and discover in them the nurseries of the existing war, are essentially ignorant of our political history. They are strangers to the doctrines of Calhoun of South Carolina-the first name in the political literature of our old government-the first man who raised the party controversies of America to the dignity of a political philosophy and illuminated them with the lights of the patient and accomplished scholar.

The great political discovery of Mr. Calhoun was this: that the rights of the States were the only solid foundation of the Union; and that, so far from being antagonistic to it, they con stituted its security, realized its perfection, and gave to it all the moral beauty with which it appealed to the affections of the people. It was in this sense that the great South Carolina statesman, so frequently calumniated as "nullifier," agitator, &c., was indeed the real and devoted friend of the American Union. He maintained the rights of the States-the sacred distribution of powers between them and the general government-as the life of the Union, and its bond of attachment in the hearts of the people. And in this he was right. The State institutions of America, properly regarded, were not discordant; nor were they unfortunate elements in our political life. They gave certain occasions to the divisions of industry; they were instruments of material prosperity; they were schools of pride and emulation; above all, they were the true guardians of the Union, keeping it from degenerating into that vile and short-lived government in which power is consolidated in & mere numerical majority.

Mr. Calhoun's so-called doctrine of Nullification is one of the highest proofs ever given by any American statesman of attachment to the Union. The assertion is not made for paradoxical effect. It is clear enough in history, read in the severe type of facts, without the falsehoods and epithets of that Yankee literature which has so long defamed us, distorted our public men, and misrepresented us, even to ourselves.

The so-called and miscalled doctrine of Nullification marked one of the most critical periods in the controversies of Amer ica, and constitutes one of the most curious studies for its philosophic historian. Mr. Calhoun was unwilling to offend the popular idolatry of the Union; he sought a remedy fo existing evils short of disunion, and the consequence was what

was called, by an ingenious slander, or a contemptible stu pidity, Nullification. His doctrine was, in fact, an accommo dation of two sentiments: that of Yankee injustice and that of reverence of the Union. He proposed to save the Union by the simple and august means of an appeal to the scvereign States that composed it. He proposed that should the general government and a state come into conflict, the power should be invoked that called the general government into existence, and gave it all of its authority. In such a case, said Mr. Calhoun, "the States themselves may be appealed to, threefourths of which, in fact, form a power whose decrees are the Constitution itself, and whose voice can silence all discontent. The utmost extent, then, of the power is, that a State acting in its sovereign capacity, as one of the parties to the constitutional compact, may compel the government created by that compact to submit a question touching its infraction to the. parties who created it." He proposed a peculiar, conservative, and noble tribunal for the controversies that agitated the country and threatened the Union. He was not willing that vital controversies between the sovereign States and the general government should be submitted to the Supreme Court, which properly excluded political questions, and comprehended those only where there were parties amenable to the process of the court. This was the length and breadth of Nullification. It was intended to reconcile impatience of Yankee injustice, and that sentimental attachment to the Union which colors so much of American politics; it resisted the suggestion of revolution; it clung to the idolatry of the Union, and marked that passage in American history in which there was a combat between reason and that idolatry, and in which that idolatry made a showy, but ephemeral conquest.

The doctrine, then, of Mr. Calhoun was this: he proposed only to constitute a conservative and constitutional barrier to Yankee aggression; and, so far from destroying the Union, proposed to erect over it the permanent and august guard of a tribunal of those sovereign powers which had created it. It was this splendid, but hopeless vision of the South Carolina statesman, which the North slandered with the catch-word of Nullification; which Northern orators made the text of indignation; on which Mr. Webster piped his schoolboy rhetoric;

and on which the more modern schools of New England have exhausted the lettered resources of their learned blacksmiths and Senatorial shoemakers. Mr. Webster, the representative of that imperfect and insolent education peculiar to New England, appears never to have known that Mr. Calhoun's doc trine was not of his own origination; that its suggestion, a least, came from one of the founders of the republic. We refer to that name which is apostolic in the earliest party divis ions of America, and the enduring ornament of VirginiaThomas Jefferson, the Sage of Monticello. At a late period of his life, Mr. Jefferson said: "With respect to our State and Federal governments, I do not think their relations are correctly understood by foreigners. They suppose the former subordinate to the latter. This is not the case. They are coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. But you may ask if the two departments should claim each the same subject of power, where is the umpire to decide between them? In cases of little urgency or importance, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but, if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a Convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best."

