Whether right or wrong, the first of these claims had been settled by the Missouri Compromise in 1820, which the South had acquiesced in. The second Calhoun, himself, had undertaken to right in 1832, and if there had been a failure it was due in some measure to his inability to diagnose with sufficient accuracy the situation at that time.
Along two lines from 1827 there had proceeded the effort of the South to recover her power and increase her population; to restore her waning political influence and rebuild her commercial strength. One was through revision of the tariff, the other through internal improvement by means of railroad development. The first, despite all the interest it attracted and the splendid forensic display it gave rise to, not only was a lamentable failure in its curative effect, but very probably added somewhat to the difficulties which hampered the other. Now with regard to the first, Calhoun had mapped out the plan, and undertook the responsibility through the nullification project, with which he effected the relegation of Hayne to the post of Governor of the State of South Carolina from the United States Senate, to which he, himself, repaired with almost ambassadorial powers. The effect of Nullification on the Tariff should be analysed before considering the railroad campaign, with which Calhoun could not refrain from interfering, with results most disappointing to those he induced to accept his view and abandon that of his faithful friend and quondam supporter, made by the Knoxville Convention of 1836, much more thoroughly the commercial leader of the South than Calhoun had ever been made its political guide.
Mr. John B. Cleveland says in his pamphlet on the “Controversy between John C. Calhoun and Robert Y. Hayne:
“There can be no question as to the sincerity of purpose or integrity of character of Mr. Calhoun. At the same time as the common saying is ‘he was set in his ideas’ and he could not bear opposition.”[80]
Upon many questions he could change and did change his views, but these changes all seem to have proceeded from a certain development of the man himself, not from any contact with others. So confident was he of his own powers that he could never profit by the realization of his mistakes. If in one of the greatest eulogies ever delivered by a great follower over a great leader, it could be asserted that:
“It is due to truth, to history and to him, to declare that he assisted powerfully in giving currency to opinions and building up systems that have proved seriously injurious to the South and probably to the stability of the existing Union.”[81]—
a critical investigation of Calhoun’s failure in the revision of the tariff may not be without instruction; for it was for the purpose of securing a proper framing of such that Nullification was launched. Later we may consider the railroad.
FOOTNOTES:
[56] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 135.
[57] Ibid. p. 208. Abridgment of Debates of Congress, Vol. 19. p. 303 et seq.