February 9, 1849
Placed under Refuge of Oppression, from the Boston Recorder, here is some flavor of the article, titled Calhoun and Garrison: “Though influenced by somewhat different motives, Calhoun at the South, and Garrison at the North, are laboring side by side and making common cause in this great business. Wonderful is the sympathy between these two men and their followers. Both classes are domineering, denunciatory, and defamatory. …And both are eager to vapor and fume, whether anybody cares for their bluster or not. …Garrison, if born in the South, would have been a cruel slave-driver; and Calhoun, if a native of the North, would have been as cruel upon slave-drivers. …Hence we are not surprised to see one of them manifesting his respect for the other. ….At the Annual Meeting of the ‘old organization’, Anti-Slavery Society, held last week in Faneuil Hall, a resolution was passed, highly commendatory of Hon. John C. Calhoun for his honest and consistent course in defending the institution of slavery. Although this resolution, was, probably, not so much designed to compliment the Southerner, as to reflect a side glance on the inconsistency of Northern dough-faces, yet it is to be presumed that the commendations of Mr. Calhoun are quite sincere, and adapted to encourage him in his frantic course of disorganization.. The Garrison faction ought to admire Mr. Calhoun; for he is aiming at the same object with them, though with a thousand times more energy and likelihood of effecting their wishes. He has forty Congressmen to do is bidding, and they not one……”
Note: on the second page of the same edition , there is a brief comment from the editor.
It calls attention to the article in the Refuge Oppression column. In regard to the article from the Recorder, the note says it is ” worthy of the ‘father of lies,’ on the score of mendacity and malice.”
February 23, 1849
Under the title They Fear the Light, here are the resolutions adopted at the Mass Anti-Slavery Society meeting, and the subject of the articles which appeared in the Feb. 9 edition of the paper. The resolution in reference to Calhoun, it claims, has “elicited a good deal of fierce and ribaldrous critricism in various quarters”. Then the disputed resolution is appended: “That in openly and unequivocally advocating slavery as a just, beneficent and democratic institution, John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, is to be commended for his frankness and directness; that for his earnestness , consistency, intrepidity and self-sacrifice, in defending and seeking to extend and perpetuate what he thus professes to regard as superlatively excellent, he is equally to be commended; and that he stands in admirable contrast, and is incomparably to be preferred, to those northern time-servers and doug-faces, who professedly look upon slavery with abhorrence, and yet are found ever ready to compromise the sacred principles of liberty, to betray the rights of the people of the North, and on bended knee to worship the Slave Power of the South.”
March 15, 1850
“Among the half a dozen men in Congress, the utterance of whose sentiments, in times of deep excitement, command the national attention, and exert in all sections of the country a strong influence over the popular mind, for good or evil, Mr. Calhoun stands prominent. Yet he has no breadth of character, no greatness of spirit, no generosity of purpose, no comprehensiveness of view. No man was ever more sectional in his feelings and aims.
In no aspect does he present an American front; he is a Southern man against the North; the welfare of the South, not of the republic is the object of solicitude; the extension and perpetuity of slavery, not the preservation and enlargement of liberty, are the ends of his public labors……”
April 12, 1850
From the New York Herald is an article about the death of Calhoun, which raises the question of who shall be his successor as “great man of the South”. “We are persuaded, from recent events, that the only man who can succeed Mr. Calhoun in the admiration of the South, is the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts –even Daniel Webster himself —provided he moves rightly hereafter…..The death of Mr. Calhoun leaves a vacant intellectual niche in the South, and we are persuaded that Daniel Webster is the only man who can fill it adequately.”
June 16, 1854
Under the Refuge of Oppression column, from the N. Y. Journal of Commerce, there is a concern that there will be an attempt in Congress to amend the Nebraska bill to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law. “…we venture to predict that the motion will be voted down by an overwhelming majority. The obligation to surrender fugitive slaves does not rest upon the Compromise of 1850 or that of 1821, (the latter of which expressly provides for the surrender of fugitive slaves escaping into the territory now covered by the Nebraska-Kansas bill,) but upon the Constitution.
Under the Refuge of Oppression, from the Boston Daily Mail, with a title The Purchase of Burns: “We confess, we could prefer no opinion, should our abolition neighbors resolve to purchase every slave south of the Mason and Dixon line. But they would find it too expensive. They have not the capital at their command. These wild, enthusiastic philanthropists have very little bottom. They are notoriously lazy. They seldom produce anything themselves, except windy speeches and crazy haranques….”
