(See Cover)
The necessary consequence of taking the sense of the community by the concurrent majority is . . . to give to each interest or portion of the community a negative on the others. It is this mutual negative among its various conflicting interests, which invests each with the power of protecting itself;—and places the rights and safety of each, where only they can be securely placed, under its own guardianship. Without this there can be no systematic, peaceful, or effective resistance to the natural tendency of each to come into conflict with the others; and without this there can be no Constitution. It is this negative power—the power of preventing or arresting the action of the government . . . which, in fact, forms the Constitution . . . and the positive which makes the government. The one is the power of acting—and the other the power of preventing or arresting action. The two, combined, make constitutional government.
—John C. Calhoun
"It was a terrible fight," said Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, resting briefly in Washington after a 2,245-mile campaign in the broiling Florida sun.
Russell won, 357,072 to 281,162, but in such a way as to underline the near-hopelessness of his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. His votes came from those parts of Florida that are still the South—from the piney woods, the swamps, the celery plantations and the cattle ranches. The other Florida—the big cities where ex-Northerners live—went for Estes Kefauver, who may have from four to seven of the state's 24 convention votes. Florida showed that Russell is the candidate of the South; outside the South, he has almost no support and plenty of bitter opposition. There is no lesson of American politics clearer than that such a sectional candidacy has little chance of winning the presidency.
A few days after his Florida victory, Russell's campaign got another boost—with another reverse twist that emphasized its hopelessness. Alabama's Senators Sparkman and Hill, who are Fair Dealers and not members of the Southern bloc, endorsed him. But in so doing they said: "He has always remained loyal [to the party] and may be counted on to do so in the future." In politics, this is like saying that the endorsee can be counted on not to steal a red-hot stove. Sparkman and Hill are not so much interested in promoting Russell's candidacy as in discouraging another walkout of Southern Democrats. They are probably right in predicting that Russell will remain loyal. The significant fact, however, is that Russell himself refuses to say flatly that he will abide by the convention decision. The farthest he will go is: "I don't foresee anything that will cause me to leave the party. But I'm not going to take any paralyzed oath not to bolt."