The Birth of Modern Politics by Parsons Lynn Hudson;

Author:Parsons, Lynn Hudson;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 2009-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Upon his return to Tennessee in the spring of 1826 Senator Eaton hand-delivered a letter addressed to Jackson. “An issue has been fairly made . . . between power and liberty,” wrote Vice President Calhoun, “and it must be determined in the next three years, whether the real governing principle in our political system be the power and patronage of the Executive, or the voice of the people.” The vice president went on, “For it can scarcely be doubted, that a scheme has been formed to perpetuate power in the present hands, in spite of the free and unbiased sentiment of the country.” Calhoun knew his man. The assertion of the ancient republican tension between power and liberty was bound to appeal to Jackson. “It will be no small addition to your future renown,” he concluded, “that in this great struggle your name is found, as it always has been, on the side of liberty, and your country. Occupying the grounds that you do, there can be no triumph over you, which will not also be a triumph over liberty.”31 With that, Calhoun gave notice that he would postpone his own ambitions for at least four more years and join with Jackson against Adams.

Calhoun had been forced to rethink his position on many issues since his defeat by the Jacksonians in Pennsylvania in 1824. He could not compete with Adams in New England, nor with Jackson in the middle states. In addition, his own state of South Carolina, a Federalist stronghold in the 1790s, was undergoing a profound change of heart in both its political and intellectual perspectives. The Missouri debates over slavery’s future in 1820 and an aborted slave rebellion in Charleston two years later told white South Carolinians that they were in a minority both in their own state and in the nation as a whole. As such, the assertions of federal power once made by Calhoun and his fellow nationalists now seemed threatening. A federal government strong enough to restrict slavery’s growth in the West might in the future be strong enough to end it altogether in the South. Protective tariffs seemed to protect northern manufacturers at the expense of southern planters. Increasingly out of step with his own state, Calhoun would have to abandon either his earlier thinking or his political ambition. He was not prepared to do the latter. An alliance with Andrew Jackson against the “ultra” doctrines advocated in the president’s Annual Message could provide the means by which he could not only survive but become president himself. Jackson, by his own admission, was not in the best of health, and a one-term Jackson presidency with Calhoun continuing as vice president would open a smoother path to the presidency than anything Calhoun had yet seen.32

Jackson took over a month before replying to his former superior. When he finally did, he repeated his disappointment with Adams. Until he saw the Annual Message, he thought “Mr Adams to have a tolerable share of common sense,” and that he would avoid “the asperity which marked the struggle of 98 & 1800 [i.

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