14 
LAND 6? WATER 
October 3, 1918 
''Forty-Seven-Forty or Fight!": By Cecil Chesterton 
The Foundations of Anglo-American Friendship 
A FEW weeks ago I was permitted to write in 
these columns of that great man Andrew Jackson, 
the last American to sheath the sword against 
England, the first to offer her his hand. This 
week I propose to tell of the turning of a very 
perilous corner in the history of the friendlier relations thus 
established between the two peoples. 
****** 
Jackson, retiring at the end of his second tenn in a blaze 
of popularity and glory, virtually bequeathed the Presidency 
to his henchman Van Buren. It was fortunate that the 
Jacksonian tradition was thus continued, for during Van 
Buren's Presidency occurred the rebellion in Canada which 
might have offered -a grave temptation to an American 
statesman of anti-British leanings. But the President was 
careful to act with correctitude and discretion, and it was not 
till the reign of his successor that a crisis appeared which 
brought with it the immediate menace of war. On this 
occasion the credit of averting such a disaster is due to one 
of the most remarkable figures in American history, John 
Caldwell Calhoim, then Secretary of State under President 
Tyler. 
Calhoun's name is known in England, if at all, mainly 
through Lowell's amusing parody of his speeches in the 
"Biglow Papers" ; but the man himself was of a very rare 
and intellectually very interesting type. He was the rational 
fanatic. Two or three distinctive political ideas had com- 
plete possession of his mind to the -exclusion of all else. He 
held them with passion and would readily have suffered or 
persecuted for them. But when he came to defend them 
he did so with a cold and lucid logic to which such passion 
seems quite alien. 
The strong passions and luminous reasoning of Calhoun 
were focussed mainly upon two great political dogmas. One 
was that of the positive blessedness of the institution of 
slavery. The other was the doctrine of State Sovereignty 
pushed to' its most extreme and almost suicidal lengths. It 
is the former which forms the theme of Lowell's satire already 
referred to. Anyone familiar with Calhoun's speeches on 
the subject will at once recognise there, under the veil of 
travesty, his characteristic ideas. But his pro-slavery 
speeches are well worth reading seriously, for they certainly 
contain the most lucid And powerful defence of what 
Mr. Belloc has called "the Servile State" to be found in our 
language. How strong was Calhoun's faith in his own reason- 
ing may be shown by a curious incident which marked his 
Secretaryship of State. When it was proposed to annex 
Texas to the United States, Lord Aberdeen had ventured to 
express the hope that slavery, already technically illegal 
in Mexico, would not be protected there. Instead of pro- 
.testing, as he might not unreasonably have done, against 
British interference in a purely American question, Calhoun 
sat down and wrote an elaborate dispatch defending slavery 
as the ideal foundation for a civilised community — a dispatch 
which led Macaulay to say in the House of Commons that 
the United States h'ad "put itself at the head of the nigger- 
driving interest throughout the world." Many Americans, 
Southern- as well as Northern, were angry at this identi- 
fication of American policy with the maintenance of slavery ; 
but Calhoun was only disappointed that Aberdeen did not 
continue the detjate, which he had hoped would convert 
Europe to his favourite thesis. 
****** 
Calhoun, as I have said, was Secretary of State when the 
annexation of Texas started the train of events which brought 
Great Britain and America within measurable distance of 
war. The Northern democracy was not unwilling to see 
Texas annexed, but it »had a project of expansion of 
its own. for which it demanded a corresponding support. 
This project concerned the undeveloped territory bordering 
the Pacific, now represented in part by the States 
of Oregon and Washington and in part by our Colony 
of British Columbia, then called collectively "the Oregon 
Territory." To this territory both Great Britain and 
the United States laid claim. The dispute turned 
upofi priority of discovery. It is difficult to- determine 
which' claim was really the stronger ; the matter had 
been allowed to rest in abeyance and the territory had 
meanwhile been policed jointly by the two Powers. But 
coincidently with the agitation for the admission of Texas 
to the Union, there arose in the North a violent agitation 
for the immediate settlement of the question" on a basis 
favourable to the American claims. The demand was crys- 
tallised in a political catch-word which was heard everywhere 
in the North and West : — ■" Forty-Seven-Forty or Fight! " — 
the demand, of course, being that England should instantly 
recognise that degree of latitude as the frontier or try the 
issue by arms. 
