The Brothers' War - The Original Classic Edition. John Calvin

as it

       is called. This word 'accede,' not found either in the constitution itself, or in the ratification of it by any one of[Pg 67] the States, has been chosen for use here, doubtless, not without a well-considered purpose.

       The natural converse of accession is secession; and, therefore, when it is stated that the people of the States acceded to the union, it may be more plausibly argued that they may secede from it. If in adopting the constitution, nothing was done but acceding to a compact, nothing would seem necessary to break it up, but to secede from the same compact. But the term is wholly out of place.... The people of the United States have used no such form of expression in establishing the present government. They do not say

       that they accede to a league, but they declare that they ordain and establish a constitution. Such are the very words of the instrument itself; and in all the States, without exception, the language used by their conventions was, that they 'ratified the constitution;' some

       of them employing the additional words 'assented to' and 'adopted,' but all of them 'ratifying.'"

       Note that I have italicized in the quotation certain admissions of Webster, which, in case his premises should be disproved, concede the cause to his adversary. And we will now tell you how Calhoun did disprove those premises.

       He showed that Webster himself had in a senate speech called the constitution a constitutional compact; and that President Washington, in his official announcement to congress, described North Carolina as acceding to the union by the ratification she had at last made of the constitution.

       As to these two points Calhoun further sustained himself with unquestionable authority and also argument inconfutable by one who, like Webster, did not find the true ratio decidendi, that is, the effect of evolution to bring forth the nation.

       The rest of Calhoun's answer will be considered a little later. But what of it has already been given covers the[Pg 68] essentials of the controversy. In supporting his proposition that the States were sovereign when they made the constitution, and kept their entire sovereignty intact afterwards, he was too strong for his antagonist. And yet had his knowledge of the facts been fuller, how much better he could have done. He could have quoted from all the great men who made the constitution and secured its ratification language, in which accede is used again and again in the same sense as it is in his resolutions.

       Likewise, he could have quoted language in which they designated the constitution as a compact or something synonymous. Madison--to mention only one of many instances--advocating ratification in the Virginia convention, called the constitution "a government of a federal nature, consisting of many coequal sovereignties." What an effective argumentum ad hominem could Calhoun have found in the provision of the constitution of the State of Webster, to wit: that Massachusetts is free, sovereign, and independent, retaining every power which she has not expressly delegated to the United States.[30]

       Webster also made blunders in construing the context of the constitution, as well as the clauses specially involved, in contrasting the constitution with the articles of confederation, and in his reading of our constitutional history. These blunders were exhaustively, ably, relentlessly exposed.

       We who are trained either in forensic or parliamentary debate well know the conquering and demolishing reply. Although, as we have just shown, Calhoun's reply could[Pg 69] have been far more effective than it really was, still its success and triumph were so evident that when he closed, John Randolph, who had heard it, wanted a hat obstructing his sight removed, so that, as he said, he might see "Webster die, muscle by muscle."

       Master the question at issue, and read the two speeches as impartially as you strive to read the discussion of AEschines and Demosthenes, and if you are qualified to judge of debate between intellectual giants you must admit that Webster was driven from every inch of ground chosen by him as his very strongest, and which he confidently believed that he could hold against the world.

       Yet the union men, who were hosts in the north and numerous even in the south at that time, accepted Webster's speech as the bible of their political faith, and as its reward ennobled him with the preeminent title of Expounder of the Constitution. They ignored,

       or they never learned of, the pulverizing refutation. But the State-rights men and the south generally understood. Webster also understood. He did not make any real rejoinder. And his subsequent utterances are in harmony with the State-rights doctrine to which

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       Calhoun seems to have converted him.[31] I fancy that with that rare humor which was one of his shining gifts, he dubbed himself in his secret meditations, "Expounder because not expounding." Later I shall tell you how Webster builded better than he knew, and that there was, after all, in the speech that which fully justifies the worship it received from the union men.

       But there is something else pertinent to be learned here. That the north generally found out only what Webster said in the debate for his side, and never even[Pg 70] heard of what was said on the other, and that the south became at once familiar with both speeches, proves that each section had already formed its own belonging and independent public, and that the southern public kept attentive watch upon all affairs of fact or opinion interesting the other, while the northern public knew hardly anything at all of the south. A large percentage of the southern leaders had studied in northern schools and colleges. In this and many other ways they had been instructed as to the north. Such instruction contributed very greatly to southern supremacy in the federal government until the election of Lincoln. We can now see that the powers in charge, as a part of their work, made the great northern public, which, as Lincoln observed, was to be the savior of the union, stop its ears to all anti-union sentiments or arguments. How else can you understand it that the ante-bellum notices of Webster, the memoir by Everett, the different utterances of Choate, and many, many other sketches, are so utterly dumb as to Calhoun's great reply? And is not the same dumbness of Curtis, Von Holst, and McMaster, writing after

       the war, due to the survival in the north of the old constraint? a constraint so powerful that, while Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, in 1883,

       did concede just a little to Calhoun, he stopped far short of the full justice that I believe he would now render were he to traverse the

       ground again.

       We must now go beyond what we have already hinted, and show you plainly how both the union men and the State-rights men assumed untenable premises, and how the south, maintaining a cause foredoomed, vanquished in the forum of discussion her adversary, maintaining the side which fate had decreed must win. In no other way can the reader be better made to understand the incalculable potency of the forces which preserved the[Pg 71] American union after its orators and advocates had all been discomfited; and in no other way can he better learn what principles are to be invoked if he would grasp the real essence of the union.

       We emphasize the material and cardinal mistake of the union men, thus phrased by Webster in the speech we have discussed: "Whether the constitution be a compact between States in their sovereign capacities, is a question which must be mainly argued from what is contained in the instrument itself."

       This was to abandon inexpugnable ground. That ground was the great body of pertinent facts, known to all, which begun the mak-ing of the union before the declaration of independence, and which, from that time on to the very hour that Webster was speaking, had been making the union stronger and more perfect. He ought to have contended that a nation grows; that it cannot be made, or be at all modified, even by a constitution. Any constitution is its creature, not its creator.

       How weak he was when he invoked construction of the federal constitution as the main umpire. That constitution had been always construed against him. The three departments of the federal government had each uniformly treated it as a compact between sovereign States; and they kept this up until the brothers' war broke out. Mr. Stephens, in his great compilation,[32] demonstrates this unanswerably. But the State-rights men had a still greater strength than even this, if the question be conceded to be one of construction. As the author of the Republic of Republics shows by a mountain of proofs, the illustrious draftsmen of the constitution and their contemporaries who finally got the constitution adopted--all the people, high and low, who favored[Pg 72] the cause--declared at the time that the sovereignty of the States would remain unimpaired