John C. Calhoun: Life, Times, & Political Philosophy

Welcome to our fourth installment in our Anglo -American conservative book series. I'm your host,

John Harris. We are going to talk about an often maligned, but I think misunderstood figure today, and that is

John C. Calhoun, who filled a number of important roles in his public life during the first part of the 1800s in American history.

He was a senator from South Carolina, a vice president, a congressman, a secretary of war, and he made many contributions, not just to actual policy, but also to political theory.

And part of the intention in this particular series is trying to trace back to roots that have been forgotten in our past, a positive vision that we can carry forward into the future, for what it means to be who we are as Americans, as part of an

Anglo -Protestant conservative tradition that is attempting to retain the true and valuable things in our traditions that help us conform more to God's good order.

And John C. Calhoun, I think, is one of the figures that actually helps us do this. Now I know there's a lot of negative things said about Calhoun.

Most likely if you're listening and you've heard of Calhoun, it was probably in a negative context, although that might be changing as some of his ideas, especially the concurrent majority and protections for minorities in society, gets more traction and appeal.

But I think there's a lot more to John C. Calhoun than even just the concurrent majority and his defense against the abolitionists.

I think actually a lot of his contributions are in the realm of finance and land and military and all kinds of other things.

So we're going to talk about those. Now a quick note about John C. Calhoun before we get into his biography and then look at some of his contributions.

John C. Calhoun might be an exception in this series, and I toyed around with this, whether I wanted to include him, but I ultimately decided to do it.

And the reason I had to consider this is because Calhoun was very private in his religious beliefs.

He was raised Presbyterian. He attended an Anglican church. His wife attended an Anglican church down in South Carolina.

He was from the upcountry. She was from the low country. And if you know anything about South Carolina, Scotch -Irish who lived in the upcountry were generally

Presbyterian. And in the low country, the Anglican church was more of the established church. But Calhoun also donated some money to the formation of a

Unitarian church in Washington, D .C., though he was not a member. So I don't know exactly where he landed, especially towards the end of his life, although he was at peace, according to,

I think, probably his best biography by Margaret Coit. He was at peace with God. He may have had true faith.

It's just a little bit hard to tell what he actually believed because he didn't talk about it much.

There is an interesting story that she tells when he's in South Carolina. I think this is during his short retirement.

He never really retired, but this was right before his second time being in the

Senate. And the rector looks at him and thinks, well, he's sleeping.

His eyes are closed. He's not even listening to a word I said. And after the sermon, Calhoun walks up to him and repeats the entire sermon, basically.

All the points that were made, he was able to discuss them. The rector said, or the pastor,

I forget what the position was exactly, but with greater felicitude than the pastor actually had.

And so he was very impressed. Calhoun was very interested in learning. And apparently he studied Hebrew because he wanted to understand the

Old Testament in the original language. He was very fascinated with the Jews in the

Old Testament, the Israelites. And so this is the John C.

Calhoun that I think embodies a lot of the religious context he grew up under.

But whether or not he had true faith or was a member of a church or held to a confession, those things are a bit mysterious.

I don't know where he ended up landing at the end of his life, but his views are consciously rooted in a particular kind of creator who he considers to be wise and good.

It's the Christian God. And he wants to conform to the order that that particular being, that creator, has laid down for us.

And he was from a state with a high concentration of Christians, obviously today still a very high concentration of Christians in South Carolina.

And he was very impacted by Christianity and contributed greatly to a country at that time that was more thoroughly

Christian than it is now. So I decided to include him in this. I think his ideas on a broad level, his underlying philosophy is actually very consistent with a biblical anthropology and an understanding of the created order.

We'll talk more about that because there are some skeptics that would say because of the fact that he was a slave holder and because he defended against abolitionists, against the immediate abolition and during the postal crisis, wanting to free all slaves unilaterally from the top down using the mechanism of the government, that he cannot possibly be a

Christian. So we'll talk about that a little bit as we get into it, whether or not that's consistent, inconsistent.

I think these things are a little more complicated than most people are willing to admit. And like many of the other videos in this series, this will also be for patrons only, the full video.

Now you can watch half of this, but it will be behind a paywall if you want to watch the whole thing.

So you can either sign up as a patron at patreon .com forward slash

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And the third way is if you don't want to sign up for anything, which I don't blame you. There's a lot of people asking you to sign up for a lot of things.

I'm really grateful for it. But if you just want to pay a couple bucks and get the slideshow, get access to the video, you can find the link and be able to do that as well.

So that's all in the info section. Well, without further ado, let us start talking about John C Calhoun, last of the founding fathers, according to some, not because he was one of the founding fathers, but because he embodied the spirit of the founding generation in so many ways.

He was a brilliant statesman, but he was also a tragic figure in my estimation.

John C Calhoun was a man of high character and stubborn honesty who sacrificed personal ambition for his principles and his people.

He was practical about policy limits and supported compromise when needed, but he defied popular opinion to do what he believed was right.

Calhoun did not chase higher office or re -election as ends in themselves. He sought to conform the government to its intended role for the good of society as a pre -existing arrangement emanating from a natural order of things.

He did not believe in small government chiefly for the sake of efficiency, but because it failed to serve the communities it was intended to serve, the bigger it grew.

His views of the general welfare and the importance of virtue inspire some to call him the last of the founding fathers.

Calhoun foresaw an inevitable war over sectional issues and died in 1850 knowing it could not be averted.

And this is one of the reasons that I call Calhoun a tragic figure because he, till the very end on his deathbed practically, was trying to avert a sectional crisis that would end in a war.

He was consumed with that. He was back and forth with it's inevitable to we must save the union.

He really did die a union man. He at least wanted that. As did many of the confederates who came later and did not want to part with the union that they so loved, but felt that it was their duty to, like Robert E.

Lee. Calhoun was kind of along that same vein. He died 10 years before the

Civil War, but he was a prophet in that he knew it was coming. There are a few quotes that indicate that he knew it was coming.

One of the things that I personally like about John C. Calhoun and everything I just told you are things that I thought of and wanted to highlight myself because these are the things that some of them

I relate to, not saying I am the man he is, but I understand to some extent what it is to be in a position where you feel like you can't please everyone.

Even the people that normally support you, you might disappoint if you do the right thing.

John C. Calhoun made those kinds of choices at many times in his life when he could have done the popular thing and he chose not to.

He sacrificed popularity to do the right thing and it probably cost him the presidency.

There were many who wanted him to run for president, but his run -ins with especially

Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren and James Polk, his tendency to weigh in on matters that were controversial even when he knew he was not going to have an answer that pleased everyone but it was necessary to weigh in to them.

Actually the speech he gave in 1837 on the petitions that abolitionists were writing to end slavery is one of those things.

He really didn't have to say anything and he did anyway because he knew it was necessary that these were things that had to be faced square on.

You couldn't just avoid them forever. It's one of the reasons I see Calhoun as a statesman and I aspire to have some of his positive virtues in my own life and not be a coward.

I hope this is something that you can resonate with as well. Maybe you could pick up one of his biographies. I owe a lot to Margaret Coit.

