WASHINGTON, April 1, 1850.
Mr. Calhoun died this morning. . . . The opinion is that the South will
be relieved. He has carried his doctrines of disunion so far, that his
political opponents have made capital out of his extravagances. He had done all
the political thinking for South Carolina for twenty years. That State has
known but one will, and that was his. It is the most oligarchical State in this
Union, perhaps in the world. The spirit of its people has rendered it so. I
regret his death politically: I think it will tend to canonize him, and give a
sort of sanctity to his enormities. Men will attack his seditious and
treasonable doctrines with less earnestness than if he were alive; for it
always looks, or can be made to look, like cowardice to assail a dead man. His
private life has been, I believe, unimpeachable; but his public course has been
one of the greatest disasters that has ever befallen the country. His errors
have all originated in his disappointed aspirations for the Presidency. Oh, if
we could only look a few years into the future, or, throwing ourselves forward
a few years into the future, look back, what different motives of action would
be suggested to our minds !
SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 298
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