Here was the first suggestion of the real safety of the Union; and it was this suggestion, reproduced by Calhoun, which the North slandered as Nullification, insulted as heresy, and branded as treason.

It is a remarkable circumstance that the South should have tamely allowed the Yankees to impose upon her political literature certain injurious terms, and should have adopted them to her own prejudice and shame. The world takes its impres sion from names; and the false party nomenclature which the North so easily fastened upon us, and which survives even in this war, has had a most important influence in obscuring our history, and especially in soliciting the prejudices of Europe.

The proposition of Mr. Calhoun to protect the Union by a certain constitutional and conservative barrier, the North designated Nullification, and the South adopted a name which was both a falsehood and a slander. The well-guarded and moderate system of negro servitude in the South, the North called Slavery; and this false and accursed name has been

permitted to pass current in European literature, associating and carrying with it the horrors of barbarisin, and defiling us in the eyes of the world. The Democratic party in the South, which claimed equality under the Constitution, as a principle, and not merely as a selfish interest, was branded by the North as a pro-slavery party, and the South submitted to the desig

nation.

How little that great party deserved this title was well illustrated in the famous Kansas controversy; for the history of that controversy was simply this: the South struggled for the principle of equality in the Territories, without reference to the selfish interests of so-called Slavery, and even with the admission of the hopelessness of those interests in Kansas; while the North contended for the narrow, selfish, practical consequence of making Kansas a part of her Free-soil possessions. The proofs of this may be made in two brief extracts from these celebrated debates. These are so full of historical instruction. that they supply a place here much better than any narrative or comment could do:

Mr. ENGLISH, of Indiana.—I think I may safely say that there is not Southern man within the sound of my voice who will not vote for the adinis sion of Kansas as a Free state, if she brings here a Constitution to that effect Is there a Southern man here who will vote against the admission of Kansa as a Free State, if it be the undoubted will of the people of that Territory tha it shall be a Free State?

MANY MEMBERS.-Not one.

At another stage of the Kansas debate occurs the following:

Mr. BARKSDALE, of Mississippi.—I ask you, gentlemen, on the other side of the House, of the Black Republican party, would you vote for the admission of Kansas into the Union, with a Constitution tolerating Slavery, if a hundred thousand people there wished it?

Mr. GIDDINGS, of Ohio.—I answer the gentleman that I will never associate, politically, with men of that character, if I can help it. I will never vote to compel Ohio to associate with another Slave State, if I can prevent it.

Mr. STANTON.-I will say, if the gentleman will allow me, that the Repub lican members of this House, so far as I know, will never vote for the admis sion of any Slave State north of 36° 30'.

We return to the influence of State institutions on America, We contend that they were not hostile to the Union, or

malignant in their character; that, on the contrary, they were auxiliary to the Union; that they stimulated the national progress; that, in fact, they interpreted the true glory of America; and that it was especially these modifications of our national life, which gave to the Union that certain moral sublimity so long the theme of American politicians. From these propositions we advance to a singular conclusion. It is that the moral veneration of the Union, which gives the key to so much of American history, was peculiarly a sentiment of the South; while in the North it was nothing more than a mere affectation.

This may sound strange to those who have read American history in the smooth surface of Yankee books; who remember Webster's apostrophes to the glorious Union, and Everett's silken rhetoric; whose political education has been manufactured to hand by the newspapers, and clap-traps of Yankee literature about "nullification" and treason. But, it is easy of comprehension. The political ideas of the North excluded that of any peculiar moral character about the Union; the doctrine of State Rights was rejected by them for the prevalent notion that America was a single democracy; thus, the Union to them was nothing more than a geographical name, entitled to no peculiar claims upon the affections of the people. It was different with the South. The doctrine of State Rights gave to the Union its moral dignity; this doctrine was the only real possible source of sentimental attachment to the Union; and this doctrine was the received opinion of the Southern people, and the most marked peculiarity of their politics. The South did not worship the Union in the base spirit of commercial idolatry, as a painted machinery to secure tariffs and bounties, and to aggrandize a section. She venerated the Union because she discovered in it a sublime moral principle; because she regarded it as a peculiar association in which sovereign States were held by high considerations of good faith; by the exchanges of equity and comity; by the noble attractions of social order; by the enthused sympathies of a common destiny of power, honor, and renown. It was this galaxy which the South wore upon her heart, and before the clustered fires of whose glory she worshipped with an adoration almost Oriental. That Union is now dissolved; that splendid galaxy of stars is