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Primary source: John C. Calhoun, "The Clay Compromise Measures," speech to the Senate, 1850.
Caption: John C. Calhoun became the South's most powerful advocate as senator from South Carolina for most of the period from 1832 to 1850.
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One of the causes is, undoubtedly, to be traced to the long-continued agitation of the slave question on the part of the North, and the many aggressions which they have made on the rights of the South during the time. I will not enumerate them at present, as it will be done hereafter in its proper place.
There is another lying back of it—with which this is intimately connected—that may be regarded as the great and primary cause. This is to be found in the fact that the equilibrium between the two sections in the government as it stood when the Constitution was ratified and the government put in action has been destroyed. At that time there was nearly a perfect equilibrium between the two, which afforded ample means to each to protect itself against the aggression of the other; but, as it now stands, one section has the exclusive power of controlling the government, which leaves the other without any adequate means of protecting itself against its encroachment and oppression.
The result of the whole is to give the Northern section a predominance in every department of the government, and thereby concentrate in it the two elements which constitute the federal government: a majority of States, and a majority of their population, estimated in federal numbers. Whatever section concentrates the two in itself possesses the control of the entire government.
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John C. Calhoun, "The Clay Compromise Measures," speech to the Senate (4 March 1850), at http://www.nationalcenter.org/CalhounClayCompromise.html.
Courtesy of the National Center for Public Policy Research.
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