The selected papers of Thaddeus Stevens Book

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.