United States or Tuvalu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Those who believed in a federal as opposed to a national government and who therefore wished to enforce the constitutional checks on the general government, were irresistibly impelled toward the doctrine of nullification as the sole means of protecting the rights of the states. As Von Holst says, "Calhoun and his disciples were not the authors of the doctrine of nullification and secession.
The first that I shall speak of is the employment of some sources of information open to everybody, but not before used. A significant case of this in American history is the use which Doctor von Holst made of newspaper material.
The Danish poet Holst was then in Rome; he had received this year a travelling pension. Hoist had written an elegy on King Frederick VI., which went from mouth to mouth, and awoke an enthusiasm, like that of Becker's contemporaneous Rhine song in Germany.
We boys thought that anyone could be a master, with a book in his hand. History and Geography were taught by an old man, overflowing with good-humour, loquacious, but self- confident, liked for his amiability, but despised for what was deemed unmanliness in him. The boys pulled faces at him, and imitated his expressions and mannerisms. The Danish master, Professor H.P. Holst, was not liked.
Holland, 95; but per contra see Herndon, 271. March, 1843. By way of example of his methods, see letter to Herndon, June 22, 1848, Lamon, 299. The treaty of peace, subject to some amendments, was ratified by the Senate March 10, 1848, and officially promulgated on July 4. Von Holst, Const. Hist. of U.S. iii. 336.
He had given up all hopes of being a great poet then and wanted to get a Doctor's degree and become a Professor at the University. I reminded him of the verses he wrote about some of the boys at school, and about the old teacher, Herr von Holst, and we laughed like two careless boys. He stood upon a little mound and recited the verses all over as though they had been written only the week before.
"The broad basis," says von Holst, "on which the compromise of 1850 rested, was the conviction of the great majority of the people, both North and South, that it was fair, reasonable, and patriotic to come to a friendly understanding." Thus in the midsummer of 1850 did the nation, with intense relief, see the imminent disaster of civil discord averted, or was it only postponed?
In the critical use of such sources, I was helped by the example of von Holst, who employed them freely in his volumes covering the same period, and by the counsel and collaboration of my friend Edward G. Bourne, whose training was in the modern school.
At last the porter came out of his subterranean hole, and it was during a little altercation between the now placable and gentle voice, sorry for its previous irritability, and the growling porter, that with all the power of an awakened recollection I recognised my old friend of student-days, David Holst, with whom I had lived three of the richest years of my youth.
GENERAL ACCOUNTS. J. B. McMaster, People of the United States, I. 525-604, II. 1-88; R. Hildreth, United States, IV. 25-410; J. Schouler, United States, I. 74-220; H. Von Holst, Constitutional History, I. 64- 111; T. Pitkin, Political and Civil History, II. 317-355; Gen. Tucker, United States, I. 384-503; J. S. Landon, Constitutional History, 97- 119; Bryant and Gay, Popular History, IV. 100-123.
Word Of The Day