The definite break between Calhoun and Jackson was one of the most dramatic and far-reaching in its political effects of any similar quarrel in American history. It furnished Clay with new material for the building of his party. It decisively committed the party of Jackson to the defense of the Union. It eliminated Calhoun from the list of presidential possibilities, dropped the curtain on the South Carolinian that the Nation had known for two decades, and raised it on another with whom the world is well acquainted. It divided his life into two distinct parts. It made Martin Van Buren President.

The Calhoun who was to become one of Clay’s most vituperative and intemperate lieutenants in the fight against the Administration differs as radically from the ambitious politician who had intrigued for the election of Jackson as the Webster of the Great Debate differed from the Webster of the Rockingham Resolutions.

The greatest biographer of the Carolinian[228] fixes the time that he became the personification of the slavery cause as 1830—the date of the quarrel—and says that “up to that time he is, in spite of his uncommonly brilliant career, only an able politician of the higher and nobler order, having many peers and even a considerable number of superiors.” Of the three great figures, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, he was admittedly the strongest intellectually, and the one most unmistakably touched with genius. Nature made him a statesman. Swept into Congress on the wave of patriotic enthusiasm following the attack on the Chesapeake, his audacity, independent thinking, militancy, and genius combined to place him in the very lead of the party of Young America that clamored for the War of 1812. He sounded the first clear official war note in his report on that part of Madison’s Message dealing with our relations with England; and after the delivery of his first war speech one of the leading editors of the day hailed “this young Carolinian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names upon the age in which they live.”[229] In his haughty assumption of equality with the oldest and most experienced members of the Congress, he suggests the younger Pitt. His war speeches were classics of argumentation, sober, and yet pulsating with patriotic passion. If any sectional thought crossed his mind then, it never touched his tongue. He was a superb Nationalist—one of the most splendid figures of his time. Summoned into Monroe’s Cabinet as Secretary of War, he disclosed a high order of executive as well as legislative ability. Finding the department in confusion, he brought order out of chaos, and established system. A former officer of the great Napoleon was impressed with the resemblance between Calhoun’s plan of army organization and that of the Corsican.[230] Even his friends were agreeably astonished at his aptitude for organzation and general executive duties. And this furthered his presidential plans, and a strong party in the Congress perfected plans to advance him to the White House on the expiration of Monroe’s term.

It is not now fashionable to think of him as a designing and ambitious politician, but one of his biographers has commented on his tendency to stoop “to cover with an approving and admiring smile a resentment which is lurking in the corner of his heart, and on the other side to break off all social intercourse with old and highly respected associates, merely because others whose services he wished to secure might not like these connections.”[231] And yet, despite his efforts, his candidacy appears to have made no impression upon the country. Among the publicists he was strong; but the people were not impressed. He was the original “young man’s candidate,” but this weakened him among the older and more important leaders. “His age, or rather his youth,” wrote one,[232] “at the present moment is a formidable objection to his elevation to the chair.” Nevertheless, placing his reliance on the younger element, he pushed on. Even in Massachusetts he was charged with having “newspapers set up” to support him.[233] Certain it is that Webster favored his election as long as it seemed possible of achievement, and when failure there seemed certain, the greatest of his future rivals earnestly urged his election to the Vice-Presidency.[234] To the latter position he was elected through a combination of the friends of Adams and Jackson.

And now we find the presidential fever consuming him. He becomes the practical, scheming, not overly scrupulous politician—a rôle he is not popularly supposed to have ever filled. From the very beginning he set to work to undermine the Administration of his chief. His apologists explain that when the “bargain” story was advanced, he was forced to choose between the two factions that had combined to elect him, and preferred to go with the Jackson forces.[235] Whatever his motive, he entered into no half-hearted opposition. This notable activity against Adams and in favor of Jackson has been ascribed to a presumptive premonition that the latter was certain to reach the Presidency, and, in view of Jackson’s assurance that he would be satisfied with one term, Calhoun calculated that the defeat of Adams would shorten his period of waiting by four years.[236] So ardently was he panting for the Presidency at this time that he summoned his friends to assist in the establishment of a paper, impatiently brushed aside the objections as to cost, and calling Duff Green to the editorship of the “National Telegraph,” created the most powerful party organ that had existed in this country up to that time.[237] Less than a year after Adams’s inauguration, Calhoun was actively organizing for his defeat. We find him inviting a Philadelphian to his chamber in the Capitol to urge him to coöperate with the Opposition party on the ground that “because of the manner in which it came into power it must be defeated at all hazards, regardless of its measures.”[238] This insistence on the defeat of the Administration, “regardless of its measures,” was the reasoning of an ambitious politician, none too scrupulous, in a pinch, in his methods. The rest is known—how Calhoun threw his influence to Jackson in 1828, and was reflected to the Vice-Presidency with the hero of the Hermitage. Close students of the period are now convinced that preliminary to this alliance an agreement had been made that Calhoun was to succeed to the Presidency after four years.

At this time he was in the full maturity of his wonderful power, and the future must have seemed secure. Quincy, who saw him about this time, found him “a striking looking man, with thick black hair brushed back defiantly,” and he comments on Calhoun’s policy of cultivating and fascinating all young men visiting the National capital.[239] The world is too familiar with the tragic features of the great Carolinian to require a description. The rugged carving, the low broad brow, the spare frame almost amounting to attenuation, the penetrating gaze of the “glorious pair of yellow-brown shining eyes,” the bushy brows and the sunken sockets—Calhoun looked unlike any other man in history.[240] He was a commanding figure at the time of the quarrel which was to change the entire course of his life, and to alter his political character.

II

We have seen that Calhoun was annoyed with Jackson over matters of patronage, but the development of the quarrel to the breaking point is to be traced in the story of a debate and two dinners.

While it has not been customary to attach any party significance to the Webster-Hayne debate, it was conducted along party lines and was a party battle. To such a seasoned observer of parliamentary fights as Thomas H. Benton, it was little more than a party skirmish.[241] Even Webster, at the time, evidently looked upon Hayne’s assault upon him as political in its character. Some time before he had sent Senator White of Florida to Calhoun to warn him that by permitting his friends to attack New England, he was playing into the hands of Van Buren, who would capture New England States that would otherwise go to the South Carolinian. And Calhoun, no less alive to the political significance of the promised fight, had, according to White’s story to Adams, been impressed. “He said Calhoun seemed to be considerably at a loss what to do,” wrote Adams at the time; “that he did not know what things were coming to; that he had no feeling of unfriendliness to me, and would by now have visited me but for fear of being misrepresented; that if I had consulted him four years ago, and not have appointed Clay Secretary of State, I should now have been President of the United States.”[242] This purported warning of Webster to Calhoun is given color by the former’s action during his great speech, in turning his fine black eyes upon the latter, in the chair, while quoting:

“A barren sceptre in their gripe
Thence to be wrenched by an unlineal hand,
No son of their’s succeeding”