Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1: From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860Blaine, James Gillespie
History
Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1: From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860
Blaine, James Gillespie
United States -- History; United States -- History -- 1865-1898
It was on these resolutions that Mr. Calhoun prepared his last
formal speech. He attempted to deliver it in the Senate on the
4th of March, but was so weak that he requested Mr. Mason of Virginia
to read it for him. On two or three subsequent occasions Mr.
Calhoun made brief extempore remarks showing each time a gradual
decay of strength. He died on the last day of March. Most touching
and appreciative eulogies were delivered by Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster,
after his death had been announced by his colleague, Judge Butler.
Mr. Clay spoke of his "transcendent talents," of his "clear, concise,
compact logic," of his "felicity in generalization surpassed by no
one." He intimated that he would have been glad to see Mr. Calhoun
succeed Mr. Monroe in the Presidency in 1820. Mr. Webster, who
always measured his words, spoke of him as "a man of undoubted
genius and commanding talent, of unspotted integrity, of unimpeached
honor." Mr. Calhoun had been driven by his controversies with
Jackson into a position where he was deprived of popular strength
in the free States. But this very fact enhanced his power with
the South, and increased his hold upon his own people. To the
majority of the people in the slave-holding States he was as an
inspired leader for more than twenty years. He taught the philosophy
and supplied the arguments to the ambitious generation of public
men who came after him, and who were prepared, as he was not, to
force the issue to the arbitrament of arms. Deplorable as was the
end to which his teachings led, he could not have acquired the
influence he wielded over millions of men unless he had been gifted
with acute intellect, distinguished by moral excellence, and inspired
by the sincerest belief in the righteousness of his cause. History
will adjudge him to have been single-hearted and honest in his
political creed. It will equally adjudge him to have been wrong
in his theory of the Federal Government, and dead to the awakened
sentiment of Christendom in his views concerning the enslavement
of man.
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