“in the South and Southwest, are decidedly the aristocratic portion of this Union; you are so in holding persons in perpetuity in slavery; you are so in every domestic quality, so in every habit in your lives, living, and actions, so in habits, customs, intercourse, and manners; you neither work with your hands, heads, nor any machinery, but live and have your living, not in accordance with the will of your Creator, but by the sweat of slavery, and yet you assume all the attributes, professions, and advantages of democracy.”

Mr. Calhoun, aged thirty, replied thus to Captain Stewart, aged thirty-four:—­

“I see you speak through the head of a young statesman, and from the heart of a patriot, but you lose sight of the politician and the sectional policy of the people.  I admit your conclusions in respect to us Southrons.  That we are essentially aristocratic, I cannot deny; but we can and do yield much to democracy.  This is our sectional policy; we are from necessity thrown upon and solemnly wedded to that party, however it may occasionally clash with our feelings, for the conservation of our interests.  It is through our affiliation with that party in the Middle and Western States that we hold power; but when we cease thus to control this nation through a disjointed democracy, or any material obstacle in that party which shall tend to throw us out of that rule and control, we shall then resort to the dissolution of the Union.  The compromises in the Constitution, under the circumstances, were sufficient for our fathers, but, under the altered condition of our country from that period, leave to the South no resource but dissolution; for no amendments to the Constitution could be reached through a convention of the people under their three-fourths rule.”

Probably all of our readers have seen this conversation in print before.  But it is well for us to consider it again and again.  It is the key to all the seeming inconsistencies of Mr. Calhoun’s career.  He came up to Congress, and took the oath to support the Constitution, secretly resolved to break up the country just as soon as the Southern planters ceased to control it for the maintenance of their peculiar interest.  The reader will note, too, the distinction made by this young man, who was never youthful, between the “statesman” and the “politician,” and between the “heart of a patriot” and “the sectional policy of the people.”

Turning from his loathsome and despicable exposition to the Congressional career of Mr. Calhoun, we find no indication there of the latent traitor.  He was merely a very active, energetic member of the Republican party; supporting the war by assiduous labors in committee, and by intense declamation of the kind of which we have given a specimen.  In all his speeches there is not a touch of greatness.  He declared that Demosthenes was his model,—­an orator who was a master of all the arts? all the artifices,