Madison to decide how and to what extent he was prepared to compromise, modify, or abandon perhaps the most contentious initiative of his predecessor’s entire term in office. The Federalists – whose New England contingent, as aforementioned, had become deeply embittered during Jefferson’s two terms in office – advocated doing away with the embargo on American trade entirely and seeking to resume the accustomed commercial relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. The traditionalist Republicans, led by Virginia Congressman John Randolph (1773-1833), likewise advised Madison to abandon his predecessor’s aggressive commercial policies, not the least of which because they resented the expansion of executive power that had been the direct result. But the “new” Republicans, the young Republicans – the men whom Randolph derisively referred to as “War Hawks” – wanted something else entirely. Insulted by British treatment of American shipping, and still stinging from an incident in 1807 that saw an American vessel fired upon in American waters by a British ship of war, they wanted the United States to teach its former colonial master a painful lesson in humility.

The form that this lesson was supposed to take was entirely unambiguous. In response to what Calhoun memorably described as Great Britain’s, “Lust for power [,]” “Unbounded tyranny [,]” and “Mad ambition [,]” he and his cohorts – the aforementioned Clay, Lowndes, and Cheves, as well as Richard Mentor Johnson (1780-1850), Felix Grundy (1777-1840), and William Bibb (1781-1820) – demanded that the United States declare war on the United Kingdom. For its part, the United Kingdom had no desire to go to war with the American republic. British troops already had the hands full on the Continent, and the British Navy was being kept well busy either attempting to protect British commerce or striking at the whatever French vessels happened to cross its path. To that end, on June 23^rd, 1812, newly appointed Prime Minister Lord Liverpool (1770-1828), revoked the Orders-in-Council (1807) that had initially allowed for the seizure of American vessels known or suspected to be bound for France. Unlike his predecessor, Spencer Perceval (1762-1812), Liverpool was eager to normalize relations between the United States and the United Kingdom and believed that the single greatest impediment to the same was Britain’s continued harassment of American shipping. Whether the Prime Minister would have been proven correct in his assessment or not remains an open question, however, for the United States Congress had already voted to declare war on the United Kingdom (79-49 in the House, 19-13 in the Senate) on June 18^th. Calhoun and his fellow War Hawks, it seemed, ultimately got their way.

While the conflict that resulted may not have been the glorious affair that its most ardent supports had hoped – American defeats were numerous in the opening phases, and the Treasury quickly found itself teetering on the brink of bankruptcy – Calhoun certainly threw his back into the effort. Between the declaration of war in 1812 and the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, he helped raise troops, raised money, worked in Congress to regulate the economy and stabilize the currency, and generally did everything in his power as a Representative and an private citizen to provide his country and its fighting men with the best possible chance at victory. In the end, of course, this all rather came to naught. The agreement that ended the conflict called for a return to status quo ante bellum. No territory was exchanged, and no concessions were made of any lasting significance. All that remained to tell the tale of there having been a war at all was the sorry state of American finances. That, and the somewhat mixed reputation gained by the American military between its early defeats and its final victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). Notwithstanding these somewhat distressing outcomes, the nation was nevertheless left energized by the realization that it had stood toe-to-toe with its former colonial master and emerged relatively unscathed. The victor of New Orleans, the aforementioned Andrew Jackson, was hailed as a national hero, the anti-war Federalists were widely discredited as defeatists – or worse, based on rumors of what was discussed at the Hartford Convention – and the popular reputation of the Democratic-Republicans was burnished yet further. The hyper-partisan era of Jeffersonian democracy was ending. The “Era of Good Feelings” was dawning in America. 

