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A Disquisition on Government And a Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States
The Papers of John C. Calhoun, Volume XXVIII is the final volume in a distinguished documentary edition, the first volume of which was published more than fifty years ago. While identical to others in the series in terms of typeface, binding, and letterpress printing, this volume does not contain any of John C. Calhoun's personal papers, rather it features Calhoun's only formal, scholarly writings on political science and political philosophy. "A Disquisition on Government" is an examination of the first principles of political science, much in the model of Aristotle's Politics or Baron Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws. It examines basic principles of politics, including concepts of sovereignty and personal liberty and the relationships between states and nations. "A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States" is a focused study of American political thought and constitutional history since the ratification of the Constitution. It pays particular attention to antifederalist views of the Constitution, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of the 1790s, and the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Comparable to the Federalist, Calhoun's "Discourse" articulates a southern-based, states' rights interpretation of the Constitution and examines the course of American political history from the viewpoint of the southern statesman. Calhoun began writing the essays around 1845. His "Disquisition" was near final form at the time of his death, but the "Discourse" was still an unpolished draft. A year after Calhoun's death in 1850, Richard Kenner Cralle, a former secretary in the Department of State and a friend of Calhoun's, was entrusted by the Calhoun heirs to edit the essays for publication. Since the Cralle edition, it has been assumed that the two essays were separate works. However, as the Calhoun Papers staff prepared the concluding volume of letters, speeches, and remarks, they discovered evidence that Calhoun had intended the two essays to be a single, unified work of political theory and a critical examination of America's remarkable experiment in republican government. Whether published separately or together, these essays are among the classical texts of American political thought.
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First published October 1, 2003
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About the author
John C. Calhoun
175 books13 followersJohn Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was a leading politician and political theorist from South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century. A powerful intellect, Calhoun eloquently spoke out on every issue of his day, but often changed positions. Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs. After 1840 he switched to states' rights, limited government, nullification and free trade. He is best known for his intense and original defense of slavery as a positive good, for his inventing the theory of minority rights in a democracy, and for pointing the South toward secession from the Union.
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June 26, 2020
It may be argued that the political writing of John C. Calhoun [1] is a classic example of rigorous reasoning drawn from faulty premises, but there is more to Calhoun's faultiness than merely having the wrong premises. In the beginning part of his career, John C. Calhoun was quite a nationalist along the lines of Henry Clay, someone who desired to see America expand and who was optimistic about the way that federal funding could help develop the South and West and lead to increasing wealth and power for frontiersmen and slaveholders like himself. That said, somewhere over the course of the 1820's and especially the 1830's, South Carolina became turned in on itself and increasingly pessimistic about its place and far more defensive than outward looking, and Calhoun was strongly influenced by the darkening mood of his electoral base within the state, and responsive to its shifts with his own turn away from the nationalistic agenda he supported at the beginning of his political career, to the point where he is remembered in history as a crabbed and hostile representative of the malign spirit of his own cursed state.
This particular work is a short one at just over 100 pages and it is published by someone who appears to be in support of Calhoun's thinking. Before the writing there is a fair amount of introductory material by Gordon C. Post that praises Calhoun for his desire to see the United States adopt a more consensus-based approach to government that rejected electoral majorities and sought a majority of interest groups that would be familiar to the approach of the contemporary Democratic party. Indeed, Calhoun is at pains throughout the book to defend a veto on acts prejudicial to the South on the grounds of identity and thus this book is a model for later identity group theorists who similarly lack self-examination on their own sins that need repentance on how corrupt minorities can preserve their privileged position by seeking to dominate the power of government. After the introductory material there is Calhoun's disquisition itself and then a couple of fragments from the Calhoun's Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States that involve the formation of the federal republic and his ideas for a plural executive. Combined these two elements and the notes on the text make for a short but interesting book.
By and large this book is not a particularly good one. Most of these faults belong to Calhoun, because his thinking was based on improper premises. Nonetheless, while Calhoun's premises about the importance of identity group approval in consensus-based government were mistaken, not least because he seemed only to think of those identity groups who were powerful and of interest to him (a common flaw in the lack of consistency of such approaches, which always seem to neglect some unpopular but large sections of the population), they are important to note because the author shows himself appealing to a sort of socialist view of the "general will" that is made up of a combination of elites whose opinions do not necessarily match with nor give any respect to individual rights themselves. The author's desire to form a plural executive and to dilute the electoral majoritarianism of the Constitution appears to be done in order to turn a functioning republic into an oligarchy where politics consisted of compromise between elites who sought to best oppress the commonfolk who were not wise enough to engage in the high arts of practicing power and exercising political freedom. And Democrats ever after him have been attempting various ways at bringing this sort of plantation-style politics to pass in the local, state, and national levels up to this day.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2014...
This particular work is a short one at just over 100 pages and it is published by someone who appears to be in support of Calhoun's thinking. Before the writing there is a fair amount of introductory material by Gordon C. Post that praises Calhoun for his desire to see the United States adopt a more consensus-based approach to government that rejected electoral majorities and sought a majority of interest groups that would be familiar to the approach of the contemporary Democratic party. Indeed, Calhoun is at pains throughout the book to defend a veto on acts prejudicial to the South on the grounds of identity and thus this book is a model for later identity group theorists who similarly lack self-examination on their own sins that need repentance on how corrupt minorities can preserve their privileged position by seeking to dominate the power of government. After the introductory material there is Calhoun's disquisition itself and then a couple of fragments from the Calhoun's Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States that involve the formation of the federal republic and his ideas for a plural executive. Combined these two elements and the notes on the text make for a short but interesting book.
