John C. Calhoun
John C. Calhoun
John Caldwell Calhounwas an American statesman and political theorist from South Carolina, who is best remembered for his strong defense of slavery and for advancing the concept of minority rights in politics, which he did in the context of defending Southern values from perceived Northern threats. He began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs. By the late 1820s, his views reversed and he became a leading proponent of states'...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionStatesman
Date of Birth18 March 1782
CountryUnited States of America
A difference must be made between a decision against the constitutionality of a law of Congress and of a State. The former acts as a restriction on the powers of this government, but the latter as an enlargement.
Where wages command labor, as in the non-slaveholding States, there necessarily takes place between labor and capital a conflict, which leads, in process of time, to disorder, anarchy, and revolution if not counteracted by some appropriate and strong constitutional provision. Such is not the case in the slaveholding States.
Be assured that, as certain as Congress transcends its assigned limits and usurps powers never conferred, or stretches those conferred beyond the proper limits, so surely will the fruits of its usurpation pass into the hands of the Executive. In seeking to become master, it but makes a master in the person of the President.
War may make us great, but let it never be forgotten that peace only can make us both great and free.
War may be made by one party, but it requires two to make peace.
There is a tendency in all parties, when they have been for a long time in possession of power, to augment it.
In my opinion, any navy less than that which would give us the habitual command of our own coast and seas would be little short of useless.
A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks.
Beware the wrath of a patient adversary.
We are not a nation, but a union, a confederacy of equal and sovereign states.
Protection and patriotism are reciprocal.
[The taxing power of the state] divides the community into two great classes: one consisting of those who, in reality, pay the taxes and, of course, bear exclusively the burden of supporting the government; and the other, of those who are the recipients of their proceeds through disbursements,and who are, in fact, supported by the government; or, in fewer words, to divide it into tax-payers and tax-consumers. But the effect of this is to place them in antagonistic relations in reference to the fiscal action of the government and the entire course of policy therewith connected.
The will of a majority is the will of a rabble. Progressive democracy is incompatable with liberty.
The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.