Politicians From South Carolina

"I never know what South Carolina thinks of a measure. I never consult her. I act to the best of my judgment, and according to my conscience. If she approves, well and good. If she does not, or wishes any one to take my place, I am ready to vacate. We are even."

"Beware the wrath of a patient adversary."

"John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson's former vice president and eventual U.S. senator from South Carolina, argued against incorporation, asserting that Mexicans represented an amalgamation of "impure races, not [even] as good as the Cherokees or Choctaws." Calhoun asked, "Can we incorporate a people so dissimilar to us in every aspect-so little qualified for free and popular government-without certain destruction to our political institutions?""

"Arguably the most prominent and accomplished of these planter-politicians was John Calhoun...On this defense of the prerogatives of the Southern section of the nation, Calhoun built an entire theory of government. Seeing the threat democracy posed to slavery, he set out to limit democracy...The problem, in Calhoun's eyes, was that the will of the majority, as expressed in the House of Representatives and the election of the president, had too much power. It had to be curbed, lest it overrun this "true and perfect voice of the people." And those "people" whose voices must be heard, of course, were those like him. Those with power. Those with property. Those who enslaved others."

"There has always been in the South that intellectual elite who saw the Negro problem clearly. They have always lacked and some still lack the courage to stand up for what they know is right. Nevertheless they can be depended on in the long run to follow their own clear thinking and their own decent choice. Finally even the politicians must eventually recognize the trend in the world, in this country, and in the South. James Byrnes, that favorite son of this commonwealth, and Secretary of State of the United States, is today occupying an indefensible and impossible position; and if he survives in the memory of men, he must begin to help establish in his own South Carolina something of that democracy which he has been recently so loudly preaching to Russia. He is the end of a long series of men whose eternal damnation is the fact that they looked truth in the face and did not see it; John C. Calhoun, Wade Hampton, Ben Tillman are men whose names must ever be besmirched by the fact that they fought against freedom and democracy in a land which was founded upon democracy and freedom. Eventually this class of men must yield to the writing in the stars. That great hypocrite, Jan Smuts, who today is talking of humanity and standing beside Byrnes for a United Nations, is at the same time oppressing the black people of South Africa to an extent which makes their two countries, South Africa and the American South, the most reactionary peoples on earth. Peoples whose exploitation of the poor and helpless reaches the last degree of shame. They must in the long run yield to the forward march of civilization or die."

"There are so many monuments to the Confederacy in South Carolina's capital city that they are nearly impossible to avoid. Pinckney's body lay in state beside a statue of John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, the seventh US vice president and a leading advocate of slavery. Calhoun was a shrewd politician, and one of the architects of secession from the Union, although he died in 1850, before he could see his secessionist theories implemented fully. In 1838 Calhoun wrote, "Many in the South once believed that slavery was a moral and political evil. That folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world." He helped propel the United States into its devastating civil war, and in South Carolina, he is revered by some as a hero."

"Stephens' Constitutional View of the War Between the States, which was and remains probably the best defense of the Confederate cause. It is all about states' rights, and the defense of the minority against the tyranny of the numerical majority, although the 'silent minority', the four million slaves, are never counted. It is substantially the book that Calhoun would have written had he been alive to do so... Calhoun was the philosopher-king of the old south, the spiritual mentor of Stephens, Davis, and most of the political leaders of the Confederacy. Bradford and McClellan, following Willmoore Kendall, are obsessed with the utterly false notion that Lincoln was somehow responsible for the permissive egalitarianism of the contemporary welfare state. But equality as such was no less important to Calhoun than to Lincoln. It was just a different kind of equality... It never occurs to Calhoun that black human beings might also resent, with equal, or much greater, reason, 'acknowledged inferiority'. That is because he does not think of them as human. Calhoun simply assumes that blacks have neither the reason nor the passions that are characteristically human. They are chattels, that is, cattle, for all intents and purposes."