Calhoun was likewise in the midst of a transitional moment in his career as a public servant, not the least which because of his work during the late war. Not only had he witnessed with alarm the deficiencies inherent in the peacetime American military establishment – between the small, poor-equipped army and the undersized, understaffed navy – but he also came to appreciate just how vulnerable the American economy had become to foreign interference. In consequence, Calhoun spent the next several years working in tandem with men like the aforementioned Henry Clay in an attempt to drastically overhaul the American republic’s military, commercial, and economic infrastructure along increasingly nationalistic lines. He called for an expanded professionalized army and navy, a more robust system of internal taxation, public funding for roads and canals, the encouragement of domestic manufacturing, and even the re-establishment of a national bank. This final proposal would doubtless have seemed unthinkable only a handful of years earlier, but the domestic pressures exerted by the war had awakened many a Democratic-Republican to the usefulness of a financial system they had previously decried as corrupt and unconstitutional. Calhoun was most definitely among them and advocated strongly for the creation of the Second Bank of the United States. He also supported the passage of the Tariff of 1816, the purpose of which was to promote domestic manufacturing for the sake of national defense. In the event of another war with the United Kingdom – a prospect which, at the time, appeared far from unlikely – it was believed by men like Calhoun and Clay that American industry needed to be robust enough to meet the demands of the American military establishment. That the resulting legislation – which raised prices on certain imported goods – received widespread support among Southern agriculturalists whose personal interests had previously favored unrestricted free trade is very much a testament to the tenor of the era. Not only had the War of 1812 made Americans more conscious of their vulnerabilities, but the widespread feelings of jubilation that followed made the idea of deviating from orthodoxy that much easier to swallow.

That Calhoun had swallowed it entirely should by now be quite clear. In 1817, after the position had been turned down by four men in succession, he accepted the offer of newly elected President James Monroe (1758-1831) to become United States Secretary of War, in which role he proceeded on an exceptionally ambitious course of modernization and reform. An expansion of the Navy was proposed, with the notable inclusion of steam frigates; the army was to be enlarged and reequipped; new roads were to be built to better facilitate the movement of troops and supplies; domestic manufacturing was to be further encouraged so that the nation could instantly spring into a wartime posture; new fortifications were to be built on the coasts; and new outposts were to be established along the expanding Western frontier. Congress, as it happened, worked to frustrate nearly all of these projects by consistently denying the War Department the funding that Calhoun required – owing mainly to lingering Old Republican sentiment and the machinations of political rivals within the Democratic-Republican organization – but at the very least the Secretary did succeed in creating a separate Bureau of Indian Affairs.

During this same period, the events of the First Seminole War (1816-1819) and the Missouri Crisis (1819) arguably tested Calhoun’s newfound commitment to administrative centralization. In the former case, during which Calhoun’s fellow Southerner and future running-mate Andrew Jackson unilaterally seized Spanish Florida in an attempt to root out the source of frequent Seminole raiding parties, the Secretary seemed to take the position that such a brazen disregard for the authority of the federal government warranted nothing less than censure and removal. The United States made indeed had benefited from the addition of Florida to its sovereign territory – a point emphasized in cabinet discussions by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) – but the ends, to Calhoun’s thinking, could not justify the means. Conversely, when Congress shortly thereafter found itself deadlocked over the proposed admission of the state of Missouri – Southerners desired it to be a slave state, Northerners wished to prevent the further spread of slavery into the former Louisiana Purchase – the Secretary of War demonstrated a far more flexible attitude. While he did not believe, as some at the time feared, that the disagreement would result in the dissolution of the American republic along sectional lines – a fate which was indeed prevented by the compromise admission of free-state Maine along with slave-state Missouri – he also admitted that, if such a dissolution did occur, the South would have no choice but to form an alliance with the United Kingdom as a means of staving off conquest by the North.

It was a startling confession, given Calhoun’s previous statements on the subject of the British and their empire, and one which speaks to the distinction which he seemed to draw between loyalty to the nation and loyalty to his home state. In most things, Calhoun tended towards the belief that what was good for the United States as a whole was also good for South Carolina. Certainly, there were national priorities and national policies whose immediate beneficiaries were Northerners, industrialists, and merchants rather than the Southern agrarians he had once called his constituents, but the effects of the late war had shown him that strengthening the North could well mean saving the South in the event of an invasion or a similar national catastrophe. But slavery was another matter entirely. The economy of South Carolina – alike with its sister states in the South – was built upon a foundation of ready access to forced human labor. And while the Constitution may have allowed for federal restrictions upon the importation of slaves from abroad – pursuant to Article I, Section 9 – it also made it reasonably clear that the institution itself was entirely subject to the laws and regulations of the individual states. The status quo which emerged from this arrangement was clear enough, if somewhat tenuous. States that wished to allow for the practice of slavery could do so as they wished. States that wished to outlaw the practice of slavery could do so as they wished. Proposed states seeking admission to the Union could do so as slave states. And proposed states seeking admission to the Union could do so as free states. So long as everyone minded their own business, it seemed, there should not have been any cause for concern.

