repudiation of reckoning the costs of war against insult and violated rights had a chivalric ring about it:  “Sir, I here enter my solemn protest against a low and calculating avarice entering this hall of legislation.  It is only fit for shops and counting-houses....  It is a compromising spirit, always ready to yield a part to save the residue.”  Here at an early date we hear the key-note of his life,—­hatred of compromises and half-measures.  If it were necessary to go to war at all, he would fight regardless of expense.

Thus Calhoun began his public career as an advocate of war with Great Britain.  The old Revolutionary sores had not yet had time to heal, and there was general hostility to England, except among the Virginia aristocrats and the Federalists of the North.  Although a young man, Calhoun was placed upon the important committee of Foreign Affairs, of which he was soon made chairman.

Calhoun’s early speeches in Congress gave promise of rare abilities.  The most able of them were those on the repeal of the Embargo, in 1814; on the commercial convention with Great Britain in 1816; on the United States Bank Bill and the tariff the same year; and on the Internal Improvement Bill in 1817.  The main subject which occupied Congress from 1812 to 1814 was the war with Great Britain, during the administration of Madison; and afterwards, till 1817, the great questions at issue were in reference to tariffs and internal improvements.

In the discussion of these subjects Calhoun took broad and patriotic ground.  At that time we see no sectional interests predominating in his mind.  He favored internal improvements, great permanent roads, and even the protection of manufactures, and a National Bank.  On all these questions his sectional interests at a later day led him to support the exact opposite of these early national views.  Says Von Holst:  “His speech on the new tariff bill (April 6, 1816) was a long and carefully prepared argument in favor of the whole economical platform on which the Whig party stood to the last day of its existence....  Even Henry Clay and Horace Greeley have not been able to put their favorite doctrine into stronger language....  His final aim was the industrial independence of the United States from Europe; and this, he thought, could be obtained by protective duties.”

Calhoun’s speeches, during the six years that he was a member of the House of Representatives, were so able as to attract the attention of the nation, and in 1817 Monroe selected him as his Secretary of War.  And he made a good executive officer in this branch of the public service, putting things to rights, and bringing order out of confusion, living on terms of friendship with John Quincy Adams and other members of the cabinet, planning military roads, introducing a system of strict economy in his department, and making salutary reforms.  He tolerated no abuses.  He was disposed to do justice to the Indians, and raise