Also I owe a lot to Clyde Wilson. He didn't write a biography, although he was the editor.

He's probably the premier Calhoun expert in the world because he edited the Calhoun papers. But there's a book that he wrote called

Calhoun for the 21st Century, which I've read and gleaned a lot from for this particular slideshow.

So you're going to see some of his framing of things in what I'm going to present to you.

So I need to give him credit. Another man I respect actually very deeply. But Calhoun was someone who embodied the spirit of a statesman and cared so much for his people.

He was willing to sacrifice. He probably got himself sick. And I mean, some people think that they can trace the origin of his malady to years before when he's rushing back to South Carolina to stop them from from seceding from the union, essentially, which seems to be where it was going, nullifying the force bill and all of that.

And he got a resolution to the matter with the help of with other senators and most notably

Henry Clay. And he got sick on the way I remember was way down her back.

But some people say, like, he just worked himself to death. He had this overactive mind. He was very locked into his principles and to just some people would say cold, hard logic.

But if he could think through it, which he was a brilliant thinker and he was a brilliant logician and he was convinced of it, you couldn't get him to buckle.

He was affable. He was he had courtesy. He was actually charming to some extent.

Some of the pictures in his later years make him look scary because he was dying of tuberculosis. But actually, as a young man, he was very good looking.

And he he was someone who.

Was content taking a loss if it meant the greater good. Not a lot of people like that, so that's,

I think, why I respect him. He seems like an affectionate husband and a good father.

He was very close, actually, with his mother in law and with his daughter, Anna. So his mother in law,

Floride, his wife, Floride and his daughter, Anna. And don't ask who Floride, how close he was related to Floride.

She was his first cousin once removed. So they did that back then. But anyway,

I'm getting off track a little bit here. This is the brilliant statesman and the tragic figure because he ended up being on the losing side of stuff.

But that was OK with him. He was going to go down with his people if it meant that.

Got to respect that. So early life, let's go through a biography. There's a painting of him while he was the secretary of war.

And you could see that he's a little older than when he first started public life, but still very dark, young, handsome man.

We're in Abbeville, South Carolina, 1782. He's the father. His father, rather,

Patrick Calhoun, was an upcountry anti -federalist and he was mostly homeschooled growing up. Now, he is a very

American story. His his family members that were killed by natives.

He has family members that fought as patriots in the Revolutionary War.

And and then his father, very conservative by instinct. And we talked about the anti -federalists in one of the previous episodes in the series.

And his father was one of them. He was suspicious that the Constitution would cede too much to the central authority.

It would be abused. It would be misunderstood. That kind of thing. In 1804, he graduated the top of his class at Yale.

So this is a guy who I think very temporarily went to an academy. He was mostly self -taught.

I say homeschool. I mean, he was self -taught, but he graduates the top of his class and then he studies law at Judge Reeves School in Connecticut.

And this is where he developed his state's rights ideas. And he was famous for getting into spirited discussions with even the professors and doing quite well in them regarding Jeffersonian democracy and the state's rights and all of that.

In 1811, he marries Floride Calhoun, which connected him to the Lowland Plantation Society.

And he was elected then to the U .S. House of Representatives as a Democrat and a Jeffersonian war hawk. One of the things you have to understand about South Carolina at this time is that they are very different.

The upcountry and the low country are very different with their interests. With Scotch -Irish in the upcountry, who are more on the frontier, and they have farms, but they're not the big plantations.

And then low country, which is more educated, more money, more, quote unquote, civilized.

And Calhoun transcends this barrier. And it's really in the nullification crisis, which we'll talk about, and then especially the

American Civil War, that you end up seeing not just South Carolina, but the entire

South become more fused together, seeing themselves as one people, even though they are distinct in many ways, just like every region has its distinctions.

The South becomes a people singular in some ways because of common enemies and because of common experience in a war.

And South Carolina is, there's still different interests in the state, but they end up overcoming some of those.

It was very severe when Calhoun was growing up. And in 1815 through 1817, he supports the national defense, internal improvements funded by non -tax revenue, which is very important, a moderate protective tariff as temporary aid, and charity committees to establish a sound national bank, which some say he switched later in life.

I don't think he actually ever switched his principles. And I'll explain that. I think he did start out, though, more someone who was able to work with those.

I mean, he was really always he always had the spirit, but he was more of a nationalist people would say. Right. He was someone who could work with anyone in the country and there was common interests and common policies.

But at the time that he was supporting the war and moderate protective tariffs, as long as and temporary aid and internal improvements with non -tax revenue, meaning revenue,

I suppose that would be. I'm trying to remember what I meant when I wrote this down. I think the revenue that comes from the tariffs and not taxes directly,

I'm assuming is New England at this point is very sectional.

So New England actually threatens to secede at the Hartford Convention, which is in 1814.

I think it ends in 1815. So right as he is getting into it, he the

New England is asking themselves, should we even stay in this union? Because New England had commercial interests.

They were the seafarers. They wanted to go trade and the South was more agrarian.

And this is one of the splits that ended up contributing to a war eventually.

But Calhoun is, of course, in South Carolina where it's more agrarian and decentralized

Jeffersonian. And he supports the war and as kind of a not a repayment or but sort of as a thank you, as just like, hey, it's fair and square.

He supported some of these measures like a moderate protective tariff that would benefit the commercial interests, because after all, during the war, which they didn't want to have happen, they don't want to go to war.

They had to cease a lot of their trade and it hurt them financially. So like we could help them out a little bit.

Right. There was there was that kind of like, if it helps the country, we can do some of these things that later on in life he is against because the logic for them changes, which we'll talk about.

But he's a war hawk and he becomes the secretary of war from 1817 to 1825.

And as secretary of war, he reduces the debt. He improves fortifications. He actually makes West Point the prestigious institution it is today.

The whole idea was we don't want a big standing army, but we do want to train officers. So when the time comes and we need an army, we have the leadership available.

He established the Bureau of Indian Affairs as well, which is part of the reason him and General Jackson got into it, because he did not approve of General Jackson's.

Actions in the Seminole War, which sort of poisons the well between them later, but this is his early life.

We'll expand on some of these things a little bit more as we go. During middle age, 1824 to 1832, he is elected and reelected as vice president under first John Quincy Adams and then

General Andrew Jackson. Calhoun's previous recommendation to censure Jackson during the Seminole War in 1818, his opposition to the tariff of abomination.

So like I told you, he becomes against tariffs and his endorsement of state nullification and not to mention fluoride, his wife's snubbing of Peggy Eaton, the wife of the secretary of war,

John Eaton. So you have the cabinet pick of the president being snubbed in society.

All of these things contribute to spark friction between John C. Calhoun and General Jackson.

And so there's personal rivalry, even though they're both Scots -Irish, they're both I think they're actually both

South Carolinian, if I'm not mistaken. They're actually very similar in so many ways, but they end up not liking each other.

At least Jackson does not like Calhoun. And it's because of a lot of personal things.

And really, it comes down to, I think, Calhoun would not flatter General Jackson. This is one of the things you hear about this today a lot.

