James H. Read: John Calhoun & Concurrent Majority | BRI Scholar Talks

0:01 [Music] hi this is tony williams a senior fellow at the bill of rights institute and we would like to welcome you to another episode of our bri scholar talks today we are going to dive into the 19th century statesman john calhoun and his philosophy of concurrent

0:23 majorities to help us make sense of these views is professor james reid james reed is a professor of political science at the college of saint benedict st john’s university since 1988 he earned degrees from the university of chicago and harvard university and dr reed is the author of several

0:43 books including majority rule versus consensus the political thought of john c calhoun which i just happen to have a copy of and it’s excellent i’m finishing it right now and also power versus liberty madison hamilton wilson and jefferson and also a very interesting book called doorstep

1:04 democracy face-to-face politics in the heartland he is currently working on a book on lincoln’s political thought and the principle of majority rule that last book sounds very relevant strongly needed in in our divisive times i think we need more of that face-to-face politics uh you know talking over a coffee or proverbial beer with your

1:24 neighbor about politics rather than the divisiveness you see on social media but we’re here to focus on the topic of john calhoun’s consensus majority views and how it may have conflicted with the constitutional ideas of james madison and and the other founders uh in your uh not only fantastic book but your

1:45 excellent essay you wrote on the topic for bri’s new textbook life liberty and the pursuit of happiness james thank you for joining us all right well thank you uh tony for this interview and thank you to the bill of rights institute for the work that you do for education in america’s history and constitution and founding principles

2:06 so in federalist 10 39 51 james madison writes extensively about majority rule the republican principle in his first inaugural address thomas jefferson stated all two will bear in mind the sacred principle that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail that will

2:27 to be rightful must be reasonable so as you were saying you know can you help us understand a little bit more on on how madison and the founders really understood the principles of a republican self-government and majority rule to to really be foundational james madison also thomas jefferson

2:47 would have acknowledged that it’s possible for majorities to act unjustly so the question is but at the same time both madison and jefferson as we found with fight with lincoln later believed that there was no place other than the majority that you could rightfully put the final power of decision in a government that’s based on

3:08 the sovereignty of the people so the question is how do you make the majority more reasonable as to use jefferson’s term and uh particularly madison in federalist 10 and federalist 51 gave a very famous answer to that question that calhoun understood and strongly disagreed with so let me

3:29 describe madison’s answer and then calhoun’s disagreement with it madison’s answer in federalist 10 and federal 51 was that if you have a popular form of government that’s over in extensive territory so larger than a state you’re gonna

3:50 take into account many different interests so the the problem for uh madison talked about majority faction an unjust majority he believed that was much more likely to happen at a state or local level where you might have just two you know really entrenched interests

4:10 uh facing each other down on different sides of the tracks right whereas if you take into account the entire united states new york pennsylvania virginia south carolina massachusetts and then further diversity as we move westward his argument was that no one

4:33 faction and by factionists he meant a group a very group that was animated by a a single impulsive passion or a single shared interest uh that came at the expense of the interests of fellow citizens that you were much less likely to have a

4:54 single majority faction over the territory of the whole united states than you were at a state or a local level madison did however understand you needed to form a majority you couldn’t govern you couldn’t get legislation passed through the house and senate if you didn’t have a majority he believed that those majorities

5:15 would be formed through a deliberative process where each each u.s rep each senator although they may have their own special interests that they represent from their state most of them uh would be at least relatively impartial toward the claims of other states and

5:37 other regions and so uh you rather than a tightly formed faction you would have a deliberative process and a majority would form and then a different issue would come along at a different majority a majority with a different composition would come along so madison really depended upon

5:58 house and senate being deliberative bodies where people listen and work out the common good um let me now contrast that with what calhoun said um calhoun in a sense calhoun’s answer to this and his critique of madison uh his critique of federalist 10 and federal 51 which at that time

6:21 uh it wasn’t clear officially clear who had written them but he he addressed his federalist 10 in federal 51. he said that might have been true at the beginning but that was before the formation of national political parties and national political parties you know interestingly um came along

6:42 madison did not did not anticipate and certainly did not want national political parties uh but a number of issues came along in the 1790s where then madison and jefferson himself and then alexander hamilton on the other side of this uh