In practice, of course, there was cause for concern. Indeed, there were at least two major problems with this understanding of the relationship between slavery and state sovereignty. First, there was the issue of how states joined the Union. And second, there was the issue of what states joining the Union meant for those who had joined at some point prior. In order for a state to gain admission to the American republic, the proposal in question – whether submitted on behalf of the residents of an Organized Territory, a region within an existing state, or even a foreign nation – must be approved by a majority in Congress. There exists no other means by which a state may come into being under the auspices of the Constitution, and Congress is under no obligation to vote on or even consider an proposal once it has been made. What this means, in practice, is that while the inhabitants of a proposed state are free – nay, required – to write their own constitution, and to thus determine what will and will not be legal therein, Congress has the final say as to whether a proposal for admission is accepted or denied. In most cases, this fact makes little difference. Generally speaking, the states represented in Congress could not care less if a proposed addition to their number desires a unicameral rather than a bicameral legislature or wishes to make the consumption of alcohol illegal on alternating Saturdays. What they do tend to care about, however, for a number of reasons, is whether or not the proposed state in question intends to allow for a legal practice which some of them find to be morally reprehensible and others find to be economically essential.

Slavery, of course, is exactly that kind of practice. And while it might have been the better part of discretion for Representatives and Senators in early 19^th century America to simply have allowed slave-states to join the Union as their inhabitants desired, their collective convictions evidently wouldn’t allow it. Not only was slavery considered by most Northern members of Congress to be an unambiguously immoral practice whose spread they felt personally compelled to arrest, but they also understood that the political culture of the United States of America was becoming increasingly fixated on the balance of power between pro-slavery and anti-slavery interests. Representatives of the slaveholding Southern states were conscious of this latter development as well, and thereby came to understand that any threat to the admission of further slave-states represented a concomitant diminution of their collective power. As of 1819, at which point the proposed state of Missouri petitioned for admission to the Union, there were twenty-two states in total. Eleven of them permitted slavery, the other eleven did not. The upper house of Congress was therefore evenly divided between twenty-two pro-slavery Senators and twenty-two anti-slavery Senators. From the perspective of the Northern states, the admission of Missouri as a slave state would have thrown off this balance and given a distinct – perhaps even permanent – advantage to the slave-holding bloc. And from the perspective of the Southern states, the rejection of Missouri’s admission as a slave state would have constituted an expansion of federal authority to include the institution of slavery. Having thus made the rejection of slavery a condition for admission to the Union, how much further would Congress be willing to go? Why not restrict slavery within the existing states? Why not abolish it altogether?

The cited opinion which Calhoun expressed during the Missouri Crisis of 1819 had clearly been formed with these questions in mind. And while it most definitely represented a very telling admission, it was not necessarily a very surprising one. Calhoun was a native of the Palmetto State, a former Congressmen from the same, and a personal beneficiary of the institution of slavery. His experiences during the War of 1812 may indeed had convinced him of the importance of seeking national solutions to national problems, but likely nothing could have persuaded him that the federal government had any right whatsoever to interfere with slavery as practiced in the states. Notwithstanding what the Constitution had to say on the subject – very little, in point of fact, but enough for most Southerners to claim its protection – there was simply no way that a population which had amassed a tremendous amount of wealth over the course of generations, and created an entire quasi-aristocratic culture as a result, would ever consent to give anyone but themselves the ability to alter or abolish the institution to which all of it was owed. If, in order to prevent such an outcome from taking place, the population in question was forced to appeal to the protection of its former colonial master, one may rest assured that this is what would take place. The Southern states may have just recently waged the second of two wars with the colonial power in question, but the preservation of their socio-economic well-being would most definitely have trumped all other considerations. The British had never seemed to take issue with the prevalence of slavery in their former American possessions, after all, and there was every reason to believe that the British government would have seized any opportunity to weaken the economy of the United States. The resulting alliance may not have been a particularly comfortable one, but Calhoun was unlikely to have been bluffing when he expressed his opinion that the South would have made its peace with the prospect if the states therein felt they had no other choice.

While the successful resolution of the Missouri Crisis meant that Calhoun was never forced to test his claim, the incident itself arguably marked another turning point in the course of his public career. From having acted, since the end of the War of 1812, as one of the foremost nationalists in the Democratic-Republican party, the 1820s would see the Congressman-turned-Secretary bend increasingly towards the narrow, sectional interests of the contemporary South. This trend proceeded slowly at first – he served out his full term in the Monroe Administration, continued (unsuccessfully) to advocate for a larger and more professionalized military, and even pursued the office of President – but it began to gain significant traction following the election of his former cabinet colleague John Quincy Adams to the office of Chief Executive in 1824.

