The burden of Mr. Calhoun's later speeches was the reconciliation of
the last part of his public life with the first. The task was
difficult, for there is not a leading proposition in his speeches
after 1830 which is not refuted by arguments to be found in his public
utterances before 1828. In his speech on the Force Bill, in 1834, he
volunteered an explanation of the apparent inconsistency between his
support of General Jackson in 1828, and his authorship of the "South
Carolina Exposition" in the same year. Falsehood and truth are
strangely interwoven in almost every sentence of his later writings;
and there is also that vagueness in them which comes of a superfluity
of words. He says, that for the strict-constructionist party to have
presented a candidate openly and fully identified with their opinions
would have been to court defeat; and thus they were obliged either to
abandon the contest, or to select a candidate "whose opinions were
intermediate or doubtful on the subject which divided the two
sections,"--a candidate "who, at best, was but a choice of evils."
Besides, General Jackson was a Southern man, and it was hoped that,
notwithstanding his want of experience, knowledge, and self-control,
the advisers whom he would invite to assist him would compensate for
those defects.
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