Keeping in mind that although a French term, egalitarian thought was evident at the time of Plato, the Apostles, and all the way through the dark ages.
You hark en to Jackson, who was not an egalitarian by any stretch.
As posted earlier, I think Calhoun's speech of 1848 shows more than anything else his and other Southerner's opposition to political egalitarianism that was being thrust into the discussion of new territorial law and exacerbating the political unrest of the period. He said so in this passage:
I have, on all proper occasions, endeavored to call the attention of both the two great parties which divided the country to adopt some measure to prevent so great a disaster, but without success. The agitation has been permitted to proceed with almost no attempt to resist it, until it has reached a point when it can no longer be disguised or denied that the Union is in danger. You have thus had forced upon you the greatest and gravest question that can ever come under your consideration: How can the Union be preserved?
Mr. Calhoun's comments were directed toward his fellow Congressmen's efforts to make important decisions on territorial and state laws based on their impressions of slavery rather than the more important and fundamental protections of liberty that he recognized as the prime responsibility of his government. He addressed the ongoing confusion of leaders engendered by the egalitarian ideas expressed in the DOI but not embodied in the Constitution.
He refers to egalitarian ideas embodied in legislative actions based on:
a proposition which originated in a hypothetical truism, but which, as now expressed and now understood, is the most false and dangerous of all political error. The proposition to which I allude has become an axiom in the minds of a vast majority on both sides of the Atlantic, and is repeated daily, from tongue to tongue, as an established and incontrovertible truth; it is, that “all men are born free and equal.” I am not afraid to attack error, however deeply it may be intrenched, or however widely extended, whenever it becomes my duty to do so, as I believe it to be on this subject and occasion.
In pointing out this, Mr. Calhoun was exposing the cultural and social fallacies of the phrase "all men are born free and equal". That explanation has its roots in Plato's discussions on the relationship of the individual to the state. It would seem that Calhoun read Plato, and Hegel; as well as most assuredly Aquinas, Locke and Hobbes.
Practically every one of these thinkers rejected the concepts of government by democracy and that egalitarianism should guide political action. Although embodied in social interactions, especially certain religious movements, liberty was always valued over equality by some that understood the value of our constitution.
He said in this speech:
Instead, then, of all men having the same right to liberty and equality, as is claimed by those who hold that they are all born free and equal, liberty is the noble and highest reward bestowed on mental and moral development, combined with favorable circumstances. Instead, then, of liberty and equality being born with man; instead of all men and all classes and descriptions being equally entitled to them, they are prizes to be won, and are in their most perfect state, not only the highest reward that can be bestowed on our race, but the most difficult to be won and when won, the most difficult to be preserved.
In your research, have you found anyone that understood the fundamental concept of liberty and its total underpinning of government any more thorough than Calhoun?
It's not wrong to say that egalitarianism came in with Jackson, and that kind of egalitarian or democratic or populist attitude as been as common in the South (within the given racial or ethnic constraints of the day).
So Calhoun's belief that people aren't born free, and aren't endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and don't have equal rights to liberty provides the "the fundamental concept of liberty and its total underpinning of government"? Strange. Bizarre.
I recognize that there are complexities here (technically free men aren't born, dependent children are; freedom has to be fought for and won, and can be lost if one is unworthy of it; etc), but in no way is Calhoun a friend of human rights or liberty as most of us understand it today.
PeaRidge, if you continue to defend slavery in any way, shape or form, however surreptitiously, however sneakily, however slyly, I will recommend your posts be deleted, and you banned forever from FREE Republic, pal.
Yes, historically, slavery was legal and constitutional, but it is morally indefensible, especially on FREE Republic.
Don't go there, don't go anywhere near it.