Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/239

 Calhoun — Nullification Explained. 233

sional Globe, second session Twenty-ninth Congress, p. 459 ; also, remarks of Lords Brougham and Aberdeen in House of Lords, in London Morning Chronicle, August 19, 1843.) But the Union haters of 1840-60, whose glasses Dr. von Hoist now wears, could only see from one side of the shield, and, in their impatience to abolish slavery, desired to see established on our Southwestern border an asylum for runaway negroes and hostile Indians.

Dr. von Hoist himself declares that " an independent Texas with- out slavery, and the permanent continuance of slavery in the Union were irreconcilable" (p. 237). He is also forced to admit that as the Constitution was originally framed and then stood, " slavery was an acknowledged and protected institution." That once admitted, "the sacred obligation imposed by the Constitutional compact for mutual defence and protection," is unquestionable, except on Dr. von Hoist's idea that this obligation was nullified by "the determining principle" of the Constitution and subordinate to the "convictions" of the Union haters. On this idea it might be admissible for Dr. von Hoist to contend that his view of the obligations of the Constitutional compact was correct and Calhoun's wrong. But to answer Calhoun's argument, thirty years after his death, by calling him a liar — will that meet the approval of cultured New England ?

The very passage, selected for quotation by Dr. von Hoist, proves that Calhoun rested his defence of the annexation of Texas — not on the avowals of Lord Aberdeen's dispatch, but on " the state of things," one important element of which, though previously made known by the remarks of Lords Brougham and Aberdeen in the House of Lords in August, 1843 (two months before Upshur's "formal proposition of annexation"), was for the first time avowed in an official dispatch to this Government by Lord Aberdeen six months later. Dr. von Hoist's disingenuous effort to make it appear that Calhoun rested his defence on the avowals of Lord Aberdeen, and not on the state of things, and that Calhoun, therefore, "lied," because the facts were known before the avowals were made, is a malus-puer-\\\\.y which, if admissible in the heat and passion of an active canvass against a live candidate for office, would even then ad- mit of but one defence, "that want of decency is want of sense."

Speaking of the Tariff controversy of 1 828-' 32, Dr. von Hoist says (page 98) :

" South Carolina received the new tariff as a declaration that the protective system was 'the settled policy of the country,' and on August 28, 1832, Calhoun issued his third manifest (his letter to