The War Party was strong in Congress, especially among 
the representatives of the new "States of the West. Its 
leader was a young man already distinguished by his eloquence 
and energy, and by his enormous popularity in his own 
State — Stephen Douglas of Illinois, later to be nicknamed 
"The Little Giant " — to confront Lincoln in the most memor- 
able of public debates, and to die separated from old friends 
and allies, preaching a crusade against the Rebellion. On 
the other side was the Secretary of State. In the matter 
of Texas his passions were strongly engaged ; in the matter 
of Oregon they were neutral ; and his admirable intellect, 
so powerful even when inspired by fanaticism, had full play. 
He set himself against the Jingo tide, and coldly and unanswer- 
ably demonstrated the folly of war at such an hour and on 
such an issue. A war over Oregon must be fought in Oregon. 
England could without difficulty land an Army from India 
at a month's notice. An American Army sent to meet it 
must either force its way through an unmapped wilderness, 
or traverse two oceans in the face of the British Fleet. If, 
on the other hand, peace were preserved, the gradual expan- 
sion of the United States westward would redress the balance, 
and ultimately give to America all that she could reasonably 
claim. 
It seemed an unequal fight ; for the national temper was 
hot and eager, and the secretary had no party at his back. 
The Whigs, who had elected Tyler vice-president to conciliate 
the Southern wing of their party, but had never intended 
him to rule, were now at issue with him on almost every 
public question, and still more at issue with his Secretary 
of State who had supplanted their own leaders. Webster and 
Clay. The democratic opposition was clamourous for war 
and drunk with the expectation of an easy and overwhelming 
popular triumph. In the whole of Congress, Calhoun had 
hardly a friend. In the country he had no body of sup- 
porters, while the general opinion was dead against him. 
But he was right ; and sooner or later those who were most 
eager to dethrone him had to acknowledge that he was right. 
Everything fell out as he said. Driven from office he 
imposed his policy on his successor. Something indeed had 
to be done to satisfy the national temper. America, Calhoun 
again opposing., but this time in vain, plunged into a war 
with Mexico. But war with England was avoided. 
Calhoun's career closed in isolation and defeat. It was a 
tragic end, the more so for the terrible clarity with which 
he foresaw the downfall of every cause that he loved. His 
last speech in the Senate is a sort of funeral oration over the 
Old South. It reminds one continually of the sad magni- 
ficence of Hector: — "For in my heart and in mj- mind I 
know that Troy shall fall." 
A dying man, he was unable himself to deliver in the 
Senate this last mournful testament of his — a protest against 
Henry Clay's famous compromise of 1850 on the slavery 
question. It was read for him by a younger Senator, while 
he sat a silent and mournful figure, staring with those great, 
haggard eyes into the future of which he despaired. A few 
days later he died. In the South his name became almost 
at once a legend. His own State of South Carolina marked 
its sense of his greatness by carving on his tomb as sufficient 
epitaph the single word "Calhoun." Ten years later his 
name and fame became the rallying point of the Great Seces- 
sion. But his own gloomy forebodings proved a truer fore- 
cast of the future than the enthusiasm of those who drew 
the sword in his name. The cause of the South went down 
in blood and defeat. Slavery, of which he had been the one 
able and intelligent defender, was extinguished. State 
Sovereignty, for which he had pleaded so powerfully, suffered 
the judgment of arms, and was no more. In the new America, 
welded into unity by the sword, there was no place for him 
and hardly a place for his fame. 
But England at least owes to this broken champion of 
lost causes the recollection that he saved her from again 
being forced to shed the blood of her children's children. 