I think there's a big picture of of Andrew Jackson in the

Oval Office because Donald Trump loves Andrew Jackson. He sees himself as Andrew Jackson. I mean, he was a lion, right?

And they're both lions. And they're they're very nationalistic and just strong and forcing their way and kind of sloppy in a way like they're they don't obey all the protocols of polite society.

And. There are some similarities there, I'm not going to lie, I mean, Donald Trump's mother is Scottish, so maybe there's some of that in her.

And in him, but John C. Calhoun was a bit more measured, subdued, calculated, principled,

I would say, consistent. And he his wife wasn't going to entertain

Peggy Eaton in polite society because she I forget the reason for it. Actually, right now she was something about her low character.

And this was seen as scandalous. And John C. Calhoun wasn't going to stop that. He didn't interfere with those things on state nullification.

I mean, this was a principled stand. He believed the Constitution allowed this on the tariffs. He believed that they were unconstitutional on the logic and the way they were being administered.

So this this is part of what happens. And in 1832 to 1833,

Calhoun resigns the vice presidency to represent South Carolina in the Senate during the nullification crisis. So there's a big conflict between him and Jackson at that point, and South Carolina nullifies the force bill and Calhoun helps gain a tariff reduction.

So the force bill is Jackson says, if you don't pay this tariff,

I'm going to come in there with troops where we're lining up, we're going to march in.

And Calhoun, just in time, is able to avert the crisis, but it definitely cost him politically.

And we're going to talk about more of these things in detail. 1833 to 1843, Calhoun serves in the

Senate, supports states rights, opposes abolitionists and theorizes the concurrent majority, which is his greatest contribution to political philosophy.

Now, you can see this picture here if you're watching. This is

Calhoun in his later years. He looks a little bit like. Doc, from Back to the

Future, and I mean, who knows, maybe he is, I mean, it could be that, you know, that I forget his name,

Doc, you know, Doc and Marty, but anyway, Doc goes back in time and maybe maybe he is John C. Calhoun, but he's dying of tuberculosis when this picture is taken and he's got sunken in eyes and his hair is kind of mangy and he's got this kind of scraggly beard.

And this is the picture that's usually in your textbooks to scare school children. Like you could use the painting, right?

They could use another one, but this is the one they like to use because he's the great defender of slavery.

It should be very, very scary when you look at the picture, even though that's really not his primary contribution.

And it's it's probably should be framed more as a defense against abolitionism than anything else as a because it wasn't specifically slavery, which we'll get into.

It was more of a defense of the entire civilization and the way that the people of the

South were being unfairly vilified in his mind. So you have the 1844 to 1845, he's confirmed as secretary of state, he achieves

Texas annexation and engineers a peaceful settlement on the Oregon question. We'll talk more about that 1845 to 1850.

He returns to the Senate. He opposes the executive overreach in the Mexican war. This is where you really first seeing someone saying, hold on, aren't we supposed to declare war?

We can't just what are these? We're in a state of war and the executive is making decisions like we should declare war, right?

You didn't think that that was a 19th century thing, did you? You thought that was a 20th century thing or a 21st century thing.

It's not. This goes back. And Calhoun was one of the first to complain about this. Anyway, he supported the

Missouri Compromise. He opposed the Wilmont Proviso and prophesied a civil war at the

North violated the Constitution on slavery. Now, for most of the sort of slavery, slave state, free state, the votes that were taken in Congress, he actually wasn't around for because he wasn't a senator for many of them.

He was serving in a different capacity, but he does make a speech which we'll talk about where he really lays it all out in 1837, at least in defending against the abolitionist charge.

In 1850, he dies and posthumously he publishes or the book is published, a disquisition on government, which is the work we're going to focus on.

That's really the theme of this is John C. Calhoun and the disquisition of government. He is eulogized by Henry Clay as one of the brightest luminaries that has been extinguished in the political firmament and by Daniel Webster as a man of undoubted genius and of commanding talent, even though Daniel Webster was very much his rival.

Now, he's remembered fondly, but now controversial for views on slavery. John F.

Kennedy said, when I was selected as chairman of a committee to pick five outstanding senators in the history of the country,

John C. Calhoun's name led all the rest. And his painting is now in the

Senate reception room. This is Democrat John F. Kennedy. My how we have changed.

John C. Calhoun to a northeastern Democrat who became the president was the leading senator of the country's history.

Prominently established in the Senate reception room. Would that ever happen today? No, it would not.

And I hope we can get back to a time where we can actually revere all the, the heroes who made good contributions to our country and view them for the ways that they lived at their time and the ways that these debates were actually framed, not through the lens of modern revisionism and.

And just viewing it through a presentist lens anyway, Russell Kirk says

Calhoun is to be sure the most impressive political theorist to be found among our American statesmen. He's intellectually more interesting than any other public man of his time.

And his statue was prominently displayed in South Carolina in, uh,

I think he actually has a few, but, uh, I think there was a big one that came down from Charleston. They took it down during the 2020, all of that.

And he actually, there was a building at Harvard.

I want to say that was named after him. And of course that's not there anymore either.

That was taken down, uh, when all the 2020 stuff stuff was happening as well.

Okay. So let's move on here. Let's talk a little bit about his actual policies.

Calhoun's philosophy society precedes government. And you know what? I should just correct myself here real quick.

It wasn't Harvard. It's Yale. It's Yale that he had, uh, there was a, uh, like a marker or a sign of him.

I remember they took it down. And so this is anyway, the way that he's remembered now is he's not remembered.

In fact, when I went to Fort hill, which you see in this particular photograph, there's a picture of it on the top, right.

And on the bottom left, there is a part of the map of the plantation.

This is modern day Clemson university. So it stayed in the family and, uh, his son -in -law ended up, uh, eventually donating it.

I don't know if it was a son -in -law or his grandson, but they, they ended up donating it to South Carolina and it becomes

Clemson university. So Fort hill is still standing. But when I went there a few years ago, I just want to take some pictures.

I had guys on me immediately. What are you doing here? Why are you taking pictures?

Did you get approval to do that? And I'm like, what is going on? And I, I, I looked down right across from Fort hill and there was a table with a student group, a

Christian student group, and they were, uh, they had black lives matter stuff and they were evangelical and they were saying that, uh, it was, you know, that the, the, the history of the school was terrible and I was just like, wow.

I mean, here they, they donate this piece of land and would they ever have thought that the students who would have taken advantage of this years down the road would have been basically cursing them?

Um, it is still there though. And I do encourage you to go visit it. You can take a tour and it's actually quite interesting.

So his philosophy though, is that society precedes government. He says, man is so constituted as to be a social being.

I next assume also as a fact, not less incontestable that while man is so constituted as to make social state necessary to his existence and the full development of his faculties, this state itself cannot exist without government, but government, although intended to protect and preserve society has itself a strong tendency to disorder and abuse of its powers.

This is prevented by whatever name called is what is meant by constitution in its most comprehensive sense when applied to government.

So this is what he's saying. Government has a job. That job is to preserve society.