7:02 political divisions foreign national political parties um they they dissolved after that uh but then were reformed in the late uh 1820s the jacksonian parties followed by the wig party and um so what what calhoun argued is that the action

7:24 of the federal government over time and the the enormous stakes that each regional interest has in getting what it wants out of the policies of the federal government will cause these national political coalitions to form it may take a long

7:45 time for them to form but once they’re formed they can become the kind of tightly knit uncompromising potentially very unjust factions that that madison believed could be prevented at the

8:05 national level and uh but did not anticipate these you know enormous ideologically driven political parties so that’s how calhoun believed you could have entrenched majorities majority faction and minority factions over the whole united states in ways that would really

8:26 um call into question whether the kind of uh solution that madison prescribed in federalist 10 in federal 51 could actually work and maybe we can take a step back for our students and just provide a little bit of background on on who

8:47 john calhoun was and and maybe a few of his you know the offices that he held okay and and maybe some of the influences you know we talked about madison and jefferson how did how do these 1798 virginia and kentucky resolutions kind of help shape history okay let me describe a little bit about his life he was born 1782

9:07 which is right near the end of the revolutionary war so we would call him a second generation statesman you know the generation that follows the the framers of of the constitution and the centers of the declaration of independence he died in 1850 which was 10 years before uh session secession and civil war but

9:28 when that was already on the horizon he was a southern slaveholder uh from south carolina uh he seems never to have questioned the justice of slaveholding uh in his early years he interestingly he was uh he was educated in the north uh

9:50 at yale um but then returned back south was in congress during the war of 1812 and in his early career was very much a nationalist a very a strong advocate of of federal power he believed in using federal power to build roads and

10:10 canals these were called internal improvements in those days he favored a tariff that was mildly protective now it was different from the ones that he supported later that he posed later but he did support a tariff at that time and he was on good terms with uh northern politicians including john

10:31 quincy adams and others so he served in the u.s house during the 18 teens and then he was secretary of war for for president james monroe which uh there was not any any major wars at the time but he had really important

10:52 role in creating the system of forts including what’s now fort snelling in minnesota and uh and also informing uh policy toward american indians um during that period uh he was elected vice president uh in the 18 the very uh

11:14 uh divided of three uh three-way race of the 1824 presidential election he was elected vice president uh under john quinte adams but very soon became a political opponent of john quincy adam the political opponent of the of the president whom he was serving well he wouldn’t say serving under he

11:35 was serving alongside in his view and he was but what what turned him away from his nationalism at first now there’s i would say there’s two things going on here one is that you have new types of legislation uh particularly pushed by the the new industries in the north new

11:58 steel manufacturer iron manufacturer textile manufacturer that are pushing a protectionist legislation meaning that they want to they want to give a boost to these american industries um and uh just to stop all these british in british products

12:20 that are coming into the country because we want to build our own industry in order to do that in the in the 1828 they passed this tariff that was called the tariff of abominations which uh raised really high tariff rates on manufactured goods manufa textile unimported goods including textiles uh iron and many other things well this

12:43 this tariff however hit the southern um slave states uh negatively they did not see anything in this for them and uh part of this was because they had to import they imported a lot of things uh textiles to clothe their slaves they had imported

13:04 many of them from britain and so the tariff increased their costs it raised the price uh of the goods and the second way that it harmed them was that they were selling their cotton to these very same british textile manufacturers so if the northern uh textile manufacturers in

13:24 massachusetts managed to get a textile a protection that diminishes the income of the british textile manufacturers then those british textile manufacturers have less money to buy cotton from the southern planters and so that was part of the way in which the

13:45 the the trade laws which were passed to benefit northern manufacturers came at the expense of southern cotton planters uh and i think that calhoun was correct about this this was actually a law that benefited the north much more than the south and

14:08 so calhoun now the question is um what do you do about something like that if you believe in the principle of majority rule the solution is you convince enough people uh outside of the south that this is unfair and have them repeal the law and that was not

14:30 that law had passed the tariff of abominations 1828 had passed by very narrow margin it was not at all uh unreasonable to think that that could be repealed through the ordinary constitutional majoritarian process but calhoun didn’t think that was sufficient and so he in