By and large this book is not a particularly good one. Most of these faults belong to Calhoun, because his thinking was based on improper premises. Nonetheless, while Calhoun's premises about the importance of identity group approval in consensus-based government were mistaken, not least because he seemed only to think of those identity groups who were powerful and of interest to him (a common flaw in the lack of consistency of such approaches, which always seem to neglect some unpopular but large sections of the population), they are important to note because the author shows himself appealing to a sort of socialist view of the "general will" that is made up of a combination of elites whose opinions do not necessarily match with nor give any respect to individual rights themselves. The author's desire to form a plural executive and to dilute the electoral majoritarianism of the Constitution appears to be done in order to turn a functioning republic into an oligarchy where politics consisted of compromise between elites who sought to best oppress the commonfolk who were not wise enough to engage in the high arts of practicing power and exercising political freedom. And Democrats ever after him have been attempting various ways at bringing this sort of plantation-style politics to pass in the local, state, and national levels up to this day.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2014...
December 16, 2009
John C. Calhoun, born in 1782, was an original "War Hawk" at the outbreak of the War of 1812, Senator from South Carolina, Vice President of the United States; he is also one of the more interesting political thinkers in American history.
John C. Calhoun's key concern in this volume was the threat of an oppressive national government. He argued: "But government, although intended to protect and preserve society, has itself a strong tendency to disorder and abuse of its powers, as all experience and almost every page of history testify." Calhoun claims that societies are made up of numerous groupings, each with its own interest. The end result? There is ". . .nothing more easy than to pervert its powers into instruments to aggrandize and enrich one or more interests by oppressing and impoverishing the others. . ." Consequently, some instrumentality must be developed ". . .to prevent any one interest or combination of interests from using the powers of government to aggrandize itself at the expense of others." One of the interests he wished to protect was, of course, slavery. He creates an interesting argument for one of the worst causes possible.
Use of the "numerical majority" to make decisions essentially can suppress minorities. He believed that the idea of the concurrent majority would reduce the possibility of tyranny. In Calhoun's own words, the essence of the concurrent majority is: "The necessary consequence of taking the sense of the community as the concurrent majority is. . .to give each interest or portion of the community a negative on the others. It is this mutual negative among its various conflicting interests which invests each with the power of protecting itself, and places the rights and safety of each where only they can be securely placed, under its own guardianship."
Critics, of course, would contend that the concurrent majority would make it difficult to take any significant action. Calhoun felt that this plan would actually foster unity. In a key passage, Calhoun said: "The concurrent majority. . .tends to unite the most opposite and conflicting interests and to blend the whole in one common attachment to the country. By giving to each interest, or portion, the power of self-protection, all strife and struggle between them for ascendancy is prevented, and thereby not only every feeling calculated to weaken the attachment to the whole is suppressed, but the individual and the social feelings are made to unite in one common devotion to country. Each sees and feels that it can best promote its own prosperity by conciliating the good will and promoting the prosperity of the others."
Calhoun's relevance for constitutional principles in the United States? Obviously, his work directly addresses the Constitution's concept of federalism. Calhoun's vision was far different from that enunciated by the Supreme Court over time. Whereas the Supreme Court emphasized the Supremacy Clause, Calhoun rejected that concept as violating his understanding of the Constitution and its origins. His conclusion was that the United States was a confederation. This work is one of the more creative bits of American political thought. While one can decry Calhoun for his support of slavery, one has to recognize the intriguing arguments that he makes in this slender volume.
John C. Calhoun's key concern in this volume was the threat of an oppressive national government. He argued: "But government, although intended to protect and preserve society, has itself a strong tendency to disorder and abuse of its powers, as all experience and almost every page of history testify." Calhoun claims that societies are made up of numerous groupings, each with its own interest. The end result? There is ". . .nothing more easy than to pervert its powers into instruments to aggrandize and enrich one or more interests by oppressing and impoverishing the others. . ." Consequently, some instrumentality must be developed ". . .to prevent any one interest or combination of interests from using the powers of government to aggrandize itself at the expense of others." One of the interests he wished to protect was, of course, slavery. He creates an interesting argument for one of the worst causes possible.
Use of the "numerical majority" to make decisions essentially can suppress minorities. He believed that the idea of the concurrent majority would reduce the possibility of tyranny. In Calhoun's own words, the essence of the concurrent majority is: "The necessary consequence of taking the sense of the community as the concurrent majority is. . .to give each interest or portion of the community a negative on the others. It is this mutual negative among its various conflicting interests which invests each with the power of protecting itself, and places the rights and safety of each where only they can be securely placed, under its own guardianship."
Critics, of course, would contend that the concurrent majority would make it difficult to take any significant action. Calhoun felt that this plan would actually foster unity. In a key passage, Calhoun said: "The concurrent majority. . .tends to unite the most opposite and conflicting interests and to blend the whole in one common attachment to the country. By giving to each interest, or portion, the power of self-protection, all strife and struggle between them for ascendancy is prevented, and thereby not only every feeling calculated to weaken the attachment to the whole is suppressed, but the individual and the social feelings are made to unite in one common devotion to country. Each sees and feels that it can best promote its own prosperity by conciliating the good will and promoting the prosperity of the others."
Calhoun's relevance for constitutional principles in the United States? Obviously, his work directly addresses the Constitution's concept of federalism. Calhoun's vision was far different from that enunciated by the Supreme Court over time. Whereas the Supreme Court emphasized the Supremacy Clause, Calhoun rejected that concept as violating his understanding of the Constitution and its origins. His conclusion was that the United States was a confederation. This work is one of the more creative bits of American political thought. While one can decry Calhoun for his support of slavery, one has to recognize the intriguing arguments that he makes in this slender volume.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews