Quincy Adams witnessed one of the encounters. “Clay,” he wrote, “had manifestly the advantage in the debate. The truth and the victory were with Clay, who spoke of the South Carolina nullification with such insulting contempt that it brought out Preston, who complained of it bitterly. Preston's countenance was a portraiture of agonizing anguish.”
To accuse Calhoun of tergiversation and treachery because he left the Whig alliance and went over to Van Buren, was, indeed, unjust. Calhoun had never been a Whig. For many years he had not sworn allegiance to any party except his “state-rights party,” and that he expected to take with him wherever he went. It was easily shown, as Clay and Webster did show, that Calhoun had in years long past advocated the United States Bank, internal improvements, a protective tariff, and generally a broad construction of constitutional powers. But he had done that as a young Republican, long before the existence of the Whig party. Since that period Calhoun's mind had gone through that process which became decisive for his whole career as a statesman. He had always been a pro-slavery man. But so long as slavery seemed secure he permitted himself to have opinions upon other subjects according to their own merits. All this changed so soon as he saw that slavery was in danger. From that time all the workings of his mind and all his political endeavors centred upon the preservation of slavery. State-rights princi-