14:50 by 1828 he’d come up with this idea of the concurrent majority the idea that the the state of south carolina does not need to wait until it convinces the majority in congress to stop this awful tariff that’s hurting the country instead it will nullify that tariff which it could do because it had a port

15:12 so terrorists were collected in ports of charleston south carolina was one of the major ports of the united states so it could just directly nullify that law or if put another way uh disobey that law if you believe the law is legitimate that the whole state of south carolina then disobeyed that law and let all those

15:33 those foreign goods come in without anybody paying any tariff duties on them well this led to a confrontation uh with um the federal government and particularly with president andrew jackson keeping in mind that calhoun is now a principal political opponent of the

15:54 second president that he served under or alongside he actually wrote came up with all the theory for nullification when he was vice president under andrew jackson they had their relationship went very sour quickly by 1831 he came out publicly as the

16:14 author of this doctrine of nullification resigned as vice president and then went to the u.s senate and so originally uh now that that was a that confrontation over the tariff could have turned violent it did not there was there was a um many a number of senators uh including henry clay

16:35 got together and broke her to compromise tariff and lowered the tariff uh calhoun was satisfied and he convinced his state to to back off and and i think in certain ways that experience of creating a confrontation and then coming to a compromise

16:57 uh convinced calhoun that this was a workable way to do government that that refusing the minority simply refusing to go along with the law could lead to an outcome that is acceptable to everyone now that was not however not the case for the next major issue which came

17:19 along which was slavery even during the the confrontation over the tariff and over manufacturers calhoun and others from south carolina always had at the back of their mind that they were not just fighting this battle against protectionism they also saw the

17:39 possibility of anti-slavery legislation anti-slavery action on the part of the federal government that could be uh would be even more alarming to southern interests and what you find from the uh mid uh 1830s on until the end of calvin’s life in 1850 is that

18:00 sexual confrontations over slavery um took center stage these were much more difficult to resolve by any kind of compromise than the tariff was then then then you know how much whether you’re going to put uh uh tariff duties on imported iron um and in fact calhoun did not believe

18:24 that there should be any compromise he actually if the irony of his of his of philosophy of government is it depends upon compromise and on the tariff he was willing to compromise he understood that the the iron textile manufacturers of the north had a legitimate point of view they just were taking it a bit too far

18:45 he absolutely rejected abolitionism he believed it was wrong destructive even criminal he saw abolitionism the way that people would today see uh you know um uh terrorists uh trying to stir up trouble within somebody else’s country um the

19:08 abolitionists um you know they they they were the abolitionists were totally suppressed in the south uh but even in the north their writings could find their way south and slaveholders feared that the slaves would get hold of those writings and those would give them ideas about

19:28 rising up so calhoun was totally opposed to abolitionism he also saw that that the the north youth of uh forming an anti-slavery coalition but basically a large political party he

19:49 feared a large political party would form that was hostile to the institution of slavery and it almost never happens in politics that the majority of people are are motivated entirely by altruistic considerations the abolitionists were driven by altruism and religious conviction but they were a small minority even in the north

20:11 um what made the anti-slavery uh coalition potentially powerful was there was no many northerners had a strong self-interest economic and political self-interest at least in stopping the spread of slavery to new territories so just the describers from this point of view many of the people who supported

20:34 anti-slavery parties like the liberty party like the republican party when lincoln came along many of them did not have any particular sympathy with african-americans either free or enslaved but they did really resent the power of slaveholders they saw

20:55 slaveholders as this very powerful domineering minority that was making itself powerful through uh unjust unfair ways and lording it over their fellow white citizens so you have through the 18 beginning in the 1830s and certainly by

21:16 the end of the 1840s and especially in the 1850s you have a strong anti-slavery movement in the north and it’s that it’s a growing majority of the population because that’s where most of the immigrants came during this period they came to the north so calhoun saw this large majority hostile

21:39 to the institution of slavery it would be a northern majority and even if it did not directly attack slavery so if you take lincoln for example lincoln of the republican party said it would not do anything to abolish slavery in the states where it existed but it did intend to cut it off uh and abolish it gradually over a long

