Calhoun On The Great Consolidated Democracy

The great statesman John C. Calhoun’s early years touched and understood the original fabric of American political ideals as he met and spoke at length with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello in the summer of 1805. Underscoring the education Calhoun received in the precepts of the Founders, Dr. A.G. Holmes, Dean of the History Department of Clemson University said of Calhoun in 1944: “In a period of national perils, it was Calhoun who time and again sounded the alarm because of the expanding powers of the Federal Government….Calhoun never urged secession. He held it as a right – a weapon to force the majority to compromise with the minority. To him, this doctrine was a means of not destroying but preserving the Federal Union by preserving the personal liberties of its people and the principles of the Constitution itself.”

Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
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Calhoun on the Great Consolidated Democracy:

“That the Government claims, and practically maintains, the right to decide in the last resort, as to the extent of its own powers, will scarcely be denied by any one conversant with the political history of the country. That it also claims the right to resort to force to maintain whatever power it claims, against all opposition, is equally certain. Indeed it is apparent, from what we daily hear, that this has become the prevailing and fixed opinion of a great majority of the community. Now, I ask, what limitation can possibly be placed upon a government claiming and exercising such rights?

And if none can be, how can the separate governments of the States maintain and protect the powers reserved to them by the constitution – or the people of the several States maintain those which are reserved to them, and among others, the sovereign powers by which they ordained and established, not only their separate State Constitutions and Governments, but also the Constitution and Government of the United States?

But, if they have no constitutional means of maintaining them against the right claimed by this Government, it necessarily follows that they hold them at its pleasure and discretion, and that all the powers of the system are in reality concentrated in it. It also follows that the character of the Government has been changed, in consequence, from a federal republic, as it originally came from the hands of its framers, into a great consolidated democracy.

It has indeed, at present, all the characteristics of the latter, and not one of the former, although it still retains its outward form. The result of the whole of these causes [of sectional conflict] combined is – that the North has acquired a decided ascendancy over every department of this Government, and through it a control over all the powers of the system. A single section governed by the will of the numerical majority, has now, in fact, the control of the Government and the entire powers of the system. What was once a constitutional federal republic, is now converted, in reality, into one as absolute as that of the Autocrat of Russia, and as despotic in its tendency as any absolute government that ever existed.”

(Calhoun’s Last Speech in the Senate, March 4, 1850, John C. Calhoun – The Man, Harriet Hefner Cook, R.L. Bryan Company, 1965, pp. 95 -105)
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Calhoun On The Great Consolidated Democracy