Society already exists. Society is a arrangement that just exists in the world because man is a social being.

That's how God made him or her. And so when humans are interacting, they find it beneficial to have a government to punish those who do evil.

As Ella, really as the Bible says, to punish those who do evil, promote the good. And, uh, and it's necessary because if nature reports a vacuum, you're going to have a hierarchy emerge of some kind and there will be a governing structure.

And a good government is one. And the purpose of government to tell us for it is to protect and preserve.

Bible agrees with this. And it's pretty obvious as well. Um, the problem is government can also do bad things.

Government can become corrupt and then it doesn't actually fulfill its end. And it's not even at that point, is it even a legitimate government?

It's just a bully at the top of the hierarchy and what keeps a government in line, what ensures that the government does not exceed the boundaries that trample on people's liberty.

What ensures the government's actually doing the job that governments exist for constitution.

That's what it is, whether written or unwritten. This is just another law of nature. You're going to have an arrangement that is beneficial to the parties involved in that arrangement, or at least they think it is.

And, and so, um, a good constitution, uh, limits, the government puts it in its rightful place, and this is how all of these things work together.

And so Calhoun does not look at the government as there to create society, to create people's, to form people's, to just draw lines on maps arbitrarily.

Uh, to the people aren't there to serve the government. It's not a bunch of individuals.

It's it's society itself. That's preexisting. Government doesn't create society from individuals or something like that.

That's not how it works. Individuals create society and then governments are what helps societies flourish.

Um, and you might think that's kind of like duh, common sense. That's just how the world has worked for a long time.

But that's not how the way I think a lot of people think today, they really do look to government as sometimes

God himself, like they've all their problems are going to be solved their individual problems. Uh, but they also just expect government to change things for the better that government has this limitless ability to make everyone virtuous or something.

Um, government can certainly promote good things. Government can certainly reflect the law of God, but government's job is really more to protect and preserve society.

And it government can't really be better. It's, it's a very rare thing when you have a government that's better than the people that it serves, right?

I mean, look at the history of Israel and Judah, right? It just doesn't happen very often where you get a

King who's really good and he's able to bring the people back through his example and encouragement and some of his laws, even then there's limits, right?

Couldn't rip down all the high places. The people are too strong, whatever. But it's the natural state is for governments and people to reflect each other in some way.

And, um, and there are obviously like right now, one of the, that comes to mind a disjointed situation, perhaps as Iran, where.

You have this government that is very adverse to the people who live there from what

I understand. And, uh, uh, friends who know a lot more about that and including one who married an

Iranian. And, uh, this is what he tells me and the Iranian people are not supportive of their government.

So it it's disordered. It's not working for the function that government is intended to have of preserving and protecting society.

It's serving an ideology instead with a universalist crusading mission for Islam.

Um, instead of serving the people that are under its supervision.

So, um, what is the purpose of government? Is it out there to make moral decrees and enforce them and crusade across the world and, uh, make, make people better people?

Or is it there to preserve what we have uphold the standards as well as it can and function in the arena of punishing evil, making sure evil is not incentivized, making sure that, uh, the arrangements of society are actually serving the people and, and virtuous people can fulfill their responsibilities before God.

So Calhoun's republicanism, this is, uh, an interesting quote that I saw

Clyde Wilson made in his book on Calhoun. He's talking about Forrest McDonald's analysis of republicanism.

So I'm like quoting someone, quoting someone, but puritanical republicanism, he says, saw the state as the instrument of promoting and preserving virtue.

The agrarian republicanism of the South relied upon independence of the citizen for the preservation of the virtue and regarded the government as an enemy to be watched and limited.

Okay. So this is one of the reasons that I am not. As bullish on the

Christian print stuff, even though like I'm I'm Hey, it'd be great if some authority rose up who was virtuous and was able to really set a good example, like, you know,

George Washington, right. It's a Christian prince. Uh, you could say in some ways like that archetype, this is a real archetype and it's a good archetype, but I'm not, um, someone who looks at, at that figure as a super authoritarian figure.

And, and thinks that's like a really good thing. That's not a sign of health. When you need that kind of a figure coming in at all, obviously, and maybe we're not in a healthy spot, but the more agrarian tradition.

And I would say the conservative tradition as a whole view society as an organic creature that people live in a state of society as they grow up with obligations already attached to them with responsibilities to their fellow man, their family and governments form out of these arrangements as the needs arise.

They're, they're not, you don't need a government to do all kinds of things for you when you're already taking care of yourself and in Calhoun's world.

Uh, it really is like gone with the wind. It's the, uh, the, the Lords of the manor and the servants.

And, uh, I mean, I'm thinking of the medieval kind of context in the South, it's plantation life.

It's slavery. It's the, uh, the, the plantation ends up being kind of a microcosm for a community.

It's its own kind of organic community. And then you have these smaller communities that are centered around common religion and language and.

Uh, common industries like cotton. And so they end up already having a society and a hierarchy and many of their social needs are already met in these organic ways, government doesn't have to meet all these needs.

And today, one of the things that we have, unfortunately, is. A pandemic of loneliness is one of the things that, uh, some of the post -liberal guys like Patrick Dineen, I think was one of the guys who pointed this out.

Is it Patrick mean, I think it was Patrick Dineen who said that the lonelier things get, the more communism, fascism, the isms become really, really attractive.

You're just, cause you don't have, you're, you're broken. You feel deracinated and separated from your fellow man.

And that's not natural. And you want government to do something and a government that can fool you or persuade you into thinking that they're really close to you and they got your back and they're a friend and they're going to meet your needs and you can rely on them and find security in them.

Like they'll get your vote. And that's not a healthy thing. Uh, a thick society and it doesn't have to be a plantation obviously, but a thick society where people rely on each other and understand who the virtuous people are because they actually can see them in their real life on the eye level.

They see tangibly what's going on. That is a much better and a more natural, I think in the way

God intended us more to live. And the government is just trying to secure these arrangements and make sure that they flow, that they're not, that they're protected from external threats, especially.

Uh, so the South looks at society organically and the puritanical republicanism, according to Clyde Wilson and Forrest McDonald, sees the state as an instrument of promoting and preserving virtue.

So the state kind of jumpstarts these things. It's the state's job to like, make sure, Hey, everyone's in line.

Let me give you an example of that real quick during COVID. I saw this very, uh, like within like 800 miles, right?

You start out in Virginia in Lynchburg and hardly anyone's social distancing.

Governors said you should, well, you also have local governors. We had sanctuary counter counties.

We had, um, a people that were just more, they didn't need the government there as much.

They were just fine. Thank you. Taking care of themselves. The hierarchies were still somewhat more intact and they, and the role of government in that particular context was not the same as the role of government in more areas that were influenced by Puritans, uh, and their children and so forth.

So the, I go to Pennsylvania, right. And now I've got to put on a mask, but I can have my nose, you know,

I don't have to put it on all the way. I can take it off while I'm in the gym. No one's going to bother me. You go to Virginia or sorry,

New York. And it's like insane. You're hiking and someone sees you half a mile off and they're already stepping aside the trail cause they don't want to get the disease.

