The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-05-25
louisville Courier-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
Compromise Measures of 1850, yariously
divided the admiration of the people, Cal
houn easily led in the perfection of his
| intellectual and ethical structure. He
| possessed not the imagination of Web
| ter nor the magnetism of Clay, but TO
mind richhly stored and rightly trained
and a logical power never surpassed, he
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 incarnation of pure reason and pure
morals.
Mr. Calhoun was leader of men, not
a follower. He was a publicist of orig
inal ideas, a constructive statesman.
Although a doctrinaire, he was 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 ex
igencies of debate. His courage was I'M
daunted, but restrained by a self-posses-
sion 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
| embodiment of the rarest type known to
our frail humanity, a superb manhood,
uniting in itself the too often conflicting
elements of genius and character Yet
was it Mr.. Calhoun's strange destiny to
become the central figure, If not the au-
| thor, of a series of errors of judgment
| and intellectual misconceptions, ulti-
mately 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 es-
sential to the well-being of the Southern
States of the Union:
That the Government was a compact
of independent sovereignties, each hav-
| ing the right to nullify the laws of Con-
gress and to withdraw fom the Union at
its own will, involving the idea and doc
trine of peaceful secession;
These were the two cardinal mistakes
to which this noble and great mind
dedicated all its extraordinary forces;
deeply laying the foundation for a 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
| aseetic ideals and exalted Puritanism.
With all his gifts of intellect and cul-
| ture, he was a provincial. Educated at
| Yale, he detected, perhaps he 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 migration from the day
! of his entrance to Congress to his mortal
| exit from the scene, had lain between
his home in South Carolina and Wash
I ington City. If he had gone abroad he
would have seen that the trend of en-
| lightened thought was set against slav-
| cry and he would have known that it
| could not be maintained for long in a 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 insti-
/ tuition of slavery to the advancing move
ment 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 mem
1 DRY of Calhoun; nor holds him answer
able for that which only a seer, inspired
of God, could have forecast and ayerted.
The archaic pile ne reared out of his
own high consciousness proved but the
| fabric of vision. 1t was as the Re-
Jlic of Plato. The beautiful mind, the
bic purpose, that. whilst he lived, gave
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
household flowers of chivalry torn from
the lintel-the spirit of honor and duty
| and love brood in the air about him.
whilst from the rice field and the cotton
patch, that no more echo the song of
blissful if ignorant content, comes a
voice saying; THE story is not yet told
| to the end
A little less than three years before
John Caldwell Calhoun died in Washing
| ton City, his harness on his back, there
was born in Edgefeld, South Carolina
a baby boy, destined to play part and
cut figure in the public life of the
| Palmetto State, and to occupy the seat
in the Senate of the United States which
Calhoun had filled so long; a farmers
! boy. as Calhoun was; and his name was
Benjamin Ryan Tillman.
|, Pursuing the restless life of this stormy
| petrol of contemporary politics. we pre-
fer to believe that two baby Tillmans
were born that nth OF August, 1877; one
| with a pitchfork, the other with a dar-
ning-needle; both with a rattle; for il
| is not easy to reconcile Tiilman, the con-
structive statesman of schools and indus
| tries-the Tillman of the darning needle