Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/594

 588 CALIIOUN struggle between a congressional bank and an executive bank, for such was the light in which lie regarded the league of banks to which the deposits had been transferred. The bank controversy led to an amalgama- tion of the national republican opposition, so called, the late supporters of Adams's adminis- tration and present friends of Clay, with that fragment of the Jackson party which on state rights grounds had followed Calhoun out of it, but without going the length of nullification. This combined opposition took the name of whigs, assumed by them as indicative of their opposition to executive usurpation. The South Carolina nullifiers an appellation often re- proachfully used, but which Mr. Calhoun did not hesitate to apply to himself still continued a body by themselves, to which he served as chief; for while cooperating for the next four years with the whigs, he declined to be class- ed as of their number. In reference to this subject he declared, in one of his speeches, that he had voluntarily put himself in the very small minority to which he belonged to serve the gallant state of South Carolina, nor would he turn on his heel to be placed at the head of the government. He believed that corruption had taken such a hold of it, that any man who at- tempted reform would fail to be sustained. The next session witnessed the commencement of the discussions on the subject of slavery. The American anti-slavery society had sent to the southern states, through the mail, tracts and other documents denunciatory of slavery. The arrival of these documents in the south happened to be coincident with a slave insur- rection in Mississippi, and also with the nomi- nation of Van Buren to the presidency by a convention of the democratic party held at Baltimore. Complaints were at once raised against this proceeding, as tending, if not in- tended, to excite the slaves to revolt. Van Buren's nomination had been opposed by a large southern section of the party, which in consequence seceded and nominated as their candidate Hugh L. White of Tennessee. The existence of this northern anti-slavery agitation was strongly urged in the southern states as an objection to voting for a northern candidate for the presidency. Van Buren's political friends in the northern states, by way of re- lieving their candidate and themselves from any odium on this score, had joined with the mercantile interest in the northern cities in loudly denouncing the abolitionists. It was under these circumstances that the president referred to the subject in his annual message. While testifying to the general feeling of indig- nant regret which the proceedings of the abo- litionists had aroused at the north (to be no doubt followed up by legislation if needed), he referred to the post office as specially under the guardianship of congress, and suggested a law to prohibit, under severe penalties, the cir- culation in the southern states through the mail of incendiary publications intended to | instigate the slaves to insurrection. The sub- ject was referred to a special committee, of which Calhoun was chairman. lie soon brought in a report, and a bill subjecting to severe penalties any postmaster who should knowingly receive and put into the mail any publication or picture touching the subject of slavery, to go into any state or territory in which the circulation of such publication or picture should be forbidden by the state laws. This report, starting with the doctrine that the states were sovereign as to each other, bound together only by compact, and that the right of internal defence was one of their re- served rights, proceeded to argue that it be- longed to the states respectively, and not to congress, as the president's message had as- sumed, to determine what publications were to be prohibited. The objection taken in the message to the publications in question had been that they were intended to stimulate the slaves to insurrection. The report went far beyond that. It principally objected to these documents that their avowed object was the emancipation of the negroes, a measure which involved not merely a vast destruction of prop- erty, but the overthrow of the existing relation between the two races inhabiting the southern states; the only relation, as the report con- tended, compatible with their common happi- ness and prosperity, or even with their exist- ence together in the same community. Social and political equality between the races was impossible. To change the condition of the Af- ricans would put them in a position of looking to the other states for support and protection, making them virtually the allies and depen- dants of those states, and placing in the hands of those states an effectual instrument to de- stroy the influence of the South and control the destiny of the Union. The object aimed at by the abolitionists was the destruction of a rela- tion essential to the peace, prosperity, and po- litical influence of the slaveholding states. The means employed were organized societies and a powerful press, which strove to promote the object in view by exciting the bitterest animos- ity and hatred among the people of the non- slaveholding states against the citizens and in- stitutions of the slaveholding states. Such a proceeding tended to the erection of a power- ful political party, the basis of which would be hatred against the siaveholding spates, and of which the necessary consequence would be the dissolution of the Union. It was, therefore, not merely the right of the southern states to ex- clude those publications, but it was also the duty of the northern states, within which the danger originated, at once to arrest its further prog- ress. The bill failed on the final vote, 25 to 1 9. With respect to petitions for the abolition of slavery in the territories and the District of Columbia, Calhoun held that they ought to be rejected altogether. He took the ground that congress had no jurisdiction over the sub- ject of slavery, in whatever form it might be