And they're fiercely compliant with what the government has told them to do. And what's the difference there?

Like, why is that? You could look at Albion seed. You could look at all these different cultural things that might explain it to you.

But one of the things that explains it is this paradigm here, puritanical republicanism and agrarian republicanism.

So the role of the state is not just to make you a better person in the, from the vantage point of the state and everyone who's voting in this democratic process, uh, in agrarian republicanism, you already have a community, you already have arrangements, you already have hierarchies, and the state's just there to ensure that those things continue survive.

It's not there to, um, there's a word, I don't like the word really, cause there's good people named Karen, but they're not there to, to be that they're not there to be a busy body and, you know, make you comply in every little facet of your life.

They can't really do that anyways. Like it doesn't, you know, in, in the long run, can they really promote virtue that way?

Anyway, there are limits to this more could be said, but, um, Calhoun was very much from the assumption that it's organic virtue pops up in relationships to people.

And then when it's grown, it must be preserved. Now banking and currency, this, this is where rubber meets the road.

We're going to talk about some policies of Calhoun. I'm banking and currency. This is Calhoun's principles, kind of a long quote, but I think it's an important one says this.

If a community be so organized as to cause the demand for high mental attainments, they are sure to be developed.

If it honors and rewards are allotted to pursuits that require their development by creating a demand for intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, justice, firmness, courage, patriotism, and the like, they are sure to be produced.

But if allotted to pursuits that require inferior qualities, the higher are sure to decay and perish.

I object to the banking system because it allots the honors and rewards of the community in a very undue proportion to a pursuit, uh, of the least of all others, favorable to the development of a higher mental qualities.

Now listen to what he's saying. He's saying that the, the bank is incentivizing something is what he's saying. And it's bad, intellectual or moral to the decay of the learned professions and the more noble pursuits of science, literature, philosophy, and statesmanship, man, all that.

And the great and more useful pursuits of business and industry with the vast increases of its profits and influence is gradually concentrating in itself.

Most of the prizes of life, the rising generation cannot but feel it's deadening influence.

Well, that's pretty scary and prophetic. What's Calhoun saying there? He's saying that you have a community.

And if you start incentivizing members of that community who are not very virtuous, who are fine using the, the fallback, the, the, the benefit of others holding the bag who will have your back.

If you make a bad loan, uh, they will use the government mechanism for their own irresponsibility.

That's what he's saying. And the bank of the United States, he's saying that's what it does. It's too much of a temptation.

You can manipulate currency. You can use the taxpayers to cushion yourself.

And there's a stability to it. Sure. But that stability is everyone else is holding the bag.

So the speculators, the risky people, the people who are not necessarily the wisest, they end up becoming the ones who are more powerful in this kind of an arrangement because it's incentivizing those kinds of people.

Is that really a good arrangement? Do you want those people to be the ones running your society? So you can see even in financial matters, there's these moral considerations.

And he's saying, look, that you, think of society as a plant or a garden or something it's growing and you got good growth.

And now what you're going to say, we're going to water the weeds. We're going to let the weeds grow.

I mean, this is how he thinks virtue works and how the government works. The government can certainly incentivize virtue and, but the government's role, um, isn't to, to create these structures that end up incentivizing, uh, people who shouldn't probably be in these positions of authority as much, and then go enforce them into compliance.

When the time comes, it's, the government's going to end up being controlled by those people.

That's what ends up happening. That is what happens in our own American history. So banking and currency, let's talk about this a little bit more.

We, his main philosophy on this, but what you see there, if you're watching are three different pieces of paper and that's what they are, right?

This isn't gold or silver. This, these are, uh, backed paper.

One of them is a Dick's from where we get Dixie. That's right. So there was a particular bank note in Louisiana called the

Dix and Dixie became known as the place where people use this particular currency.

Cause it's a popular one, uh, nothing to do with like racism or any, like people are getting rid of like the

Dixie chicks are like, Oh, we're just the chicks now. Well, it came from this guys or girls, uh, bonds right next to it.

You see, this is a treasury. Um, this is a bond issued by the United States. And this is a long -term investment that you can get a return on.

And we still have bonds in our country. And then you have treasury notes, which, uh, they're more of a, they're not as much of an investment investment.

They are an IOU. That is for a quick turnaround. You can go cash it in and get, you know, a bank note for it or whatever you want to get.

So these are three different, if you want to call it legal tender, I guess,

I don't know if that's the correct term, but these are three items traded, uh, for, uh, acquiring stuff.

This is buying power right here. And we have to understand this to understand the situation and what

Calhoun is critiquing. So Calhoun's objectives are according to his 1842 campaign slogan, free trade.

Okay. Low duties. So we don't, we don't want a big tariff.

We want a free, we actually want free trade is what we want. So low duties, free trade. We want no debt, no debt.

Can you believe that? No debt. They were running surpluses at when Calvin was in office, different America, separation from banks.

We don't want to be intertwined with them. We think that there's a danger there. We don't want it. And that's not just the national bank.

That's the pet banks, which I'll explain. Um, we want an economy that has retrenchment.

We want strict adherence to the constitution. That's the 1842 campaign slogan. Do you see anything about slavery in there?

No, this is, this is basically what Calhoun was known for, for a lot of his career.

Now, the main issue that Calhoun has with currency, uh, and the banks and how they relate to each other is that special interests were allowed to control the currency through the mechanism of the bank.

So he says this in 1837, he says, place the money power in the hands of a single individual or a combination of individuals.

And by expanding or contracting the currency, they may raise or sink prices at pleasure and may command the whole property and industry of the community and control its fiscal operations.

So you're saying, you know, it may, it's 30%, let's say of the buying, the, the, uh, the, the buying power that's out there, 30 % let's say is the bonds or something like that.

If you are able to control that 30%, you can control the value of everything else, including land.

That's the level of control that this gives you. So the banking system concentrates and places power in the hands of those who control it.

Forces increases just as in proportion as it dispenses with a metallic basis, meaning if it's not backed by gold, silver, et cetera, if it's backed by paper, never was an engine invented, better calculated to place the destiny of the many in the hands of the few or less favorable to that equality and independence, which lie at the bottom of all free institutions.

So what's the critique here? What's his main issue with this, with the, uh, the bank of the

United States, his main issue is they use bonds to, the, to, to, um, supply the revenue of the bank.

And so the bank loans these out to subsidiary banks, uh, when it receives, you know, bank notes from other local banks, remember there's these local currencies floating around and it, uh, and, and then it, it, it calls it in.

It says, we, we've got your, uh, your bank notes are from the taxes and revenue collection.

They're in our vault right now. We're going to call in the gold right now. Okay. So you got to give it to us. They can force everyone else to have to give up their gold, which means now they're not in a fractional reserve system able to loan as much, or they can just sit on it and say, we're not calling in the gold and there's more opportunity for banks to make loans.

But the national bank itself, what is it backed up by? It's not a bunch of gold sitting back there necessarily.

It's it's bonds. So the government has decided that it will issue a bond, which it's paying a percentage of interest on itself.

