The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-06-27
JOHN C. CALHOUN.
Henry Watterson's Estimate of South
 Carolina's Great Senator,

From the Louisville Courier-J Journal.
 Of the triumvirs, Clay, Webster and Calhoun, who. during the critical period of sectional agitation lying between the Missouri compromise of 1920 and the com premise measures of 1850, Veriously d. vioed the admiration of the people, Cal houn easily led In the perfection of his intellectual and ethical structure. He pos sessed not the imagination of Webster nor the magnetism of Clay; but to a mind richly stored and rightly trained and a logical power never surpassed he united a commanding personality Dorio in its sin. .plicity, supported by private virtues to which neither Nr. Clay nor MT. Web ster could hold candle. He was un- doubtedly the chastest public man Amer lea has yet produced, not excepting Washington, nor forgetting Lincoln; the very incarnation of pure reason and pure morals.
 Mr. Calhoun was a leader of men, not a follower. He was a pubncist of original ideas. a constructive statesman. AL though a 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 admin istration and to the exigencies Of debate. His courage was undaunted but re- strained by a Belf-possession which never for 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 embodiment of the rarest type known to our frail hu- manity, a superb manhood uniting in it. self the too often conflicting elements of genius and character. Yet was 1t MT. Calhouns strange destiny to become the central figure, if not the author, of series of errors of judgment and intellec- tual misconceptions. 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 institu- tion of African slavery was essential to the well being of the southern states of the union
 That the government was a compact
 of independent sovereignties, each having the right to nullify the laws of Congress
 and to withdraw from the union at its
 own will, involving the idea and doctrine | of peaceful secession.
 These were the two cardinal mistakes | to which the noble and great mind ded- | icated all its extraordinary forces; deep | ly laying the foundations for war of | sections disastrous in Its consequences to | the interests dear to his heart; though | MT. Calhoun loved his country, valued l 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 cul- l ture, he was a provincial, Educated at
 Yale he detected, perhaps ne exagger-
 ated, 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
 plantation. His migratons from the day
 of his entrance to Congress 10 his mortal l exit from the scene, had lain between | his home in South Carolina and Washing
 ton city. If re had gone abroad he would have known that 1t could not be main- | tained for long in few states lying upon | the south Atlantic seaboard of the Uni | ted States. He would have given his | great intellect to the finding of some way | to adjust tEe 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 preor- dained and from the beginning of time inevitable.
 South Carolina justly reveres the mem- ory of Calhoun, nor holds him answear
 able for that which only seer, inspired
 by God, could have forecast and avert
 ed The archaic pile he reared out of his own high consciousness proved but the fabric of vision. It was as the re- public of Plate. The beautiful mind, the noble purpose that, while he lived. gave 1t life and light, remain; and, even as the stranger wanders aimlessly among the desolate shrines of a ghostly past the crumbling walls, the shipless wharves, the empty marts the very familiar house. hold flowers of chivalry, torn from the lintel-the spirit of honor and duty and the love brood in the air about him, while IL aalA or,H hn atolx
 that no more echo the/song of blissful if ignorant content comes a voice say ing, 'the story is not yet told to the end"