Abstract

This study attempts to understand why and how the truth of certain fundamental principles of the American regime---that "all men are created equal," that government should be limited and republican, and that the object of government is a common good above all particular goods---came to be doubted by a significant number of Americans in the first half of the 19th century. The focus of the work is the political thought of John C. Calhoun, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster as presented in their works, speeches, papers, and letters. It concludes that Calhoun's commitment to preserving the southern slave culture as he found it and Jackson's commitment to democracy caused them to consciously depart from certain key principles of the Founders. Although Clay and Webster generally accepted and defended the principles of the Founders, they did so, respectively, from a positivistic and a traditionalistic philosophic position that could not adequately answer the challenge posed by Calhoun and Jackson, among others. The conclusion contrasts the statesmanship of these four men with that of Abraham Lincoln, who restored the American regime to its founding principles by rededicating the nation to the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence