esidency in 1820. Mr. Webster, who
always measured his words, spoke of him as "a man of undoubted
genius and commanding talent, of unspotted integrity, of unimpeached
honor." Mr. Calhoun had been driven by his controversies with
Jackson into a position where he was deprived of popular strength
in the free States. But this very fact enhanced his power with
the South, and increased his hold upon his own people. To the
majority of the people in the slave-holding States he was as an
inspired leader for more than twenty years. He taught the philosophy
and supplied the arguments to the ambitious generation of public
men who came after him, and who were prepared, as he was not, to
force the issue to the arbitrament of arms. Deplorable as was the
end to which his teachings led, he could not have acquired the
influence he wielded over millions of men unless he had been gifted
with acute intellect, distinguished by moral excellence, and inspired
by the sincerest belief in the righteousness of his cause. History
will adjudge him to have been single-hearted and honest in his
political creed. It will equally adjudge him to have been wrong
in his theory of the Federal Government, and dead to the awakened
sentiment of Christendom in his views concerning the enslavement
of man.

Mr. Calhoun's published works show the extent of his participation
in the national councils. They exhibit his zeal, the intensity of
his convictions, and at the same time the clearness and strength
of his logic. His premises once admitted, it is difficult to resist
the force of his conclusions. Mr. Webster assailed his premises,
and in their debate of February 16, 1833, defeated him, as another
senator remarked, "by the acuteness of his definitions,"--thus
meeting Mr. Calhoun on his own ground. The war and its results
have in large degree remanded the theories of Mr. Calhoun to the
past, but no intelligent student of the institutions of the United
States can afford to neglect his elaborate, conscientious, able
discussions. Taken with Mr. Webster's works they exhibit the most
complete examination, the most comprehensive analysis of the often
tortuous and ill-defined line which separates the powers of the
National Government from the functions which properly belong to
the States. Mr. Calhoun's public service may be regarded as
continuous from 1810, when he was elected to Congress at twenty-
eight years of age, till his death,--a period of forty ye