But the attempt of the Abolitionists to identify the
American national idea with a system of natural rights, coupled with the
plain fact that the national domain contained more material for free
than it did for slave states, provoked the Southerners into taking more
aggressive ground. They began to identify the national idea exclusively
with a system of legal rights; and it became from their point of view a
violation of national good faith even to criticise any rights enjoyed
under the Constitution. They advanced a conception of American
democracy, which defied the Constitution in its most rigid
interpretation,--which made Congress incompetent to meddle with any
rights enjoyed under the Constitution, which converted any protest
against such rights into national disloyalty, and which in the end
converted secession into a species of higher Constitutional action.
Calhoun's theory of Constitutional interpretation was ingeniously
wrought and powerfully argued. From an exclusively legal standpoint, it
was plausible, if not convincing; but it was opposed by something deeper
than counter-theories of Constitutional law.
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