And then it can, if it wants to also loan that bond back to itself and then pay more interest on it.

So it's doing it twice. And in so doing increase the money supply and get into more debt.

And this is how we stimulate economies, right? So Calhoun saying, that's one of the problems with this is you could just raise or sink prices through these mechanisms.

Now, of course, the federal reserve today has many other mechanisms for doing this. They can adjust interest rates. They can do quantitative easing.

It's a little more sophisticated, but back then same principle. Now there's a secondary issue to all this.

He says special interest could also benefit at the expense of general welfare. He says, I had not proceeded far before I was struck.

And he's talking, this is sort of, he's talking in 1837 about the national bank. He's opposing it, but he's reflecting on a bill to charter the second bank, which was in 1814.

So, or I guess you could say, renew the first charter, uh, because the first charter lapses in 1811.

You have, remember Alexander Hamilton. We talked about this in the Anti -Federalists and then the

John Randolph or John, sorry, John Taylor's, um, uh, critiques of Hamilton.

Hamilton gets the first bank of the United States and it's, it lapses in, uh, it would have been,

I think 1811. And so there is no national bank after that.

There's this, and, and there's a problem though, cause they're, they're at war. It's kind of like not a good time to, uh, to have financial uncertainty and it creates a lot of problems.

The government needs all this money. And so Calhoun's one of the guys that's tasked with, all right, figure this out. We're going to need a bank.

We're gonna need to figure out how to increase the money supply. We got to buy stuff. How are we going to do that? So Calhoun tries to get some more reasonable policies.

He doesn't get all of them. Uh, he is able to get some regulations that he wants, but, um, but his idea is essentially don't use bonds that are long -term higher interest use treasury notes, uh, and, and try to cut out the bank as this institution that you're borrowing from that the government's borrowing now from its own national bank.

So I'll read this and it explains it better. I had not proceeded far before I was struck.

He says during this process of reviewing this with the extraordinary character of the subject, a bank of $50 million, whose capital was to consist almost exclusively of government credit in the shape of stock to furnish the government with loans to carry on the war.

It's like, wait a minute, we're at 1812 and he's a war hawk. He's supporting the war, but he's like, hold on a minute.

Now I think it ended up being like 36 ,000 or 36 million. But at the time he's looking at a proposal for 50 million.

We got to start this bank off with $50 million. You don't have $50 million. So how are you going to do that? Well, uh, well, we'll have it in the shape of stock.

What is, what's that was essentially bonds. Okay. So we'll put these bonds there, these bonds that are an

IOU that are these that, that acute interest, uh, accrue interest every year and get more valuable because of a promise from the government.

We're going to take those and we're going to say, okay, we've got $50 million now and we're going to furnish the government with loans to carry on the war.

So with those bonds, we're going to now pay for, uh, by giving them to contractors and all the rest, all the stuff we need, which means that we're paying for it twice.

Essentially where we're getting money for. So, so we're going to banks saying, here's a bond, give us money.

You can hold this bond now. And now that we have a bank note, uh, that can be traded in for gold or silver or something.

Now we can pay a defense contractor and well, they didn't really call them. I don't think defense contractors back then, but we can pay our troops.

We can pay for what we need. And so this is what Calhoun says about it. He says, wait, that don't make any sense.

He goes, I saw it once the effect of this arrangement that the government would borrow back its own credit.

Let me read that again. The government would borrow back its own credit and pay 6 % per a year for what they had already paid eight or 9%.

So essentially the government deposits these bonds in the bank. The bank then is going to make money off of these bonds that 9 % or whatever it is that the government promises to pay back.

They're able to, uh, lend those out and profit from that. And when the government needs to borrow to cover its own debts, then they are going to be borrowing back the credit that originated from their own resources.

So, and while paying interest, so that's now 6 % that they have to pay to the bank for the privilege of borrowing their own credit.

It's crazy. And this is how finance worked and Calhoun saying, hold on a minute.

Like this actually makes no sense at all. This is really, really, really bad.

So, uh, he had a better idea and it's, uh, it, he ends up though completely going against the national bank, but he doesn't like Jackson's idea either.

So here's the timeline, right? In 1811, this is Calhoun's transition. First bank charter ends and expires without a renewal on March 4th of that year, 1814,

Calhoun supports a bill to charter the second bank, but favors a treasury note system as part of the capitalization instead of relying solely on bank notes or bonds.

So these are much lower interest. Uh, he wants to cut out the middleman and the endless interest loop with the limitation that the government should use its own credit directly without the intervention of a bank, which he says,

I propose to do in the form of treasury notes to be issued in the operations of the government and to be funded in the subscription to the stock of the bank.

So the way this works is instead of getting a loan from the national bank, they could just use treasury notes and directly pay whoever the contractors were, whoever was working for them, whoever they needed to pay.

And then they could trade it in kind of like dollars today for lack of a better example here.

And so this would just decrease the influence of the national bank.

And that's not exactly what happened, but that's what Calhoun wanted.

He wanted more hard money policies, which are honest, which are actually more biblical cause there's don't have the unequal weights and measures and all of that.

So, um, in 1832 to 1836, Jackson ends the second national bank.

He vetoes the recharter in 1832. The charter expires 1836, but he deposits federal funds in pet banks.

So here's a new system, the pet banks and pet banks aren't good. So what are the pet banks?

Alexander Hamilton had issued his circular directing bank notes to be received as gold and silver in the public dues.

In other words, Alexander Hamilton, boy, that guy really messed things up. He, um, he made a rule that essentially if you have a bank note, so a particular bank is issuing what they say is a means gold and silver.

It's if you can back it up, then that is legitimate. And this will be honored by the bank of the

United States. So you could take your local bank, no, go to the bank of the United States. I'm perhaps oversimplifying, but you can get, you can get your gold silver for it.

Now you pay your taxes, whatever. Now fueling the land speculation bubble is what happened with this rule.

Because remember is at the time, there's a lot of westward expansion. There's a lot of open land out there. And boy, is that a slush fund of it's less, that's not even the right word.

It's a swamp of corruption. Uh, eventually after the civil war, it's real corruption with the railroad and the homestead act and everything.

But the idea is we can with all the open land and property we have, which is also value.

These banks would just pop up everywhere and say, yeah, I'm going to issue my bank. No, you can, it's, it's worth its weight in gold.

Sure. And it expanded the money supply. It made this bubble and Jackson was able to deposit the federal treasury, uh, not revenues, not in local, uh, federal, federally arranged places that were like unique to the federal government.

He actually combined it with private interest. So we get his pet banks. He had Democrat loyal banks, special interests that,

Hey, we supported Jackson. And now guess who's going to deposit with us. So there was corruption and there was a problem with speculation at that point because the government's backing up all of these, uh, these bank notes.

And this leads to the panic of 1837. And in 1836, so right before the panic of 1837,

Calhoun helps pass the deposit act, which directed surpluses from tariffs to be deposited in States and not pet banks.

And he tried to guard against fraud. So he was trying, uh, his best to not favor these special interests to make everything for the common good, for the, all this, this, this, this, these societies that are part of the compact of government.

