The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1902-05-28
TWO SOUTH. CAR0LlNIANs.

Of the triumvirs, Clay, Webster and
Calhoun, who, during the critical
period of sectional agitation lying be-
tween the Missouri Compromise of
1920 and the Compromise Measures OF
1850, variously divided the admiration
of the people, Calhoun easily led in
the perfection of his intellectual and
ethical structure. He possessed not
the Imagination Of Webster nor the
magnetism of Clay; but to mind
richly stored and rightly trained, and
a logical power never surpassed, be
united a commanding personality !;
Doric in its simplicity supported by
private virtues to which neither Mr..
Clay nor Mr.. Webster could hold a
candle. He was undoubtedly the
chastest public man America has yet
produced, not excepting Washington.
nor forgetting Lincoln: the very in
carnation of pure reason and pure
morals.
Mr.. Calhoun was a leader of men,
not a follower. He was a publicist Of
original ideas, a constructive states
man. Although doctrinaire, he was
a man of affairs, and, whether in the
War Office or upon the floor of the
Senate, he showed himself equal alike
to the work of administration and to
the exigencies of debate. His courage
was undaunted, but restrained by a
elf-possession which never for a
moment lost its dignity. Among his
colleagues he was respected as none
other was. He stood in his time, and
he stands in history, as the embodi-
ment Of the rarest type known to our
frail humanity, superb manhood,
uniting in itself the often conflicting
elements of genius and character.
Yet was it Mr.. Calhoun's srange
destiny to become the central figure.
If not the author, of series or errors
of judgment and intellectual miscon-
cepitons, ultimately visiting upon the
South an Illiad Of woes.
That negro labor was indispensable
to the profitable cultivation Of cotton,
sugar and rice, and that, therefore,
the institution Of African slavery was
essential TO the well-being of the
Southern States Of the Union; that
the Government was compact Of in
dependent sovereignties, each having
the right to nullify the laws OF Con-
gress and to Withdraw from the
Union at it's own will, involving the
idea and doctrine Of peaceful seces-
sion.
These were the two cardinal mis-
takes to which this noble and great
mind dedicated all its extraordinary
forces; deeply laying the foundation
for War Of Sections disastrous IN
it's consequences to the interests dear
to his heart; though Mr.. Calhoun
loved his country, valued the Union,
hated barbarism and cruelty, and, in
his own life, realized the most ascetic
ideals and exalted Puritanism. With
all his gifts of intellect and culture,
he was a provincial Educated at
Yale, he detected, perhaps he exag-
gerated, the commercialism which
even then was beginning to corrode
the public life and conscience OF that
wide-awake and go-ahead section. He
disliked travel. He enjoyed the
repose, the seignory, Of the planta-
tion. His migrations from the day Of
his entrance to Congress to his NOR
tai exit from the scene had lain be,
tween his home in South Carolina and
Washington City. If he had gone
abroad he would have seen that the
trend of enlightened thought was set
against slavery and he would have
konwn that it could not be maintain
ed for long in few States lying
upon the South Atlantic seaboard of
the United States. He would have
given his great intellect to the finding
of some way to adjust the institution
of slavery to the advancing movement
of the modern world. His failure to
see, to know and to do cost the South
dearly, unless we are to consider all
that happens as preordained and from
the beginning Of time inevitable.
South Carolina justly reveres the
memory of Calhoun, nor holds him
answerable for that which only a seer,
inspired of God, could have forecast
and averted. The archaic pile he
reared out of his own high conscious
ness proved but the fabric of a vision.
It as as the Republic OF Plato. The
beautiful mind, the noble purpose,
that, whilst he lived, gave it life and
light, remain; and, even as the
stranger wanders aimlessly among the
desolate shrines of ghostly past-the
crumbling walls, the sbipless wharyes,
the empty marts, the very familiar
household flowers of chivalry torn from
the lntel-the spirit of honor and duty
and love brood in the air about him,
whilst from the rice field and the cot
ton patch, that TO more echo the song
of blissfuil ignorant content, comes
a voice saying "Tbe story is not yet
told to the end. -
II.
A little less than three years before
John Caldwell Calcium died in Wash
ington City. his harness On his back,
there was born in Edgefeld, South
Carolina, baby boy. destined to