The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-07-16
IGNORING 1 GREAT HAN.

IGNORING ! GREAT HAN.
 The New York Mail sraciousiy ad- mits that the State of South Carolina has the right to set up . statue of John c. Calhoun in statuary Hall at Wash ington Just so. and we might add that 1t is really no ones business but South Carolina's. And we might go still further and say that no State will be more creditably represented than South Carolina will by having Calhoun in the Hall Of the great -triumvirate- Calhoun. Clay and webster-more thap one Northern writer of sound judgment has placed Calhoun at the head in all that tends to make a great man and a great statesman. Referring to the proposed action. Tho Mall says:
 Calhouns effigy will stand in statu- ary Hall very much as Clsopatras obelisk. there. is a token and memo rial of the fact that power and glory have departed from Egypt, The statue of Calhoun. at the Capitol. will
 
 his monuments. and 1t will grace the seat and scene of the Federal power which the South Carolina statesman so profoundly suspected.
 The inference is not exactly just or fair. Carried to Its obvious conclu- sion 1t would mean that the theory of government for which Calhoun stood had departed from the American peo- ple just as the glory has departed from Egypt. but this is not true. although we admit that the tendency of the pres ent administration is towards making 1t true. if possible. Calhoun was neither a secessionist nor Q disunion- ist. He loved the Union as devotedly as did either of his great colleagues but the Union he loved was the Union as the founders of the Republic un- derstood it, and not Union which would make the Federal Government supreme.
 It is easy and proper to admit that his plan of guarding the rights of the State by nullifying the acts of Con- gross was wholly untenable. and we suppose no sound statesman would now stand for that doctrine. or advocate re- sorting to 1t. for it was-or would have been. if carried out-more de- structive of the Union of the States than secession. If one state could null fly or set aside an act of Congress for any given reason any other State could nullify another law for any other req son. and the result must have been an- archy or chaos. His theory of dual government was no sounder or safer. In short, some of the doctrines so ably and strenuously held by the great South Carolinian cannot be defended or palliated and no one now upholds them.
 But we should bear in mind that these theories for which Calhoun la bored with the powers of his great mind were based on his intense devo- tion to the South and to the rights of the States which he believed to be en- dangered Some of the acts of Con- gress and the administration would. in his Judgment, lead to dangerous and unrepublican centralization of power and ultimately change our form of gov- ernment. Earnest, honest and fearless in advocacy of what he believed to be right, as we know him to have been, we may vet admit that the success of his theories would have finally ended in the destruction of the Union just as surely as successful secession would have done. For all that, all his aber rations, if we may so term them. were founded on devotion to the reserved rights of, the States, and we do not ad- init that this doctrine Is dead as the glory of Egypt. And by the way. we wonder what Calhoun would think and say of Federal encroachments and standardization now? He would be ready to admit that what happened in his own time and gave him so much concern was really insignificant when compared to later happenings and ten dencies.
 By all means South Carolina should honor John c. Calhoun.