Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-12-23
An Interesting Historical heminis,


Mr.. Oliver Dyer, who was for many
years the most noted photographer of
the United States Senate, has recently
issued book called "The Great Senators,
or The United States Forty Years Ago."
We do not intend to review the book in
this issue of the HERALD, but we desire to
advert to special feature of it.
1t has for years been the fashion to
heap all manner of abuse upon Mr.. John
G. Calhoun and Mr.. Jefferson Davis.
Both, after having ridden on the comb
ing waves of success, were engulfed in
the angry billows of partizan strife. The
fall Of each was in one respect like that
of Lucifer. in that they never rose again.
When Mr. Dyer, a young man, vent to
Washington, in 1S48, he expected to see
q demon in John G. Calhoun, and such
he appeared to the youngster in the first
days Of his experience in legislative halls.
Dyer was of the uncompromising abolition
fold. and it was hard for him to see any
good in m an who sustained slavery and
furnished the arguments that brought
on the war of secession. Yet he states
that an intimate acquaintance with Cal
houn left upon him the impression that
the South Carolina statesman was alto
gether the most admirable man he ever
knew, with one single exception; and, !,
singularly enough, that exception was
Mr.. Jefferson Davis, who came into the
Senate about that time with the eclat OF
his gallant deeds in the Mexican war
circling his brow like nimbus.
A strong interest IN the constitutional
questions that agitated the Senate in bis
days led Mr.. Dyer to look into the real
history of the development Of the seces-
sion idea, and he found, curiously
enough, that il was a scintillation of the
genius of Massachusetts, statesman,
Mr.. Josiah Quincy.
Mr.. Dyer does not 60 into this question
in the exhaustive manner which it
admits of. Any one who gees back to
the debates which preceded the forma-
tion of our present Constitution in 1887,
knows that New England threatened to
make the Union impossible unless the
abolition of the elave trade was postponed
until 1903 by an express provision Of the
Constitution. This was done to admit oi
the thrifty people of that section getting
their shipping interests engaged in other
industries than carrying black men to
bondage, and to enable them to sell their
slaves South as q preliminary to. the
development of disinterested ideas on
human liberty. But while Dyer does
not 90 back as far as he might have gone,
he goes far enough to develop the true
origin of secession as political PROPOSE.
ton.
The matter arose in 1911, in debate
in respect to what was called the Orleans
territory, which com prised the Louisiana
purchase of Mr.. Jefferson. In that de-
bate Mr.. Josiah Quincy, Of Maseachu.
sets, developed the idea that the admis.
sion of new State formed from this
territory of itself dissolved the Union
and left each of the original thirteen
States at liberty to form such new con
nections ss might be acceptable to it
Massachusetts did not avail itself oil
this original idea of Mr.. Josiah Quincy
although, few years later. the Hartford
Convention, and other incidents in the
history of New England, showed how
slight was the hold of the Union idea on
multitudes of the people of New Eng
land.
Mr, Dyer points out the interesting fac
that Mr.. John @. Calhoun did not make
his appearance in Congress until nine
months after Mr.. Quincy had made this
peculiar break in favor of secession. BE
also shows, by resolution drawn up by
Mr. Calhoun himself, in which he uses
the term nation in referring to the United
States, that Mr.. Calhoun had not at that
time formulated his distinctive idea that
the American Onion was q confederacy
of equal and sovereign States. That this
circumstance stood out from Mr.. Cal
houn's subsequent career as milestone
so to speak, is shown by the fact that he
always complained to Mr.. Dyer and
other reporters If they ever employed
the word nation in their reports of bis
speeches.
OF course Mr.. Dyer might have made
this branch of his work infinitely more
interesting If he had been more expsn