Unlike previous contests, in which the Democratic-Republicans found themselves either arrayed against their longstanding opponents, the Federalists, or else entirely unopposed, 1824 witnessed multiple nominations for the office of President by different factions within the Democratic-Republican party. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams enjoyed support mainly in New England and New York, Treasury Secretary William Crawford (1772-1834) was the favorite of Virginia and Georgia, now Senator Andrew Jackson was strongest in the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, and parts of the South, and Speaker of the House Henry Clay was the preferred candidate of his native Kentucky, neighboring Ohio, and Missouri. Given how widely this situation seemed likely to split the national vote, it should come as no surprise that Calhoun favored his own chances and decided to pursue a nomination of his own. But while South Carolina was already securely in the Jackson camp – seemingly quashing Calhoun’s presidential ambitions outright – the Secretary of War was still sufficiently popular among his fellow partisans to gain their support as a candidate for the office of Vice-President. Indeed, he was chosen as running-mate by both Quincy Adams and Jackson, thus effectively elevating his chances at success significantly above those of any of the frontrunners. Granted, Calhoun was opposed to most of the Quincy Adams platform, and his attitude toward Jackson was still colored by his experiences in the Monroe cabinet during the events of the First Seminole War. Nevertheless, he proved an enthusiastic campaigner, and made very effective use of the contemporary partisan press to clarify his own policy positions and promote his own personal appeal. If the results were any indication, this was a wise choice on Calhoun’s part.

Pursuant to the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, members of the Electoral College were required to submit separate votes for President and Vice-President, the purpose of which was to almost completely eliminate the possibility of a Chief Executive being elected from one party while his replacement-in-waiting was chosen from another. This rule change did not prevent there ever being a tie for the office of President – for which outcome the Constitution described a very specific procedure – but at the very least it ensured that partisan rivalries did not extend into the Executive Branch itself. The efficacy of this arrangement was well proven by the outcome of the Election of 1824. None of the four candidates were ultimately able to secure the required Electoral College majority to become President of the United States – leading to a contingent election in the House of Representatives – but the fact that the Vice-President was chosen separately, and that Calhoun appeared on two separate tickets, ensured that his own candidacy met with incontestable success. With one hundred and eighty-one electoral votes – compared to Quincy Adams’ eighty-four and Jackson’s ninety-nine – John C. Calhoun was to be the next Vice-President. All that remained, of course, was to determine who he was destined to share the dais with when Inauguration Day rolled around. The Constitution mandated that only the top three candidates would be allowed to participate in the contingent election in the House – thus eliminating Clay as a contender – and that voting would take place by state delegation rather than by individual Representative. The resulting poll, unlike the last instance in 1800, took only one round. Though Quincy Adams had received fewer electoral and popular votes than Jackson, he was ultimately supported by the bare majority of thirteen states necessary to win. John Quincy Adams thus became the President of the United States of America, with John C. Calhoun as Vice-President, and Henry Clay – who, as Speaker of the House, had overseen the contingent election – as Secretary of State.

Andrew Jackson unsurprisingly cried foul at this turn of events, alleged the existence of a “corrupt bargain” between Quincy Adams and Clay, and vowed to run again and win in 1828. Calhoun, for his part, was somewhat more sanguine. What concerned him far more, it seemed, then how the President had become the President was how he was supposed to position himself within an administration whose policies he openly opposed. During their shared service in the Monroe Administration, Calhoun and Quincy Adams had been of like minds on a number of issues. The latter may have had to convince the former that Gen. Jackson’s effective conquest of Spanish Florida was cause for celebration rather that rebuke, but both men seemed to agree on the necessity of things like protective tariffs, high prices for public land, a stable currency backed by a central bank, and federal funding for major infrastructure projects. But as the heightened nationalism of the 1810s gave way to the increasing factionalism of the 1820s, the threat of armed conflict dissipated, and the Atlantic economy began to shift away from the war footing it had been on since the early 1790s, Calhoun’s positions began to change. Having supported the aforementioned Tariff of 1816, for example, he came out strongly against the succeeding Tariff of 1824. Quincy Adams was a keenly in favor of the latter, believing as he did that the cultivation of a thriving domestic economy was more important than ensuring unhindered American access to the larger global economy. But while this may have suited Quincy Adams’ mainly Northwestern supporters – whose occupations were increasingly mercantile and industrial – it did not sit well with Southerners like Calhoun whose livelihoods depended on foreign markets to absorb their produce and provide them with cheap manufactured goods.