22:02 period of time well from calhoun’s point of view and out of south carolina slave holders that was just as bad that meant that your institution your way of life had no future and they saw the idea of of preventing slaveholders from taking their what they considered their slave property

22:23 to all those westward territories which which were going to be the seed beds of future states and if slaveholders could not bring their slaves there to the western to the west um then over time the the northern free state majority

22:44 hostile to the institution of slavery would get a lock hold they would never be voted out and at some point they would actually put an end to the institution of slavery in one way or another and that was a very realistic scenario and in fact that’s what lincoln wanted to do and from calhoun’s point of view that was a

23:05 a deeply unjust majority um let me just since i’ve gotten talking about slavery uh one of the ironies um one of the inc incongruous things about calhoun’s defense of minority rights is that some minorities counted and others did not

23:27 white slave wealthy white slave holders uh were a minority who he believed were entitled to to be able to uh veto to stop actions of the federal government that they did not like and they were a powerful minority they’re wealthy they also controlled the government’s estates because nullification can only work

23:49 if somebody controls the government of at least some states well the african-americans both those who were free and the greater number who were enslaved they were a minority of the population nationally they were actually majority of the population in south carolina they did not have those rights

24:10 and calhoun’s answer was that some people are prepared for liberty and some people are not that’s uh a very um that’s a my view a deeply unjust answer that’s the answer that he gave it was also the case that calhoun was very straightforward

24:34 about how where you have the institution of slavery every white person however rich or poor can view themselves as an aristocrat can see themselves with pride and uh that is part of what helped his his system of government the the uh as

24:55 i mentioned earlier the uh for the concurrent majority to work the interest within a state had to be homogeneous enough that you could you didn’t have to have internal veto state you know vetoes within vetoes within vetoes and slavery helped give the white population

25:17 of south carolina that sense of common of common interest of unity uh over against this this group that they had enslaved and that was potentially very dangerous and so um you know of all the the great problems with calhoun’s uh

25:39 system of government the greatest one was that uh how do you decide which minorities actually count you can use calvin’s system of government it doesn’t depend on slavery to work and as i talk about in the book i thought you know the way in which it had been employed in former yugoslavia northern ireland it

26:00 was considered for a post-apartheid south africa so it doesn’t depend on slavery but i think in calhoun’s case it functioned better with the institution of slavery to give people the necessary solidarity and clearly stopping anti-slavery action was one of the principal

26:21 motivations for calhoun and continuing to push this theory of government um throughout the whole second half of his life so he died in 1850 there was a great crisis in 1850 over of spread of slavery to the territories also over california entering the union

26:43 as a free state because it was an enormous state and calhoun and many others wanted to divide it into a northern free state southern northern free california and southern slave state california to keep the balance in the senate he died at the point of that crisis over where slavery was going to go westward so the compromise of 1850 takes place

27:04 but it doesn’t actually stop the civil war from occurring as a nation descends into into that yeah the compromise of 1850 in many ways was a holding action right right it kept it kept things from blowing apart but did not resolve any of the issues right and so we got the civil war by

27:25 uh you know we have secession 1860 secession 1861 after the election of lincoln and so lincoln during his presidencies you know is is trying to defend national union um republican principle and really in a sense majority role right yes can you uh tell us a little bit more

27:46 about how lincoln is really defending the founders and and then founding view of majority rule and republicanism uh you know against you know ultimately you know secession nullification you well i would say you know what lincoln gave a very thoughtful uh defense of majority rule

28:09 in his first inaugural address and um you know i would suggest that his lincoln’s view of majority rule was very similar to that of james madison he lincoln talked about how in his defense of majority rule in his first inaugural address he talked about how it a deliberate majority

28:30 that it’s held in place by constitutional checks and limitations changing easily with deliberate changes of public opinion and sentiment so it’s constitutionally checked it’s deliberate in that sense it’s what he was describing is comparable to what madison was was advocating although it was under

28:51 very different conditions than than madison was facing in 1787 and participating in the constitutional convention let me describe i want to before we get to the war i think it’s really important to look at the election of 1860 because

