damaging fact was unearthed and the jealousy of Jackson
was aroused. Calhoun was driven into a deadly quarrel, resigned
the Vice-Presidency, and went back to South Carolina to engage in
the nullification contest. Van Buren quickly usurped his place in
the regard and confidence of Jackson, and succeeded to the Presidency.
Calhoun, denounced in every paper under the control of the
administration, was threatened with prosecution, and robbed for a
time of the confidence of the Democratic party. By the strangely
and rapidly changing fortunes of politics, it was now in his power
to inflict a just retribution upon Van Bren. He did not neglect
the opportunity.

SECRETARY CALHOUN'S DIPLOMACY.

Mr. Calhoun urged the scheme of annexation with intense earnestness.
Taking up the subject where Mr. Upshur had left it, he conducted
the negotiation with zeal and skill. His diplomatic correspondence
was able and exhaustive. It was practically a frank avowal that
Texas must be incorporated in the Union. He feared that European
influence might become dominant in the new republic, and, as a
consequence, that anti-slavery ideas might take root, and thence
injuriously affect the interests, and to some extent the safety,
of the Southern States. In an instruction to William R. King, our
minister at Paris, Mr. Calhoun called his attention to the fact
that England regarded the defeat of annexation "as indispensable
to the abolition of slavery in Texas." He believed that England
was "too sagacious not to see what a fatal blow abolition in Texas
would give to slavery in the United States." Then, contemplating
the effect of the general abolition of slavery, he declared that
"to this continent it would be calamitous beyond description." It
would "destroy in a great measure the cultivation and production
of the great tropical staples, amounting annually in value to nearly
$300,000,000." It is a suggestive commentary on Mr. Calhoun's evil
foreboding, that the great tropical staple of the South has steadily
increased in growth under free labor, and that the development of
Texas never fairly began until slavery was banished from her soil.

Discussing the right of Texas to independence, in an instruction
to Wilson Shannon, our minister to Mexico, Mr. Calhoun averred that
"Texas had never stood in relation to Mexico as a rebellious province
struggling to obtain independence. The true relation be