On a somewhat more philosophical note, it was also increasingly a cause of suspicion on the part of the Southern wing of the Democratic-Republican party as the 1810s gave way to the 1820s that Northerners like Quincy Adams seemed so keen to extend the authority of the federal government into the realms of domestic commerce and infrastructure. Not only did it appear to these Southerners to be pushing the envelope of what the Constitution explicitly permitted, but it gave them cause to wonder how much further a man of Quincy Adams’ convictions might conceivably go. Like his father before him, the younger Adams was a noted opponent of the institution of slavery. He had been tactful enough over the course of his career up to his victory in 1824 not to allow his opinion on the subject influence his actions as a public servant, but it was far from unthinkable – in the minds of his Southern opponents, at least – that he might have felt the office of President finally lent him both the power and the political cover to make manifest what had long been a profound personal belief. Without knowing for certain that Calhoun was of this opinion himself, it bears acknowledging both the possibility and the likelihood. Along with the tariff issue, Calhoun and Quincy Adams had also come down on different sides of the aforementioned Missouri Crisis in 1819. The latter was of the opinion that slavery was a clear example of bad policy if a disagreement about its potential expansion into new states might conceivably lead to the dissolution of the American republic. The former, meanwhile, held to the opinion that slavery, by supposedly making all white men equal, was essential to American democracy, and that protecting is was tantamount to protecting the republic itself. As this was not what one might call a tractable argument, it was little wonder Calhoun already felt alienated from his former cabinet colleague upon their shared inauguration in March of 1825.

President John Quincy Adams’ subsequent selection of Henry Clay as his Secretary of State certainly didn’t help matters between himself and his Vice-President. Whatever Calhoun felt about the “corrupt bargain” that Jackson loudly alleged, the appointment of the Kentuckian sent an unmistakable message as to the long-term intentions of the new Chief Executive. The reason for this would have been plain enough at the time. At the turn of the 19^th century, being handed the reigns of the State Department was tantamount to being anointed as the President’s preferred successor. James Madison had been elected President after serving Jefferson in that selfsame capacity, as had Monroe after serving Madison and Quincy Adams after serving Monroe. Vice-Presidents had been elected President before, of course. Adams had previously been Washington’s VP, and Jefferson had filled the same role for Adams. But this trend had been broken with Madison’s election in 1808. From that point until the early 1840s, the office of Secretary of State would function as the primary steppingstone for public servants eager to ascend to the highest office in the land. That this was an informal practice doubtless gave cause for people like Calhoun to hope that perhaps they might be the one to break the pattern and win the endorsement of their former running-mate. Clay’s elevation, unfortunately, made it plain that this was not to be. The Kentuckian may not have shared Quincy Adams’ belief in the fundamental incompatibility of slavery with American republicanism, but he and the President were virtually in lockstep on the subject of tariffs, internal improvements, and the broad authority of the federal government. In short, he was someone to which Quincy Adams would have been quite comfortable handing the office of President once his own term of service expired.

It should not come as much of a shock that Calhoun refused to accept that his political career was over at the age of forty-two. Having perhaps a premonition that the Hero of New Orleans would yet make good on his promise – or maybe just seeking a way of leaving office less shameful than resignation – he thereafter bided his time, made such entreaties as were necessary, and finally agreed to serve as Andrew Jackson’s running-mate in the Election of 1828. Calhoun remained suspicious of the former general – no less for his tendency towards populism and his support of successive federal tariffs than because of any lingering disdain left over from the events of the First Seminole War – but Jackson, at the very least, was a fellow Southerner, and someone who accordingly understood the importance of slavery to the Southern way of life. The resulting national poll, though it followed what was arguably one of the most vicious presidential campaigns in American history, was quite emphatic in its result. Jackson was called a warmonger and a murderer, a heartless slaver, and the husband of a convicted adulteress, but he nonetheless defeated the incumbent President by a margin of one hundred and seventy-eight electoral votes to eighty-three. Once again, it seemed, John C. Calhoun would be Vice-President. But while, at the outset, he surely believed this to be a tremendous boon – particularly given the recent passage of yet another federal tariff which he was hoped the newly-minted President would seek to repeal – the events of the next several years would show quite clearly that it was actually anything but.