This is really the theme in Calhoun's whole political philosophy. It's about the health of society and the different particular component parts of society and societies coming together for their mutual benefit.

And so we don't privilege certain groups over others. There's a give and take there's a, that he really did believe in the general welfare and of the union.

Uh, 1837, Calhoun supports Van Buren's independent treasury plan and proposes that year, um, uh, that, that is proposed that year it's enacted in 1840.

And he favors direct government handling of funds over Jackson's pet bank system.

So basically now he's saying, look, we don't need the pet banks.

We don't need the national bank. We can just have an independent treasury that issues treasury notes.

And we will basically pay kind of like today with dollars. We just pay what someone is owed and they can go to a bank and turn it in.

And it's backed up in, in gold and silver. Like we're good for it. So that was the system that they had up until the civil war.

And then we get the third national bank and the rest is history. We have the fed, we have everything else today.

So, um, one of the things Calhoun is known for is tariffs tariffs. You know a lot about that now.

A lot of you didn't, but you do now because of Donald Trump situation's a little different back then the tariffs at first Calhoun in 1816, uh, was supportive of a temporary remedy for the embargo during the war of 1812.

So the Northeast needs some help. We'll help them out a little bit. Um, we'll have a, the tariff, but by 1828, the tariff is just so bad and it's, it's crushing.

It's oppressing. It is just benefiting the commercial interests of the North and it is crushing the agrarian interests of the

South. The South needs to export goods to Europe and other markets. And the North is forcing them to pay more to have to do that.

And essentially forcing them to buy their stuff. And so he says in a speech about the tariff of abominations in 1828, the constitution grants to Congress, the power of imposing a duty on imports for revenue, which powers abused by being converted into an instrument of rearing up the industry of one section of the country on the ruins of another.

They who say that they cannot compete with foreigners at their own doors without an advantage of 45 % expect us to meet them abroad under disadvantage equal to their encouragement.

We are told by those who pretend to understand our interests better than we do that the excess of production and not the tariff is the evil, which afflicts us.

They also occasionally complain of low prices, but instead of diminishing the supply as a remedy for the evil demand and enlargement of the market by the exclusion of all competition, in other words, you guys just don't want to compete with Europe.

Like you're making us buy your stuff. And we would love to just be able to buy like we did before, uh, stuff in other countries.

We're exporting to those countries. We can buy from those countries. Well, in 1836, he says every dollar we can prevent from coming into the treasury or every dollar thrown back into the hands of the people will tend to strengthen the cause of Liberty on nerve, the arm of power.

So this becomes special interests power in the government consolidation.

This is all coming together and Calhoun is opposing it. And he's saying that the tariff is this instrument is a sectional instrument to punish one section of the country, uh, and benefit one section of the country.

It's at the expense of the South of the North is being benefited like this. Now that's a little different than the

Trump tariffs, which are really more presented and framed as this is something for the good of the whole nation.

But Calhoun was convinced that the motive and the way that the tariffs were being used by 1828 were actually unconstitutional.

And so this becomes a nullification crisis. South Carolina basically just says, we're not going to pay it anymore.

1832 to 1833 with, um, the cons without it, the constitution he says, and the laws made in pursuance of it and the treaties made under its authority would have been the

Supreme law of the land as fully and perfectly as they are now. And the judges in every state would have been bound here by anything in the constitution or laws of a state or to the contrary, notwithstanding there's supremacy results from the nature of the revelation or the relation between the federal government and those of the several

States and their respective constitutions and laws where two or more States form a common constitution and government.

The authority of these within the limits of the delegated powers must have necessity be Supreme in reference to their respective separate constitutions and governments.

Without this, there would be neither a common constitution and this supremacy is not an absolute supremacy.

It is a limited in extent and degree. It does not extend beyond the delegated powers. All others being reserved to the

States and the people of the States beyond these costs. This constitution is a destitute of authority and as powerless as a blank sheet of paper.

So what are you saying there is the constitution is a compact with several

States and their limitations. And the supremacy clause doesn't allow one to just run roughshod over the agreement.

The supremacy is the supremacy of the constitution and the arrangement. It's not the supremacy of one party over another.

And so in this particular arrangement, once one region of the country is not allowed to use the government to punish unfairly another region of the country and just use them for their own their own benefit.

So this becomes a big problem. This actually is something a lot of other

Southern States were talking about doing, but South Carolina actually is the gumption to say, you know what, we'll even leave if we have to leave.

Like this is something that they're just so mad about because they're essentially 45%.

I mean just about half of what they think they're making is what they could be making is they're not being, they're not making, it's going up North somewhere.

So this is Calhoun's logic and any, and he thinks that the bonds of the union are essentially being abrogated over this.

So Calhoun really doesn't have a problem with tariffs per se, but he does have a problem with protective tariffs for one region over another region.

Now that whole issue I talked about earlier, it gets averted, but it becomes one of the pieces of philosophy and logic that in the

Kentucky and Virginia resolutions and the Jeffersonian tradition, which we've really been talking about without even talking about Jefferson by talking about John Taylor of, and talking about the anti -federalists and talking about the understanding of the compact and the nature of it at the inception of it.

And so Calhoun is basically, he is taking that logic and he is preserving it.

And the South tends to preserve this spirit more so than the North. Remember I told you earlier, the Hartford convention was an attempt to look at the question of whether or not the

Northeast should secede, whether the union is really to our benefit. And this is something that was alive and well in the

North is where Calhoun was cutting his teeth on the state's right stuff is when he is up North, he's at Yale, he's, you know, being educated in law.

And now the state's rights tradition becomes more of a sectional thing as the

North gains more ascendancy, more immigration, the population increases, more commercialism, more factories.

They link up with the Midwest more. So I've shared interests over infrastructure and this spells over time, the defeat of the

South and they knew it. And the North is now becoming more domineering and imperialistic.

So this brings us to public lands and internal improvements, public lands, out

West. There's a lot of public land. This is still a problem, by the way, this is still an issue. If you remember

Mike Lee, I think it was last year talking about this issue and it became a big thing. We have all this land and what do we do with it?

In 1837, John C Calhoun introduced a bill to seed public lands to Western states in opposition to both a homestead act, which he saw as corruption and distribution, which he saw as dependence.

Distribution was just, you know, we'll sell the land and we'll give it to all the states. And he saw that as bad for a few reasons.

He thought it would incentivize the idea that we're having a windfall come. And so you'd have States who were invested in spending a lot thinking they're going to get all this money from the land sales out

West. It also, he didn't think was fair to those Western States because like the Eastern states didn't have this. They were able to manage and sell their land that was within their borders.

And now the Western States has so much common property of the rest of the country. He just didn't think it was fair.

He thought that there was too much corruption involved in it and who was getting paid. So he, he wanted to distribute it or rather he, he wanted it to give it back.

He wanted those States to be the ones to essentially manage their own affairs with the land that was in proximity to them as a good regionalist and localists.

Right. And what happens is the distribution idea passes. And why wouldn't it, everyone wants a cut of this.

