Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/237

 Calhoun — Nullification Explained. 231

Let us see on what this charge of "lying" rests. The following is the extract from Calhoun's dispatch to Pakenham, quoted by von Hoist.

"The United States have heretofore declined to meet her (Texas') wishes; but the time has now arrived when they can no longer refuse, consistently with their own security and peace, and the sacred obliga- tion imposed by their Constitutional compact for mutual defense and protection. * * They are without responsibility for the state of things already adverted to, as the immediate cause of imposing on them, in self-defense, the obligation of adopting the measures they have. They remained passive so long as the policy on the part of Great Britain, which has led to its adoption, had no immediate bear- ing on their peace and safety."

Dr. von Hoist's comment on this is as follows:

"It may not be correct to apply, without modification, the code of private ethics to politics; but, however flexible political morality be, a lie is a lie, and Calhoun knew that there was not a particle of truth in these assertions. Almost eight years before, on May 23, 1836, as we have seen, he himself declared annexation to be necessary, and the first and foremost reason that he alleged for it was the interest which the Southern States had in it, on account of their peculiar in- stitution. Two years later, his colleague, Mr. Preston, had moved in the Senate, and Mr. Thompson, of South Carolina, had also moved in the House of Representatives, to declare annexation expedient. Several State Legislatures, as those of Mississippi, Alabama and Ten- nessee, had agitated the question with hot zeal, unreservedly avowing that they did so 'upon grounds somewhat local in their complexion, but of an import infinitely grave and interesting to the people who inhabit the southern portion of the Confederacy.' In December, 1841, it was a public secret in the political circles of Washington that Tyler had again taken up the annexation project. It had in fact never been abandoned, but only temporarily put off the order of the day, because, for various reasons, the time had not been deemed op- portune. But on October 16, 1843, more than two months before Lord Aberdeen's dispatch was written, and more than four months before it was delivered, Upshur had made the formal proposition of annexation. Whether Calhoun had any knowledge of the existence of this dispatch before he had consented to become the successor of Upshur, we do not know; but that he would have accepted Tyler's invitation and entered upon the office with exactly the same pro- gramme, if Lord Aberdeen's dispatch had never been written, nobody