South Carolina Exposition and Protest, Part I: Context

            Bear with me, for a moment, if you please. I’ve an idea I’d like to tease out a little.

            Ahem.

There would seem to be, upon consideration, a great number of truisms which one might fairly apply to the political culture of the United States of America without any need to make qualified admission to time, place, or context. They are fact, they have always been fact, they will always be fact, or so it would seem. Americans hate taxes, for example. Now and again they have been convinced of their necessity, but their first impulse, as a people, seems always to a kind of moral outrage towards the very idea that their hard-earned money should have to pay for something not of their choosing. Americans love a war hero, it might also be said, even when they have mixed feelings about the war itself. A willingness to shed blood for the nation, even in the service of a questionable cause, almost never fails to elicit respect and devotion among the American people. Indeed, many a political career has been founded on exactly this phenomenon. And then, of course, there is the matter of the Founders. Americans love them, love to quote them, love to draft them into their arguments. The average American may not know very much about the life and career of Thomas Jefferson, his political philosophy, or his policy positions, but they know enough to pay heed to the speaker when his name is invoked. As often the speaker seems to know as little as their audience, but this hardly seems to matter. The Founders are not people, with flaws, and biases, spotty judgement, and moral failings. At best, they are icons to be beatified and worshiped. At worst, they are implements with which to bludgeon one’s opponents. In either case, they are not human beings.

Not, at least, in the way they are most often talked about. I can only hope that this series has offered a useful counterpoint to this tendency. Treating the Founders like deities or blunt instruments is destructive to understanding how and why they did what they did. They were people, they tried their best, they made mistakes. Possessed of this knowledge, the United States of America as a concept becomes a fair bit less anxiety-inducing and a fair bit easier to live with from one day to the next. The nation was not created by gods and then handed down to mortal successors who must invariably fail to live up to or even understand the motives and intentions of these otherworldly figures. Rather, it was created by human beings who didn’t always have all the answers but hoped, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that they and their descendants might conceivably make things work. This might not seem like the most inspiring truth by which to live – embracing, as it does, the imperfection of humankind – but it is most definitely preferable to the alternative. Better, I think, to understand that your nation was created by people as imperfect as you are than to drive yourself to distraction trying to live in strict accordance with a set of painfully flawed ideas all because you’ve convinced yourself that they represent the objective, universal truth. Forgive me for seeming to do the opposite of what I say, but this latter course seems rather far afield of what the Founders wanted for their countrymen.

 The funny thing is, of course, that this idea – that the Founders are less people and more rhetorical devices – has been in circulation in the United States of America since the Founders themselves were still running the show. From almost the moment that the Constitution took full effect in the late summer of 1789, exceptionally intense debates began to take shape concerning the “true significance” of this or that article, or clause, or sentence, or grammatical construction. People who were not in attendance at the Philadelphia Convention nonetheless claimed to know for certain what was intended by the use of the words “necessary and proper” in Article I, Section 8, and argued vehemently with anyone who dared to disagree. People who were in attendance, but who disagreed on how a given power was to be deployed in practice, likewise claimed a special knowledge, and argued just as vehemently with each other. Complete agreement on the subject was exceptionally uncommon. All that everyone seemed to be sure of was that their interpretation was the right one. Granted, people were more willing, in those days, to see the Constitution for what it was: a flawed attempt to create a stable government for the American republic. The number of amendments they collectively agreed to – fully twelve between 1790 and 1804 – would seem to speak to this understanding. But a pattern was set all the same. Arguing about the meaning of the Constitution and the intentions of its authors had become a foundational aspect of American political culture.

Enter, on that note, one John C. Calhoun (1782-1850). He has appeared in these pages before, as both an ardent nationalist and a vehement defenders of the rights of the states, and most recently figured into the previous series as the principle opponent of President Andrew Jackson during the so-called Nullification Crisis (1828-1833). Calhoun, among other things, famously articulated his own particular vision of how the Constitution was supposed to function in the form of the South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828). This, too, was discussed in the previous series, but really only by way of context. The subject at hand was Jackson, his understanding of executive authority, and the various incidents which caused him to convert his convictions into policy. But Calhoun, in truth, is just as significant to the history of American political culture as was Old Hickory himself. Jackson digested, processed, and reshaped existing attitudes towards the nature of presidential power in ways that would continue to reverberate for the better part of the century that would follow his tenure in office. Just so, Calhoun re-framed the established tradition of constitutional interpretation – particularly as concerned the balance of power between the states and the federal government – in ways that would resonate for generations to come. Bearing this in mind, certain question would seem to warrant investigation on the subject of Calhoun’s theory of constitutional sovereignty. Namely, as specifically concerns the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, what is it that he said, why does it matter, and how does it fit into the well-established American tradition of treating the Founders as though their words were carved in stone?

