Summer History & Heritage — #6 (week of July 18)

Students & friends, our Tuesday/Thursday Christian Almanac sketches for July are as
follows: July 5 & 7 — 12 & 14 — 19 & 21 — 26 & 28. Below are some of my weekly
questions and answers.
July 5 — Andrew Jackson
“Having considered it with that solemn regard to the principles of the Constitution which
the day was calculated to inspire, and come to the conclusion that it ought not to
become a law, I herewith return it to the Senate. . .with my objections.” Thus wrote this
U.S. President, nicknamed “Old Hickory,” in 1832 when he vetoed the Bank Renewal
Bill, by which Congress sought to extend the life of a federal financial institution whose
doubtful constitutionality and privileged economic status troubled the chief executive?

July 7 — 476 AD
Historians have generally used this year in the 5th-century AD to mark the so-called
fall of the Roman Empire (at least in western Europe)? That’s when the Germanic
warlord Odoacer marched his legions into Rome and took over the imperial palace with
almost no resistance. What’s typically billed as a “fall” was more like a gradual fading of
the political reality of empire (with ebbs and flows), but the ideal of a great confederation
of autonomous kingdoms, under imperial protection, lasted for over a thousand years.

statesman — (from July 2011 Chronicles magazine)
This political term, says historian Clyde Wilson, describes one who “must be
something of a prophet–one who has an historical perspective and says what he
believes to be true and in the best long-range interest of the people, whether it is
popular or not”? Wilson contrasts this with a mere politician (all we get these days),
someone who “says and does whatever he thinks will get or keep him in power” and
whose sense of history is dictated by opinion polls and campaign contributions.

John C. Calhoun — (from July 2011 Chronicles magazine)
A descendant of immigrants from Northern Ireland, this South Carolinian (1782-1850) served at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including the Vice Presidency and the Senate, for 40 years and proved himself one of our most brilliant political thinkers?
Written in his final months, his magnum opus, A Disquisition on Government, makes a
vital distinction between society and government, the latter (government) existing only
by virtue of the consent of and for the preservation of the former (society).

Nullification — (from July 2011 Chronicles magazine)
If secession, however regrettable, is the ultimate expression of the states’ rights school
of the American tradition, the penultimate is this political act? What it entails, in brief,
is a state’s disavowal of a Federal law in its jurisdiction (for constitutional reasons)
pending some workable resolution of the conflict by both the Federal Government and
the States. Calhoun may have been its supreme advocate, but Jefferson and Madison
set forth the basic idea in their Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798).