The Brothers' War

by John C. Reed

From his first speech in congress to the end of his life you note that he has always mastered the pertinent facts, literature, and guiding principles of whatever he has to do with, whether in speech or action. This indicates continuous, most industrious, and most wise self-instruction. I believe it was Mr. Parton who said that Jefferson was the best educated man of his time. His full equipment from all belonging learning and science was surpassed only by the versatility with which he instantly solved all new questions. But Calhoun’s was more of a special training than Jefferson’s. Having for some years learned by doing,—doing after the best study and reflection, consistent with due promptness, that he could give each thing he had to do,—his capital of knowledge and developed faculty had become all-sufficient. Stephens, a profound student of both Jefferson and Calhoun, makes this comparison:

“Amongst the many great men with whom he associated, Mr. Calhoun was by far the most philosophical statesman of them all. Indeed, with the exception of Mr. Jefferson, it may be questioned if in this respect the United States has ever produced his superior.”[48]

Government—that is, good democratic government—he studied all his life with rare devotion. His two special works,[49] and the parallel parts of his speeches, warmly commended by such a thinker and friend of democracy as John Stuart Mill, are sufficing proof. In all the long tract from Plato and Aristotle down to the popularization of direct legislation, which commences with the publication of Mr. Sullivan’s pamphlet a few years ago, there is to be found nobody who has penetrated so deeply into the secrets of those principles by which alone true democracy must be maintained. With what clear vision does he read us lessons from the unanimous veto of the Roman tribunes; the political history of the twelve tribes of Israel; the balance of interests in the English constitution and our own, intended to guarantee what he calls government of the concurrent majority. His illustration from the confederacy of Indian Tribes is to be especially emphasized as demonstration of his industry in collecting his materials and of his great insight.[50]

I must give still another example, which I am sure will yet benignly enlighten America.

Ever since Adam Smith fell into my hands in early manhood I have had a strong predilection for political economy. My conviction during the brothers’ war that proper management of the currency of the confederacy was indispensable to the success of our cause initiated me into an earnest study of the science of money. And later intense interest in the greenback question, and afterwards the silver question, added to the impetus. The longer I observed the more plainly I saw a few private persons controlling the coinage, the greenbacks, and the national bank currency of purpose to monopolize government credit, and also fix the interest rate and the price level, at any particular time, as suited their selfish interests. The remedy became clear,—government must retake and fulfil all its money functions. Especially must it keep the country supplied with a volume of money which never becomes either redundant or contracted. How to do this properly brought up the question, What is money? What is it that makes a sheep, or cow, or coin, or piece of paper, money? For the true answer to this question is the very beginning and foundation of all monetary science. I took up Ricardo again, who, with a solitary exception mentioned a little farther on, had, from the time I turned into him during my study of the confederate currency, of all the economists by profession, showed to me the best understanding of the real nature of money; and of course John Stuart Mill, Jevons, Carl Marx, and others of less note, were examined. The result confirmed Ricardo in his primacy; although I felt that the true nature of money was assumed—rather vaguely—by him, and not clearly expressed as it ought to be. I believed myself familiar with all the important work of Calhoun. Somehow I had overlooked his contributions to this subject. A few brief quotations from the more unimportant of these I found in certain American books, which made me read the pertinent speeches.[51] It was a most inexpressible surprise to me to find that he had perfected Ricardo. Briefly stated, this is the true doctrine according to Calhoun. It is not legal-tender laws, nor is it intrinsic value, which makes even gold go as money. Well, what is it? Calhoun was not the first to answer it, for others had given the true answer; but they ran away from it as soon as they made it. He divined the full satisfactoriness of the true answer, which he demonstrated to be true by a method as nearly mathematical as the case admits of. And he lightens up what was dark before by showing that that is money, and good money, whatever it may be,—gold, silver, paper, property, what not,—which the government receives in payment of its dues. The practice of the government,—not laws, nor the market value of different materials of money,—this is the great thing. If the United States should refuse to receive gold for its dues, that would so greatly lessen the demand for gold as money that the coin would depreciate and drop out of circulation. Nothing—not the precious metals, not diamonds of the first water, not radium, not the bills of the best bank, not greenbacks, not treasury notes can maintain themselves as money if the government will not receive it. This is the first half of the subject. Calhoun adds the other by showing that whatever the government makes money, its volume can always be kept of the proper quantity,—which proper quantity varies with the needs of commerce,—so as to avoid the too much or too little. His illustration from the treasury notes of North Carolina, which could not be a legal tender under the federal constitution, but which circulated briskly and buoyantly and stayed at par for many years, because they were received without discount by the State, and also because their volume was kept within bounds, will yet greatly help the cause of honest money.

In the achievement just told Calhoun not only excelled the economists of his day, but he is yet in advance of all of the present except Del Mar,[52]—the only economist who has excelled Ricardo in divining the essence of money. These two alone explain clearly and fully why it is that bankers keep such tenacious grip upon the money function of government—they thereby so shape its practice that their wares shall be money, with all the incidents of profit therefrom, and no others shall. Del Mar never quotes him; and I almost know he has never studied his views upon this subject.

America will yet have a “rational money,” a term which Prof. Frank Parsons has happily chosen as the name of his invaluable book.[53] To win it she must fight many battles with the money power. When this war of the people is waging by the people for the people, the doctrine of Calhoun will be the banner of the right. After the sordid money oligarchy is overthrown and the United States is blessed with a people’s money, that benign deliverance will add prodigiously to the fame of Calhoun.

My space does not admit of telling you how deeply Calhoun loathed the spoils system. That must be borne in mind, and taken into account in any true estimate of him as a statesman.

I deem it especially important to have you consider his standing with the people of his State. Literally his word was law in South Carolina. Hayne in 1832, and Huger in 1845, resigned their seats in the national senate to give place to him. Everybody in his State always wanted him to lead, and everybody always wanted him to lead according to his own will. This unwonted influence, utterly without precedent, was due to the accurate measure which the masses had taken of him. As he lived and aged among them they knew him better and better to be irreproachable in private and public life, the ablest of the able, the most diligent of the diligent, and the truest of the true as a representative or official, and of that severe and lofty virtue which scorns all popularity that is not the reward of righteousness. And so he became example, model, worship, to all classes. The forty years political ascendency of Pericles in the Athenian democracy is the only befitting historical parallel which I can think of. Familiar with the State from boyhood, I have long thought its people the most advanced of the south. In spite of the revenge wreaked upon her in war, and in spite of the direr devastation of the twelve years of negro rule following the fall of the Confederate States, that little community, with her dispensary and her system of really direct nomination,[54] to say nothing of her wise management of all her material resources, is teaching the nation lessons of the highest wisdom. These are the people from whom Calhoun won a crown more resplendent than any other of our States has ever bestowed upon a loved son. How eloquent were her last offices. Read Mr. Pinkney’s extracts from the “Carolina Tribute,” narrating the reception of his mortal remains in Charleston:[55] the novel procession of vessels, displaying emblems of mourning, the solemn landing at noon, an imposing train moving amid houses hung with black, “a Sabbath-like stillness” resting on the city, “The solemn minute gun, the wail of the distant bell, the far-off spires shrouded in the display of grief, the hearse and its attendant mourners waiting on the spot, alone bore witness that the pulse of life still beat within the city, that a whole people in voiceless woe were about to receive and consign to earth all that was mortal of a great and good citizen.”

Appropriately and impressively Mr. Pinkney closes his description of this forever memorable demonstration by quoting Carlyle’s “How touching is the loyalty of men to their sovereign man.”[56]