This, of course, is usually where the discussion shifts to a kind of biographical overview. What better way to begin to understand the perspective of a historical actor then by examining the experiences that shaped and tested them? Calhoun will receive this treatment as well, rest assured. First, however, a qualification. There are many things which the various members of the Founding Generation did over the course of their lives which went entirely beyond what in any age should be thought of as morally acceptable. They have not always been mentioned, it is true, in the discussions which form the substance of this series, mostly because they have not always been pertinent to the subject at hand. But this should not be taken as some manner of pardon. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, all of whom have been written about here at length – and in often complementary terms, it must be said – were all also guilty of having owned human beings. Nothing they accomplished will ever wash this stain from their records. Their contributions to the cause of “American liberty” cannot erase the crime, or make it seem to be anything less than the unforgivable offense that it is. They are important men, most definitely, and worthy of study and scholarship. And let no one say that they were exceptional among their contemporaries for having claimed to possess the bodies of wholly innocent men and women. But the fact remains, notwithstanding their willingness to admit that the institution of slavery was vile, cruel, and arbitrary, that they should have been better. They should have done better. This has not been said often enough in these pages.

As to how this relates to John C. Calhoun, the answer is a fairly simple one. The likes of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, while all lifelong slaveowners, tended not to celebrate the institution or advocate for its spread beyond the states in which it appeared to be economically essential. They did little to alleviate the suffering that chattel slavery caused, of course, but nor were they among its most vehement defenders. In this way, perhaps, it becomes easier to forget the magnitude of the harm they caused to countless individuals bought and sold. John C. Calhoun, on the other hand, was not a sensitive, repentant, hand-wringing slaveowner. He did not bemoan the dubious necessity of owning human beings while simultaneously doing little to lessen the suffering that said ownership caused. On the contrary, and quite famously, he argued that slavery was an unmitigated boon. “Never before has the black race of Central Africa,” he notoriously asserted in a Senate speech delivered on February 6th, 1837, “From the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually [.]” Slavery was sanctioned by scripture, Calhoun argued. It was practiced in ancient Greece and in the Roman Republic. Far from being incompatible with the attainment of true greatness, it accordingly seemed essential to the same. Access to an exceptionally cheap and plentiful source of labor effectively freed slaveholders to cultivate their mental, spiritual, and artistic faculties, the end result of which was the development of a rich and varied culture from which all its members stood to benefit. And at the same time, proximity to such enlightened civilizations afforded slaves the ability to transcend their “savage” origins by a course of mimicry and education. Indeed, Calhoun concluded, wherever, “Two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good.”

It should not need to be argued that Calhoun was emphatically incorrect. There is not, nor can there ever be, any means by which the ownership of human beings might possibly be justified. That he nevertheless attempted to claim otherwise would accordingly seem to warrant a particularly strident disclaimer for the discussion that is to follow. Calhoun was not worse than George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson, or James Madison on the spectrum of prominent American slaveholders. Indeed, there is no spectrum. Owning slaves is unforgivable, period. It’s just that Calhoun is more strongly associated with attempts to defend the institution of slavery than any of the Founders. They were selfish cowards who were simultaneously willing to admit the evil of slavery but unwilling to take any action which would have threatened their material livelihoods. Calhoun, by his own admission, conversely makes himself out to be a monstrous bigot who actually believed that buying a human being and proceeding to work them until they died represented some kind of twisted cultural enlightenment. The crime, in either case, remains the same, but it is undeniably easier to recoil at Calhoun’s shamelessness than at the mealy-mouthed repentances of the slave-owning Founders. Bearing all of this in mind, let the following be made absolutely clear. Regardless of what might be said about the man in the entries to follow, and regardless of what it might seem to say that the present discussion is taking place at all, John C. Calhoun was in many ways a vile human being whose words and actions vis-à-vis the institution of slavery are unjustifiable and unforgivable. He is being featured here because he was an exceptionally influential figure in the realm of 19^th century American politics, and because some of the things that he said over the course of his public career remain pertinent to discussions that continue to take place. He is not being given a pass.