"Calhoun's last speech had a bitter attack on Mr. Jefferson for his amendment to the Ordinance of '87 prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territory. Calhoun was in a dying condition – was too weak to read it. So James M. Mason, a Virginia Senator, read it in the Senate about two weeks before Calhoun's death, March 1850."

"The first protective tariff in American history was introduced by Calhoun and supported by Madison and Jefferson, and opposed by Webster... Calhoun divorced the idea of states' rights from natural rights, and invented the doctrine of legal or constitutional 'secession' to replace the natural right of revolution as the ground for independence. The South understood that to appeal to the right of revolution, as Jefferson had in the Declaration, was necessarily to appeal to the idea of individual natural rights. Southern leaders balked at such an appeal, because they understood that natural rights flew in the face of their fantastic justifications for slavery."

"For one hundred years, southern politics had remained frozen in time. The Democratic Party had been the party of John Caldwell Calhoun, the Yale-educated South Carolinian who fought in the decades leading up to the Civil War for the southern plantation/slave-owning way of life under the banner of states' rights. To white southerners, the Republican Party was the hated Yankee party of Abraham Lincoln that had forced them to release their Negro property. After Reconstruction, neither party had much to offer the Negroes, so for another century white southerners stayed true to their party and the Democrats could count on a solid block of Democratic states in the South. The point George Wallace was making in his independent run for president was that southern Democrats wanted something different from what the Democratic Party was offering, even though they were not going to become Republicans. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was expressing the same idea as early as 1948 when he ran against Truman as the candidate for president for a party significantly named the States' Rights Party."

"Calhoun is remembered for what he did in the latter half of his adult life. In those years, he rationalized slavery, suppressed freedom of speech, and legitimized secession."

"In conclusion, what estimate should be made of Calhoun as a political theorist ? Certainly upon many points in his system the political science of the past half-century has pronounced favorable judgment. This is notably true in regard to his repudiation of the Naturrecht theory of an original state of nature and a social contract antecedent to the establishment of government. His assertion of the unity and indivisibility of sovereignty is also in accord with the doctrine now generally accepted by political scientist.On these questions he reasoned with great clearness and force. From another point of view, however, his reasoning, though keen and strong, was- narrow and cramped. Calhoun seemed to lack the proper historical perspective. Thus he saw that an inferior and a superior race can with difficulty coexist on the same territory on terms of entire equality, but he applied this doctrine in defense of the institution of slavery long after its death-knell had been sounded throughout the civilized world. The argument from the inequality of races could not justify the complete denial of civil and political rights to the lower race, in the nineteenth century and in the United States. Calhoun saw clearly, what De Tocqueville and Bryce have pointed out, namely, the danger of party or majority despotism in a democracy, but he failed to see the impracticability under the given conditions of such a scheme as the " concurrent majority" or nullification. He perceived the difficulty involved in a divided sovereignty, but he overlooked the nationalizing influences that were at work in the United States, and hence failed to see that this very doctrine of the divisibility of sovereignty was the safeguard of states' rights, and that, if conflict were precipitated, the one and indivisible sovereignty would fall to the nation. Granting, for the sake of argument, his favorite premise that the states were originally sovereign, it did not follow socially, economically, politically that they were still so situated. Calhoun's reasoning was keen and acute, rather than broad and comprehensive.' Logic seemed to overbalance the historical sense; his conclusions, therefore, were brilliant examples of dialectics, but ill adapted to the time and place in which he lived.Yet, when all is considered, one must rank Calhoun as among the strongest of American political theorists in the first half of the nineteenth century. Clear in his style of expression, keen and vigorous in the use of logic, Calhoun developed a formidable body of political theory, not easy to attack and overthrow. His influence in determining the course of southern political thought was very great and entitles him to the first place among the theorists of his school. This is as true of his political philosophy as of his public law; for in both Calhoun's influence was predominant."

"The old Jackson men of the inner set still speak of Mr. Calhoun in terms which show that they consider him at once the most wicked and the most despicable of American statesmen. He was a coward, conspirator, hypocrite, traitor, and fool, say they. He strove, schemed, dreamed, lived, only for the presidency; and when he despaired of reaching that office by honorable means, he sought to rise upon the ruins of his country-thinking it better to reign in South Carolina than to serve in the United States. General Jackson lived and died in this opinion. In his last sickness he declared that, in reflecting upon his administration, he chiefly regretted that he had not had John C. Calhoun executed for treason. "My country," said the General, "would have sustained me in the act, and his fate would have been a warning to traitors in all time to come.""

"A friend, Mary Bates, observed that she “never heard him utter a jest,” and Daniel Webster in his eulogy said he had never known a man “who wasted less of life in what is called recreation, or employed less of it in any pursuits not immediately connected with the discharge of his duty.” Duty is the word, for duty was the demonic force in Calhoun. "I hold the duties of life to be greater than life itself," he once wrote. "... I regard this life very much as a struggle against evil, and that to him who acts on proper principle, the reward is in the struggle more than in victory itself, although that greatly enhances it." In adult life to relax and play are in a certain sense to return to the unrestrained spirits of childhood. There is reason to believe that Calhoun was one of those people who have had no childhood to return to. This, perhaps, was what Harriet Martineau sensed when she said that he seemed never to have been born. His political lieutenant, James H. Hammond, remarked after his death: "Mr. Calhoun had no youth, to our knowledge. He sprang into the arena like Minerva from the head of Jove, fully grown and clothed in armor: a man every inch himself, and able to contend with any other man.""

"John Calhoun, if you secede from my nation I will secede your head from the rest of your body."

"Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons. ... To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table. Let me reiterate--all options must remain on the table."

"I am proud that at my side will be a running mate whose life is the story of the American dream and who's worked every day to make that dream real for all Americans – Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. And his wonderful wife Elizabeth and their family. This son of a mill worker is ready to lead – and next January, Americans will be proud to have a fighter for the middle class to succeed Dick Cheney as Vice President of the United States."

"as John Edwards has said, "It's time for us to be patriotic about something besides war.""

"I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs. I think he would be appalled, actually."

"And we have so much work to do in America, because all across America, there are walls ... There's a wall around Washington, D.C. The American people are, today, on the outside of that wall. And on the inside are the big corporations and the lobbyists who are working to protect a system that takes care of them. ... There is another wall that divides us. It's the moral shame of 37 million of our own people who wake up in poverty every single day This is not OK. And for eight long, long years, this wall has gotten taller And there's also a wall that's divided our image in the world. The America as the beacon of hope is behind that wall. And all the world sees now is a bully. They see Iraq, Guantanamo, secret prison and government that argues that water boarding is not torture. This is not OK. That wall has to come down for the sake of our ideals and our security. We can change this. We can change it. Yes we can. If we stand together, we can change it. ... This is not going to be easy. It's going to be the fight of our lives. But we're ready, because we know that this election is about something bigger than the tired old hateful politics of the past. This election is about taking down these walls that divide us, so that we can see what's possible -- what's possible, that one America that we can build together."

"Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there."

"Oh, do not cry. Be good children, and we shall all meet in Heaven ... I want to meet you all, white and black, in Heaven."

"Every good citizen makes his country's honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defense and is conscious that he gains protection while he gives it."

"Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms."

"It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word."

"Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in."

"You are uneasy; you never sailed with me before, I see."

"John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"

"Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn."

"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!"

"I killed the bank."

"Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error."

"Never take counsel of your fears."

"No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody."

"One man with courage makes a majority."

"To the victors belong the spoils."

"John Calhoun, if you secede from my nation I will secede your head from the rest of your body."

"He told his friends that he purposed washing his hands utterly of public life and political affairs; that he had now been to all intents and purposes a public servant from the age of thirteen to that of threescore and ten ... that he had lived his whole life in plain sight of the public and the people, hiding nothing, simulating nothing, confessing nothing, extenuating nothing and regretting nothing — except that he could never get a chance to shoot Clay or hang Calhoun."

