He never appointed nor removed a
clerk for opinion's sake. In seven years he only removed two clerks,
both for cause, and to both were given in writing the reasons of their
removal. There was no special merit in this, for at that day to do
otherwise would have been deemed infamous.
Mr. Calhoun, as a member of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet, still played the
part of a national man, and supported the measures of his party
without exception. Scarcely a trace of the sectional champion yet
appears. In 1819, he gave a written opinion favoring the cession of
Texas in exchange for Florida; the motive of which was to avoid
alarming the North by the prospective increase of Slave States. In
later years, Mr. Calhoun, of course, wished to deny this; and the
written opinions of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet on that question mysteriously
disappeared from the archives of the State Department. We have the
positive testimony of Mr. John Quincy Adams, that Calhoun, in common
with most Southern men of that day, approved the Missouri Compromise
of 1820, and gave a written opinion that it was a constitutional
measure.
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