All that being said, let us continue in our accustomed way. Calhoun – who, it really shouldn’t need to be said at this point, was a native of South Carolina – was born on March 18^th, 1782 in what was then the Abbeville District on the Palmetto State’s sparsely-populated western frontier. Like most of the families in the region, the Calhouns were Scots-Irish Presbyterians who came originally from Northern Ireland and settled in the colonial American interior in search of cheap land and a favorable economy. The family found exactly that on the South Carolina borderlands – after brief, preliminary stopovers in Pennsylvania and Virginia – and Calhoun’s father Patrick (1727-1796) enjoyed particular success as a surveyor, farmer, planter, and politician. The elder Calhoun never truly became one of the colony’s political or social elite, it is true. Being a Presbyterian frontiersman in a culture dominated by a coastal Anglican junta, he was more or less forbidden from rising to the absolute heights of power and influence. But he provided exceptionally well for his family all the same, thereby ensuring that his sons wanted for little and had every reason to feel pride in their origins. Indeed, by succeeding as he did in spite of his status as a social and political outsider, Patrick doubtless did much to shape young John’s personal and political convictions. Patrick was a man of ambition and a supporter of the Revolution who opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution on the grounds that the resulting national government would inevitably threaten the rights of the states. Though John would begin his political career as an avowed and enthusiastic nationalist, in time his principles would come to closely mirror those of his father.

Though possessed of prodigious intelligence and scholastic ambition, Calhoun’s early formal education was severely limited by the circumstances of his upbringing. Quite simply, there were no schools in the Abbeville District, or even in any of the surrounding counties, of which young John might have availed himself. An academy in Appling, Georgia – some fifty miles distant – was the nearest source of formal instruction, and while Calhoun was made to attend this selfsame institution, it struggled to secure funding and operated only intermittently. His early studies, in consequence, were largely self-directed, and had to be squeezed into whatever free time young John could set aside between his increasingly demanding responsibilities to the Calhoun family’s various properties. His father’s death in 1796, at a time when his older brothers were settling into careers and lives of their own, made this balance even harder to maintain. By age fourteen, Calhoun was managing all five of the farms his family owned, and studying at his own behest, and hunting, and fishing as often as he could manage. It was, no doubt, an exceptionally crowded life for one so young, and which surely demanded a high degree of discipline. Fortunately, Calhoun’s brothers were not ignorant of their younger sibling’s travails. Six years after their father’s death, they conspired to pool their resources and sent young John to one of the handful of universities yet extant in the United States.

Surprisingly, given that he was a southerner, Calhoun chose not to attend the College of William & Mary, where many scions of prominent Virginia families had received their education. Instead, in a move that was, if not entirely unheard of then at the very least unusual, Calhoun enrolled at Yale College in Connecticut. The moral and intellectual strains of New England Federalism, it seemed, would form a primary influence on Calhoun’s understanding of the political issues of the day. And so, indeed, they did, though not to the exclusion of Jeffersonian democracy. College President Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), a Congregationalist theologian originally from Massachusetts, became Calhoun’s mentor upon his matriculation in 1802, and profoundly impressed the young South Carolinian with the breadth of his knowledge and the clarity of his insight. Even so, Dwight reportedly found it impossible to shake Calhoun of his attachment to the radical populism favored and professed by the ascendant Democratic-Republicans. It was a shame, he once explained to his young disciple, that Calhoun seemed to possess, “A most unfortunate bias for error,” for otherwise, “Your talents are of a high order and might justify you for any station [.]” Dwight did not live to see it, but his frustrations may well have been soothed by Calhoun’s later attempt to interpose the sovereignty of the individual states between the passage of federal law and the enforcement of the same. Dwight, after all, was among a relatively small group of New Englanders active in the 1800s and 1810s whose disdain for the administration of Thomas Jefferson and his Virginia successors ran so deep that they openly considered the possibility of secession. If successive southern presidents, they asserted, were going to pursue such policies as visited severe and particular harm upon mercantile New England, then the states therein had every reason to contemplate severing their connection to the agrarian South out of purest self-defense. Nothing every came of these discussions – beyond an ultimately discredited convention held in Hartford over the winter of 1814/15 – and Calhoun never became the Federalist that Timothy Dwight might well have preferred. But clearly, and to some extent, his beliefs did sink in. Calhoun might not have ended up a secessionist, but he most certainly came to believe that the essential sovereignty of the various states entitled them to act with perfect autonomy whenever that their interests were fatally threatened.