Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1907-07-31
THE MEMORY OF CALHOUN.
Some Thoughts to be Suggested by
South Cardinals Statue.

SOuth CaFOllnaS statue.
The New York Mail graciously admits
that the State of South Carolina has the
right to set up q statue Of John G. CAL
houn in Statuary Hall, at Washington.
just 30, and we might add that it ia
really no ones business but South Caro-
ina's. And We might 80 still further
and say that no State will be moro cred-
itably represented than South Carolina
will by having Calhoun in tho hall. OF
the great triumvi virate--C Calhoun, Clay
and Webster-more than ono Northern
writer of sound Judgment hasl placed
Calhoun at the head in all that tends to
make great man and great statesman.
Referring to the proposed action, The
Mail says:
"Calhoun's effigy will stand in Statu-
ary Hall very much as Cleopatra's
Needle stands in Central Park. The
obelisk, there, is token and memorial
of the fact that power and glory have
departed from Egypt. The statue Of
Calhoun, at the Capitol, will be the cost
liest, perhaps the finest, of his monu-
ments and it will grace the seat aud
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 conclusion
it would mean that the theory of govern
ment for which Calhoun stood had de-
parted from the American people, just
as the glory had departed from Egypt,
but this is not true, although we admit
that the tendency Of the present admins
tration is towards making it true, if pos
sible. Calhoun was neither secession
ist or disunionist. He loved the Union
as devoutly as did either of his great
colleagues, but the Union he loved was
the Union as the founders of the repub-
lie understood it, and not Union which
would make the Federal government
supreme.
1t is easy and proper to admit that his
plan of guarding the rights CT the State
by multiplying the acts of Congress was
wholly untenable, and we suppose no
sound statesman would now stand for
that doctrine, or advocate resorting to it,
for it was-or would have been, If oar
ried out-more destructive of the Union
of the States than secession. @If ono
State could nullify or set aside an act of
Congress for any given reason any other
State could nullify another law for any
other reason, and the result must have
been anarchy or chaos. His theory of a
dual government WAS no sounder or
safer. In short, some of the doctrines
30 ably and strenuously held by the
great South Carolinian cannot be de-
Tended or palliated and no one now up
holds them.
But we should bear in mind that these
theories for which Calhoun labored with
the powers of his great mind were based
on his intense devotion to the South and
to the rights of tho States which he be-
lieved to be endangered. Some of the
acts of Congress and the administration
would, in his judgment, lead to danger
Gus and unrepublioan Capitalization of
power and ultimately change our form
of government. Earnest, honest and
fearless in advooasy of what he believed
to be right, as we know him to have
been, we may yet admit that the success
full secession would have done. For all
that, all his alterations, if we may so
term them, were founded on devotion to
the reserved rights of the States, and we
do not admit 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 Capitalization now? He would be
ready to admit that what happened in
his own time and gave him SO much con-
Germ was really insignificant when COM
pared to later happenings and ten
denotes.
By all means South Carolina should
honor John G. observation-disclosures
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