"The West grouped itself around the figure of the frontier General Andrew Jackson, who claimed to represent the true Jeffersonian principles of democracy against the corrupt moneyed interests of the East. Adams received the support of those classes who feared majority rule and viewed with alarm the growing power of the farmers and settlers of the frontier. The issue between the two factions was joined in 1828, when Jackson stood as rival candidate against Adams’s re-election. In the welter of this election two new parties were born, the Democrats and the National Republicans, later called the Whigs. It was the fiercest campaign since Jefferson had driven the elder Adams from office in 1800. As the results came in it was seen that Adams had won practically nothing outside New England, and that in the person of Andrew Jackson the West had reached controlling power. Here at last was an American President who had no spiritual contacts whatever with the Old World or its projection on the Atlantic shore, who represented at the White House the spirit of the American frontier. To many it seemed that democracy had triumphed indeed."

"There were wild scenes at Washington at the inauguration of the new President, dubbed by his opponent Adams as “the brawler from Tennessee.” But to the men of the West Jackson was their General, marching against the political monopoly of the moneyed classes. The complications of high politics caused difficulties for the backwoodsman. His simple mind, suspicious of his opponents, made him open to influence by more partisan and self-seeking politicians. In part be was guided by Martin Van Buren, his Secretary of State. But he relied even more heavily for advice on political cronies of his own choosing, who were known as the “Kitchen Cabinet,” because they were not office-holders. Jackson was led to believe that his first duty was to cleanse the stables of the previous regime. His dismissal of a large number of civil servants brought the spoils system, long prevalent in many states, firmly into the Federal machine."

"But the next serious issue was the Federal Bank, whose charter was due to come up for renewal in 1836. The National Republicans, or Whigs, now led by Clay, preferred to force it before the 1832 Presidential election. Jackson had long been expected to attack the moneyed power in politics. The position of the Bank illustrated the economic stresses which racked the American Republic. “It was an economic conflict,” wrote Charles Beard, “that happened to take a sectional form: the people of the agricultural West had to pay tribute to Eastern ! capitalists on the money they had borrowed to buy land, make | improvements, and engage in speculation.” The contest was joined in the election. The triumphant return of Jackson to power was in fact a vote against the Bank of the United States. It was in vain that Daniel Webster was briefed as counsel for the Bank. Jackson informed the Bank president, “I do not dislike your bank more than all banks, but ever since I read the history of the South Sea Bubble I have been afraid of banks.” He refused to consent to the passing of a Bill to renew the charter, and without waiting for the Bank to die a natural death in 1836 he decided at once to deprive it of Government deposits, which were sent to local banks throughout the states. When the charter expired it was not renewed, and for nearly thirty years there was no centralised banking system in the United States."

"The union of Western and Southern politicians had had their revenge upon the North. The Radicalism of the frontier had won a great political contest. Jackson’s occupation of the Presidency had finally broken the “era of good feelings” which had followed the war with Britain, and by his economic policy he had split the old Republican Party of Jefferson. The Radicalism of the West was looked upon with widespread suspicion throughout the Eastern states, and Jackson’s official appointments had not been very happy. The election in 1836 of Jackson’s lieutenant, Van Buren, meant the continuation of Jacksonian policy, while the old General himself returned in triumph to. his retirement in Tennessee. The first incursions of the West into high politics had revealed the slumbering forces of democracy on the frontier and shown the inexperience of their leaders in such affairs."

