I must admit that I'm no fan of John C. Calhoun, even if he did start out as a nationalist and was a Whig at one time.
I get sick and tired of the Lincoln bashing some conservatives engage in even as they extol the Republican party as the "historic house" of American conservatism. It's also hypocritical for fans of George Papadopoulos, Rafael Trujillo, and similar characters to call Abraham Lincoln a "tyrant."
If the South had not seceded nothing would have happened. Lincoln was not elected to implement "big government" but to thwart the extension of slavery from where it already existed to areas where it did not. At the time it looked as though slavery was going to spread to every state and territory in the Union, and the Slavocrats certainly were no supporters of "states' rights" with their Fugitive Slave Law. People who praise the Old South as a paragon of decentralism are either ignorant or dishonest. The mere fact that a non-extentionist had been elected to the White House set off a childish hissy fit in which seven states seceded before the man had ever even taken office.
Conservatives today tend to forget that Lincoln was simply an heir of Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists (which included our first two Presidents). It was the proponents of implied powers who were the original conservatives, while the strict constructionists were assumed to be Jacobinical atheists who were ready to confiscate and burn Bibles at a moment's notice. It really is amazing how ignorant of history some conservatives can be.
It's also forgotten that many Northerners supported the Confederacy and many Southerners supported the Union men. Southern Unionists are the forgotten heroes of American history. And I should know, since I'm descended from some of them.
The real tragic result of the Civil War (never mentioned by anyone) was that it led to the idea that amendments to the Federal Constitution should alter state laws. Up until this time such amendments affected the Federal Constitution alone, as was intended. Since that time, almost every proposed amendment wants to prevent states from doing so-and-so or force them to do such-and-such.
The Thirteenth Amendment was absolutely necessary to get rid of slavery since the original Constitution gave it ironclad protection. BUT--the trouble was it didn't end there. One may argue that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were also necessary, but they were a response to a unique situation--the slave status of an American population group that had been here almost since the beginning, quite literally among the oldest Americans. It would have been better had the states themselves repealed any strictly racial bars to voting (and meant it rather that letting it be a dead letter) but there was no way this was going to happen. The Fourteenth Amendment had the unhappy result of applying the Federal Bill of Rights to the states, which is why the First Amendment now prevents prayer before high school football games. The point is, Blacks were among the oldest and most "American" of all population groups but they were enslaved. Instead of seeing it this way, Blacks have been regarded by the right and celebrated by the left as the "ultimate aliens"--beings so inherently "un-American" that space aliens look like Anglo-Saxons in comparison.
After these initial Reconstruction Amendments all such attempts to amend state constitutions at the federal level should have come to an end--but they did not. The Blaine Amendment is often discussed here on FR. The Blaine Amendment (which was never passed) would have forbidden states from giving state money to "sectarian" schools (the target was Catholic parochial schools). There was simply no excuse for such an amendment; it was the unique Reconstruction situation being regularized. And unfortunately that has been the story from that time to this.
Nowadays conservatives advocate a federal amendment for each and every bad Supreme Court decision. Such decisions are based on a misuse of the Fourteenth Amendment and the idea of repealing every single horrific Supreme Court ruling one amendment at a time is ludicrous. For one, it assumes the correctness of that Court's authority to apply the Bill of Rights against the states. For another, this tactic will lead to a literally infinite number of amendments. Much better to merely amend the Fourteenth Amendment or remove the SC's jurisdiction over the states in some other way.
Okay . . . I think that's all I wanted to say.
+1
Forgive me if I misunderstand you, but you apparently characterize Hamilton and the Federalists as "original conservatives" and strict constitutionalists as "Jacobian atheists." That doesn't make sense to me. I see no problem with your comment that Lincoln was the heir of Hamilton and the Federalists. Indeed he was.
Re Hamilton. Hamilton certainly used the implied powers argument. But was Hamilton, the monarchist and proponent of a very strong central government, conservative? He certainly publicly advocated passage of the Constitution after the Constitutional Convention. But during the Constitution Convention Hamilton proposed that the Constitution should form a government patterned after the British government. That was less radical a change than what the other delegates favored and in that sense might be considered conservative in a relative sense.
Here is a link to Hamilton's handwritten proposal for the Constitution that his grandson gave to the New York City Public Library: Link. His proposed Constitution does not seem conservative to me. Hamilton proposed that the president be elected be elected by a series of electors and serve for life. He could only be removed/impeached if convicted of a crime or misdemeanor Hamilton's president would have an absolute veto over laws passed by the legislature.
In Hamilton's Constitution, Senators would also serve for life, and they could also be removed or impeached. Hamilton proposed that the governors or presidents of states be appointed by the central government. Those governors or presidents of states would also have an absolute veto over state legislation.
The book, "Miracle at Philadelphia" by Catherine Drinker Bowen, says summarizes some of what Hamilton said to the Convention in presenting his proposed Constitution:
... why should we fear an elective monarch for life more than one for seven years? Were not the governors of the states elective monarchs? Hamilton's own notes for his speech went even further. "The monarch must have proportional strength," he had written. "He ought to be hereditary and have so much power that it will not be his interest to risk much to acquire more. The advantage of a monarch is this -- he is above corruption."
That sounds like a government that could easily and quickly become tyrannical and despotic over the people.
Re the Federalists. The Federalists passed the Sedition Act that prohibited criticizing the government or the president. Once signed by the Federalist president John Adams, the Federalists used the Sedition Act to jail their political opponents and critics. Fortunately, the Federalists soon faded as a political party but did retain a hold on the judicial system for many years. So much for free speech under the Federalists.
Back to Lincoln. As president, Lincoln kept his Congress out of session for months while he unconstitutionally assumed powers of the Judicial and Legislative branches of government and acted without Constitutional constraints. He did that without Congress in session to object to his actions and nobody but Taney and a few other judges in the judicial system to try to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law (which judges Lincoln simply ignored). In fact, Lincoln's minions jailed one judge and held another under house arrest. With respect to freedom of speech, Lincoln and his administration and military jailed newspaper publishers, writers, city officers, state legislators, and critics of his policies. A number of them were held for more than a year without charges. All of that sounds very much like the immense powers of the president in Hamilton's proposed Constitution. That's conservatism?
Look around and see if you can identify any current-day philosophical descendants of Hamilton and the Federalists or even Lincoln. Ask yourself whether such persons are considered conservative or liberal?
What "states' right" gives states the right to block the federal government from enforcing a provision of the Constitution with the Fugitive Slave Law? Even Lincoln thought the Constitution demanded a fugitive slave law [Link]:
"We must not disturb slavery in the states where it exists, because the Constitution, and the peace of the country both forbid us -- We must not withhold an efficient fugitive slave law, because the Constitution demands it."
States' rights are most commonly seen as stemming from the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The basis for the Fugitive Slave Law is, of course, Article IV, Section 2, paragraph 3 of the Constitution, which all states agreed to. So, the "right" to recover fugitive slaves would appear to have been delegated to the Federal Government, as both Lincoln (above) and the Supreme Court (e.g., Prigg v. Pennsylvania) understood. It is thus not a states' right to thwart the Fugitive Slave Law.