Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850Benton, Thomas Hart
History
Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850
Benton, Thomas Hart
United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861
by a democratic convention? and were answered that he had, and
because Mr. Calhoun was the author of nullification, and of measures
tending to the dissolution of the Union. The answer went into the
newspapers, without the agency of him who gave it, and without the
reasons which he gave: and his opposition was set down to causes
equally gratuitous and unfounded--one, personal ill-will to Mr.
Calhoun; the other, a hankering after the place himself. But to
return to Messrs. Clay and Calhoun. These reciprocal taunts having
been indulged in, the debate took a more elevated turn, and entered
the region of history. Mr. Calhoun continued:
"I will assure the senator, if there were pledges in his case,
there were none in mine. I have terminated my long-suspended
personal intercourse with the President, without the slightest
pledge, understanding, or compromise, on either side. I would
be the last to receive or exact such. The transition from their
former to their present personal relation was easy and natural,
requiring nothing of the kind. It gives me pleasure to say,
thus openly, that I have approved of all the leading measures
of the President, since he took the Executive chair, simply
because they accord with the principles and policy on which I
have long acted, and often openly avowed. The change, then,
in our personal relations, had simply followed that of our
political. Nor was it made suddenly, as the senator charges. So
far from it, more than two years have elapsed since I gave a
decided support to the leading measure of the Executive, and on
which almost all others since have turned. This long interval
was permitted to pass, in order that his acts might give
assurance whether there was a coincidence between our political
views as to the principles on which the government should be
administered, before our personal relations should be changed.
I deemed it due to both thus long to delay the change, among
other reasons to discountenance such idle rumors as the senator
alludes to. That his political course might be judged (said Mr.
CALHOUN) by the object he had in view, and not the suspicion
and jealousy of his political opponents, he would repeat what
he had said, at the last session, was his object. It is, said
he, to obliterate all those measures which had originated in
the national consolidation school of politics, and especially
the senator's famous American system, which he believed to be
hostile to the constitution and the genius of our political
system, and the real source of all the disorders and dangers to
which the country was, or had been, subject. This done, he was
for giving the government a fresh departure, in the direction
in which Jefferson and his associates would give, were they now
alive and at the helm. He stood where he had always stood, on
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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