Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1863-09-17
Men of Ideas,

The Rev. A. d. Mayo, in q recent Ad
dress before the Union Literary Society of
Antioch College (Ohio) on THE Scholar s
Vocation in the New Republic" thus sketch
es the two American statesmen whose con-
ficting ideas be deems the handspring Of
our present gigantic convulsions:
"Amid the thousand civil and martial
dignitaries that have figured 10 America du
ring the last halfcentury, each of whom
has foDdly imagined himselfthe handspring
of the Union, Two quiet, scholarly statesmen
have best represented the divergiDg tenden.
cies ofthe Republic, and portrayed its history
as in prophesy. First of these was John 9.
Calhoun Of South Carolina, the man who
held in his brain all the aristocratic ideas of
the age, in their application TO our own land.
He believed religiousley in Government
Of the few, in which the laborers should be
q menial class, and the gentry the rulers of
society. In this. he represented the aspirs-
tricts and formidable tendencies in the
North. But he saw that the only path to
this order Of affairs was civil war and
anarchy. So he preached Secession, not az
the final condition of the people, but as the
rerotutionaryhigh,ody to concentrated poper.
He has taught the lesson 80 well that two
years ago the whole aristocratic class, South
aud North, were ready to precipitate the
country into revolution (christened 'Seces-
sion J, in order to re-establish the nation as
consolidated aristocracy The public life
Of Calhoun was failure. He had little
administrative ability; but he was the
philosophical teacher of generation of
q generation of statesmen and generals, in
deed of the leading classes Of entire Com
monwealths, in the method of accomplish
ing the overthrow of the New Republic, and
the establishment Of New Europe in
America.
While Calhoun was breathing out his
last breath at Washington, the new Senator
from New York, William H. Seward, was
stammering through his first speech in the
Capitol, on the admission of California to
the Union. That speech contains the peoples
tohOle dns,cer to the entire programme of the
dying champion of Southern 0ristocracy.-
That hours talk to a contem ptu0us Senate
and a careless people placed Mr.. Seward at
the head of the philosophical statesmen of
the New Republic, and history will set him
over against the great South Carolinian, as
the man who soonest and most completely
saw all through and around his elaborate
scheme Of American despotism, and predic-
ted its downfall at the moment OF its ap-
parent triumph. Mr.. Seward saw then
that Secession was aiming to precipitate the
country int tremendous revolution. He
told the naughty men engaged in the con.
spiracy that if they inaugurated civil war
to establish despotism, the ruling class Of
the South, aud all they represented, would
90 to the bottom OF bloody sea, while the
people would reach their final destiny in
the establishment of the New Republic, =
This idea centralizes all he has said, thought,
and done since that eventful day. His great
speeches have been observations Of the
progress of that revolution, as from point
overlooking the entire field. Like all pro-
gressive philosophical men, he has counted
too enthusiastically on the people, and often
been seemingly contradicted by events.
Like his great opponent. his chief success
has not been as an executive statesman, and
he has been disappointed in his personal
ambition. But when he is dead, and all he
said and, wrote and thought about Ameri-
ican affairs, shall be gathered up into one
consistent whole, it will be known how
capacious was that range of vision that took
in the whole past, present, and future OF the
Republic; and how strong was that faith In
man, which in the very turmoil OF civil war
could cheerfully prophesy the compile sue
cess Of those great ideas and dinstitutions, on
which the Union will rise to thu foremost
rank among the nations Of the earth.