John C. Calhoun - States Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

View all John C. Calhoun Quotes
The error is in the assumption that the General Government is a party to the constitutional compact. The States... formed the compact, acting as sovereign and independent communities.

John C. Calhoun
Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail.

John C. Calhoun
The defence of human liberty against the aggressions of despotic power have been always the most efficient in States where domestic slavery was to prevail.

John C. Calhoun
I hold that the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good. A positive good.

John C. Calhoun
It is federal, because it is the government of States united in a political union, in contradistinction to a government of individuals, that is, by what is usually called, a social compact. To express it more concisely, it is federal and not national because it is the government of a community of States, and not the government of a single State or Nation.

John C. Calhoun
Government has no right to control individual liberty beyond what is necessary to the safety and well-being of society. Such is the boundary which separates the power of the government and the liberty of the citizen or subject in the political state.

John C. Calhoun