So they're going to pass, Hey, for my state, I get some money from this. And sure enough, it a bunch of States did spend more expected the windfall got in trouble.

And guess which state decided, you know what? We're going to refuse to take advantage of this surplus.

You're going to give us money government. We're not going to take it. Now, let me ask you, when was the last time you ever heard that happen?

Well, it happened and it was South Carolina, South Carolina refused the distribution of value from the land in the

Western States that they were allotted. So a high principle, high character, that's the kind of guts we need today to say, we're not taking the federal money where we have the ability not to take it so that we can be independent, truly internal improvements.

This is something Abraham Lincoln was big on. Henry Clay is called the American system, uh, you know, build all kinds of railroads and, you know, on the waterways build, uh, infrastructure like lighthouses and, and, you know, really make, make things good for commerce, roads, et cetera.

In 1828, after casting a boat to limit earmarks, if the system of internal improvements cannot be confirmed confined in practice, the objects of really national importance as contemplated by the act of 1824.

And if it must degenerate into those merely local, having no reference to the powers and duties of the general government, it would and ought to fall into disrepute.

So earmarks is something that, you know, they call it, I think log rolling back then, but this idea that we're going to get all this pork pork barrel spending, that's a good name for it.

I suppose, um, that the internal improvements were just filled with this. We, we want, uh, projects here, projects, their projects everywhere.

And he, and Calhoun's principles, look, this has to be of national importance. Yes. The government can and should regulate interstate commerce, but this has to be something that's for interstate commerce for the common people.

It can't be for particular sections. It can't be pork for your, uh, your state that is just benefiting your state.

And so he becomes kind of adverse to this stuff. Um, in his 1846 plan, he justifies some interstate commerce to improve navigation along the

Mississippi river, but it fails. So when he tries to do it, it fails. Congress passes a sectional project for the

Midwest and it's regional, which president Polk vetoes. And this inspires the ride of the rise of the

Midwestern free soil movement, which becomes the Republican party. And then we get a war. So, um, you can see these things coming together during Calhoun's lifetime.

It wasn't, um, just the moral issue of slavery and the abolitionists in the

North that are really upset about this. This is two very different ways of thinking about society, the way that government should function, what government should do.

And it expresses itself in things like internal improvements. And, uh, and the free soil movement essentially says like, we want these infrastructure projects for the

Midwest. And we want this to be, these to be free States. We don't want any competition with slave labor and we don't want any black people around here because we want it to be white and we're immigrants from Germany and other places they can come all about here.

Um, but that's the way we want it. And we're gonna, we want the government to pay for stuff.

So that's how you get Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln, the Republican party. And how much of this could be averted if without, you know, like Hamilton and if John C Calhoun was more successful perhaps against this whole zeitgeist,

I don't know, but it probably could have been more easily averted on foreign policy.

Uh, Calhoun in 1807, his first political act was a public speech in Abbeville condemning the

HMS Leopard Leopard affair, which is a British vessel that ends up, um, firing on killing and capturing some people who, uh, they accused them of having some

British deserters on the board. It's an American vessel. So they violated it. And it's makes everyone angry.

And Calhoun says, we got to encourage defense for honor, very Southern. Okay. Like this is our honor and we, we gotta make sure that for the sake of our own honor, uh, we, we fight 1811.

He says the war in our country ought never to be resorted to, but when it is clearly justifiable and justifiable and necessary.

So it doesn't just want to do war. Uh, we sometimes use war hawk that way today, but he's saying, you know, this is necessary.

This is justifiable. And then he votes to go to war in the war of 1812, mostly over impressionment of American semen and blocking trade.

And there's, of course, there's stirring up the natives on the frontier against settlers and that kind of thing.

But a lot of it was not recognizing American sovereignty, capturing boats, uh, making

American seats, uh, semen part of the British army or British Navy, rather blocking boats from being able to trade with enemy countries like France.

So this becomes a war issue. And so his first,

I broke this down into three things, foreign policy, honor. We need to think of our, our national honor, just like you would, if like your family was disrespected or your family was attacked or like they were violated its honor.

Number two, wise and masterly inactivity. That's such an interesting phrase. Wise and masterly inactivity, famous speech he gave.

Um, let's see, this is give you a little context here. Calhoun counseled Americans to not negotiate a treaty with Britain, not to violate a treaty rather with Britain on the

Oregon question, but to wait. And he counseled president Polk to negotiate for 49th parallel settlement.

So he, there's a lot of, uh, agitating then at this point, again, to go to war with great

Britain over the Northwest question of Oregon and what do we do?

And if you look at a map, it's basically like Britain is claiming all this territory and the

United States is claiming all this territory up to basically the border of Alaska and Calhoun's like, let's just wait on this.

Let's just not be hasty. Like our honor hasn't been violated. Uh, we have an arrangement already.

Let's not violate that just cause there's public pressure. And he ends up getting in supporting the

Webster Ashburton treaty of 1842 and it is a peaceful resolution to the Oregon question.

And he says, I am finally opposed to war because of peace. Peace is preeminent to our policy.

There are maybe nations restricted to small territories, hemmed in at all sides. So situated that war may be necessary to their greatness.

Such as not our case though. Right. I mean, think of like Israel today, maybe it's like,

I'm thinking of what's a small nation that's like hemmed in at all sides. And I don't know. I mean, it's, that's not the only one.

That's like the first one that came to mind, like surrounded by a lot of enemies. He's like, that's not us. We've got plenty of room, right?

We're not, we're not like that. We can afford to wait. It's okay guys. Right. Providence has given us an inheritance stretching across the entire continent from East to West, from ocean to ocean and from North to South covering by far the greater and better part of its temperate zone.

By the way, the way he describes this very different than the way a lot of Northerners Northeasterners describe the foreboding howling wilderness, right?

He's, it's a paradise to John T. Calhoun. He says, it comprises a region not only so vast, but abundant all resources, excellent in climate, fertile and exuberant in soil, capable of sustaining a plentiful enjoyment of all necessary necessaries of life.

A population 10 times our present number. Our great mission as a people is to occupy this vast domain, to replenish it with an intelligent, virtuous and industrious population.

War would but impede the fulfillment of this high mission by absorbing the means and diverting the energies, which would be devoted to the purpose.

On the contrary, secure peace and time under the guidance of a sagacious and cautious policy, a wise and masterly inactivity will speedily accomplish the whole.

It was like such a way with words, masterly inactivity. Like it's, it's really wise to just not do anything guys.

We could just do that. And it is at this point that I am going to cut the podcast for those who are watching for free.

Uh, we are going to keep talking about foreign policy and we are going to get into the disquisition on government and also the question of abolitionism and how

Calhoun viewed that particular issue. And also his view of the constitution. And, um, it'll be good.

But, uh, for that, that's for those who are patrons or sub stack members.

If you want to just get the rest of it, uh, you can click a link and there's a small fee. And if you really just don't have the money and you say,

John, I really want the slideshow and I really just want to watch it. You just message me on social media. I'll just send it to you. So, uh, anyway,