The admission of California and the law of 1850 was a distinct breach of the second compromise and the right to secede was just as clear, as it had been in 1820; but the expediency of such action was nothing like as clear. There was no great and towering personality around which men could gather. Rhett’s resolution in Congress in 1838 was the logical result of Calhoun’s teaching since 1833; but Calhoun was not ready to act. If ever secession was a practical policy it was in 1838 as presented by Rhett in Congress.[156]
In South Carolina in 1850, Calhoun was dead, and there was the view of Rhett and the view of Cheves. In Georgia there was the view of Cobb and the view of Toombs, and the view of Hill and the view of Stephens.
Of the man who did more than any other to arrest secession in 1850, we know least, and what we do know does not help us to any great extent to understand him. What policy Howell Cobb represented is not very clear. He was strong enough to be denounced as a traitor by those who could not drive him from their path, and somewhat in the same way that Hayne was taken out of national politics, when State politics required a man of unusual force, Cobb stepped down in 1852 from the high station of Speaker of the House of Representatives, to become Governor of Georgia; while in the last four years before secession, he was silenced by his position in Buchanan’s Cabinet.
But apart from leaders the country had changed, and in spite of the declarations to the contrary, in nowhere more than in the South.
The continual increase of the Negro population and the immense sums invested in that species of property had worked a disintegration of former views.
Nullification had accelerated the change, for the views of Hayne in 1827 and Calhoun in 1836, were certainly wide apart.
In 1845 Calhoun had congratulated Hammond on the progress of opinion in the South to the high ground he had held in advance; but it may well be doubted whether Calhoun, himself, would not have been startled by the progress disclosed in 1855, as evinced by the agitation for the re-opening of the slave trade.
In 1845 when Wise, then United States Minister to Brazil, disclosed the manner of conducting the slave trade in that country, in which both Englishmen and Americans were implicated, the President, in whose cabinet Calhoun then was Secretary of State, condemned it without stint, rejoicing that “our own coasts are free from its pollution”; although he was forced to admit that there were “many circumstances to warrant the belief that some of our citizens are deeply involved in its guilt.”[157]
Calhoun’s criticism of Wise on this occasion was only that he feared he was injudicious, and that his declarations might affect the relations between Brazil and the United States.[158]
Certainly Calhoun was not the man to have favored what his chief styled “pollution,” and to have remained in his cabinet.