"A charismatic figure, Jackson was combative, quick-tempered, and thin-skinned. To his friends he was generous, considerate, and above all loyal; to his enemies, mean-spirited and spiteful. "When Andrew Jackson hated," Robert V. Remini, a modern Jacksonian scholar, has written, "it often became grand passion. He could hate with a Biblical fury and would resort to petty and vindictive acts to nurture his hatred and keep it bright and strong and ferocious." He at time exploded with anger, but it is believed that he never really lost his temper. Rather, he launched into tirades quite purposefully either to intimidate his opposition or to end debate on a matter that was dragging on too long. Martin Van Buren, his closest adviser, marveled at Jackson's ability to turn his anger on and off at will. One minute he could be shrieking at the cabinet in the high register his voice invariably had whenever he was agitated; the next moment, alone with Van Buren after the others had left, he was relaxed and in good humor. At social occasions Jackson surprised many with his grace, poise, and charm. Around women he shed his backwoods manner and earthly language to engage comfortably in social discourse. He delighted in disappointing those who, he said, "were prepared to see me with a tomahawk in one hand and a scalping knife in the other.""

"There is something too mean in looking upon the Negro, when you are in trouble, as a citizen, and when you are free from trouble, as an alien. When this nation was in trouble, in its early struggles, it looked upon the Negro as a citizen. In 1776 he was a citizen. At the time of the formation of the Constitution the Negro had the right to vote in eleven States out of the old thirteen. In your trouble you have made us citizens. In 1812 General Jackson addressed us as citizens; 'fellow-citizens'. He wanted us to fight. We were citizens then! And now, when you come to frame a conscription bill, the Negro is a citizen again. He has been a citizen just three times in the history of this government, and it has always been in time of trouble. In time of trouble we are citizens. Shall we be citizens in war, and aliens in peace? Would that be just?"

"It's not that Jackson had a "dark side," as his apologists rationalize and which all human beings have, but rather that Jackson was the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a colonialist, imperialist democracy, a dynamic formation that continues to constitute the core of US patriotism. The most revered presidents-Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama-have each advanced populist imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology. All the presidents after Jackson march in his footsteps. Consciously or not, they refer back to him on what is acceptable, how to reconcile democracy and genocide and characterize it as freedom for the people."

"The Indian-fighting frontiersmen and the "valiant" settlers in their circled covered wagons are the iconic images of that identity. The continued popularity of, and respect for, the genocidal sociopath Andrew Jackson is another indicator."

"They must be either for or against us. Distrust them and you make them your enemies, place confidence in them, and you engage them by every dear and honorable tie to the interest of the country, who extends to them equal rights and privileges with white men."

"[W]ith sound-money and gold-standard morality transcendent, Jackson's destruction of the Bank was all but universally regarded as a villainous action. ...In more recent times, as the conventional wisdom of bankers has come... modestly into question and a heightened democratic ethos has ascribed both perception and virtue to the common man, Jackson's action has been viewed with contrasting warmth. He was... speaking for the small, energetic and aspiring folks of the new states, the new farms and the frontier. He was, in an important respect, their accidental ally. He opposed the bank as a monopoly—a monster which, as Biddle held, had power to rival that of the state. ...[I]t was also the power of his political enemies. But he favored hard money—he was for currency consisting of gold and silver and for eschewing all paper as the instrument of the devil. In getting rid of the bank, he got... the softest [money] of all—an explosion of new banks, and avalanche of bank notes. But this, and the loans so allowed, were what his constituents most wanted. Had Andrew Jackson succeeded in establishing... hard money... his name would have been reviled by the... small, energetic and aspiring folk of the frontier. Historians, in pondering whether Jackson was right or wrong on financial matters, must allow... a third possibility... that he was confused."

"The Jacksonian movement in politics, although it took the name of the Democratic Party, fought so hard in favor of slavery and white supremacy, and opposed the inclusion of non-whites and women within the American civil polity so resolutely, that it makes the term 'Jacksonian Democracy' all the more inappropriate as a characterization of the years between 1815 and 1848."

"The Cherokees, Creeks, and some Choctaws supported the fledgling US and Andrew Jackson’s forces in warfare against the British in 1812-1815. It didn’t keep our tribes from being removed by Andrew Jackson’s government from our homelands."