litician than
his admirers have generally been disposed to admit, but that his
"apostacy" of 1850 was, perhaps, the one act of that life which was
least influenced by professional motives and most by a genuine
conviction of the pressing need of saving the Union.

The support of a Southern statesman of like authority might have done
much to give finality to the settlement. But the one Southerner who
carried weight comparable to that of Webster in the North was found
among its opponents. A few days after Webster had spoken, the Senate
listened to the last words of Calhoun. He was already a dying man. He
could not even deliver his final protest with his own lips. He sat, as
we can picture him, those great, awful eyes staring haggardly without
hope into nothingness, while a younger colleague read that protest for
him to the Assembly that he had so often moved, yet never persuaded.
Calhoun rejected the settlement; indeed, he rejected the whole idea of a
territorial settlement on Missouri lines. It is fair to his sagacity to
remember that the mania for trying to force Slavery on unsuitable and
unwilling communities which afterwards took possession of those who led
the South to disaster could claim no authority from him. His own
solution is to be found in the "Testament" published after his death--an
amazing solution, based on the precedent of the two Roman Consuls,
whereby two Presidents were to be elected, one by the North and one by
the South, with a veto on each other's acts. He probably did not expect
that the wild proposal would be accepted. Indeed, he did not expect that
anything that he loved would survive. With all his many errors on his
head, there was this heroic thing about the man--that he was one of
those who can despair of the Republic and yet not desert it. With an
awful clearness he saw the future as it was to be, the division becoming
ever wider, the contest more bitter, the sword drawn, and at the
last--defeat. In the sad pride and defiance of his dying speech one
catches continually an echo of the tragic avowal of Hector: "For in my
heart and in my mind I know that Troy shall fall."

He delivered his soul, and went away to die. And the State to which he
had given up everything showed its thought of him by carving above his
bones, as sufficient epitaph, the single word: "_CALHOUN_."

CHAPTER VIII

THE SLAVERY QUESTION

The Compromise of 1850,