29:11 this is where you really see in a sense the fruit of calhoun’s political philosophy uh calhoun did not want secession that let me explain he he defended he believed that states had a right of succession but he did not want them to resort to it

29:31 he was realistic about how much blood would be shed how violent and bloody any any such separation would actually be so for calhoun he believed the right of secession and and also slave states threatening secession would actually prevent secession because

29:51 it would it would get the northern earth to back down stop pressing this slavery issue and we could go back to having mutually beneficial compromises that didn’t happen um so the the actual trigger of secession and civil war was the

30:12 election of 1860 and in particular it was that the slave states did not want to accept the results of the 1860 election if their candidate john breckinridge had won he got i think about 25 percent

30:34 of the vote if he had won they would have been fined to stay in the union and would have insisted that the northern states go along with john breckenridge’s presidency but they absolutely they believed and in many ways

30:54 shaped by calhoun’s political theory that they were not obliged to respect the results of an election that was motivated by a view of slavery that they basically rejected and moreover

31:15 they declared and said secession was declaring the let the 1860 election itself illegitimate in the southerners minds they seceded before lincoln had even taken office the the slate of the lower south uh south carolina florida mississippi georgia louisiana texas alabama

31:36 seceded before lincoln had even taken office so they couldn’t claim that that was in response to anything that he’d done they were saying we refuse to to respect the result of an election of a view that we were opposed to and somebody elected entirely on northern votes and um then the the

31:59 it was now of course virginia tennessee uh arkansas uh north carolina did not secede as a result of lincoln’s election in fact did not consider that a a a good reason first for breaking up the union um if so in a certain sense

32:21 south carolina’s attack on fort sumter in april of 1861 was for the purpose of pushing those non-seceding slave states off the fence of ending the deliberations and this is going to be one of my main points in the book the book i’m writing at lincoln lincoln himself did not want a civil war

32:41 he believed that slavery could be abolished democratically through majority rule respecting all the all the constitutional processes over a long period of time was that realistic well

33:02 the state of south carolina certainly considered it realistic that’s the reason why they succeeded they believe that that long slow squeeze as a way of putting slavery out of existence by a determined northern anti-slavery majority that that could work and they were not

33:23 willing to let him give it a try and so they um broke up the union before he could take office and they ended the liberation by uh initiating a war and so um so so during the war itself yes lincoln was appealing to majority rule and he had to keep

33:43 he had to keep together even the majority in the north was very difficult to keep together it required uh because when when lincoln was elected lincoln was elected in a three-way i’m sorry a four-way race um you know he he did not have a majority he had a plurality and the republican party didn’t have a

34:04 majority in congress as a result of the 1860 elections um now he uh the slave states could see that a majority was that he didn’t yet have a majority but that was going to happen at the time however lincoln’s majority in congress depended on the support of northern democrats uh

34:25 and so he did have to appeal to majority rule to keep that very difficult coalition together lincoln could have been voted out of office in 1864 i think that’s really important this greatest crisis in american history he never suggested that elections be cancelled or delayed

34:46 as many other people in power would have suggested he knew he could he could be voted out of office he probably would have been voted out of office if the military situation had not changed shortly before in the summer of 1864 the military situation changed for the better and uh ensured his re-election but he

35:08 knew he could be voted out of office so in that sense he still even under the most adverse conditions understood and was committed to uh governing in accordance with what he understood the principles of the founding free elections following constitutional rules and based on the will of the majority

35:30 so i would say the lesson that one of the points about lincoln is how committed he was to the processes of free elections uh as central and and to the legitimate will of the majority and uh and you know in that sense i i

35:52 in this debate between calhoun and lincoln i’m on the side of lincoln i do think that as i mentioned earlier that calhoun has a number of very important points about how a majority can act unjustly there’s no guarantee against that um but uh from lincoln’s point of view

36:13 uh a a minority that refuses to give up power to the majority even through a free election that’s worse than an unjust majority james reid thank you enough uh for coming on today and discussing everything from the founding

36:34 up through the 19th century and and the ideas of john calhoun and then ending in lincoln in the civil war and even making it relevant to today so we covered a lot of ground but uh thank you for your essay uh in life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and we look forward to your lincoln book thank you thank you so much