John C. Calhoun

John C. Calhoun
United States Senator from South Carolina
In office 1845–1850
16th United States Secretary of State
In office April 1, 1844 – March 10, 1845
President	John Tyler
Preceded by	Abel P. Upshur
Succeeded by	James Buchanan
United States Senator from South Carolina
In office 1832–1844
7th Vice President of the United States
In office March 4, 1825 – December 28, 1832
President	John Quincy Adams Andrew Jackson
Preceded by	Daniel D. Tompkins
Succeeded by	Martin Van Buren
10th United States Secretary of War
In office October 8, 1817 – March 4, 1825
President	James Monroe
Preceded by	William H. Crawford
Succeeded by	James Barbour
Member of the United States House of Representatives
In office 1810–1817
Personal details
Born	(1782-03-18)March 18, 1782 Abbeville, South Carolina
Died	March 31, 1850(1850-03-31) (aged 68) Washington, D.C.
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic-Republican, Democratic, Nullifier
Spouse	Floride Colhoun Calhoun

John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was a leading United States Southern politician and political philosopher from South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century, at the center of the foreign policy and financial disputes of his age and best known as a spokesman for slavery, nullification, and the rights of electoral minorities, such as the Southern states.

After a short stint in the South Carolina legislature, where he wrote legislation making South Carolina the first state to adopt white manhood suffrage, Calhoun began his federal career as a staunch nationalist, favoring war with Britain in 1812 and a federal program of internal improvements afterwards. He reversed course in the 1820s, when the "Corrupt Bargain" of 1825 led him to renounce nationalism in favor of States Rights of the sort Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had propounded in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. Although he died a decade before the American Civil War broke out, Calhoun was a major inspiration to the secessionists who created the short-lived Confederate States of America. Nicknamed the "cast-iron man" for his staunch determination to defend the causes in which he believed, Calhoun pushed the theory of nullification, a states' rights theory under which states could declare null and void federal laws they deemed to be unconstitutional. He was an outspoken proponent of the institution of slavery, which he defended as a "positive good" rather than as a necessary evil. His rhetorical defense of slavery was partially responsible for escalating Southern threats of secession in the face of mounting abolitionist sentiment in the North.

He was part of the "Great Triumvirate", or the "Immortal Trio", along with his colleagues Daniel Webster and Henry Clay.

Calhoun held several high federal-government offices. He served as the seventh Vice President of the United States, first under John Quincy Adams (1825–1829) and then under Andrew Jackson (1829–1832), but resigned the Vice Presidency to enter the United States Senate, where he had more power. He served in the United States House of Representatives (1810–1817) and was Secretary of War (1817–1824) under James Monroe and Secretary of State (1844–1845) under John Tyler.

Early life

When his father became ill, the 17-year-old boy quit school to continue the farm. With his brothers' financial support, he returned to his studies, earning a degree from Yale College in 1804. After studying law at the Tapping Reeve Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut, Calhoun was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1807.

In January 1811 Calhoun married his first-cousin-once-removed, Floride Bonneau Calhoun, whose branch of the family spelled the surname differently than did his. The couple had 10 children over an 18-year period, although three died in infancy. During her husband's second term as vice president, Floride Calhoun was a central figure in the Petticoat Affair.

An 1822 portrait of John C. Calhoun

Early political career

In 1810, Calhoun was elected to Congress, and became one of the War Hawks who, led by Henry Clay, were agitating for what became the War of 1812 — no great innovation for Calhoun, who had made his public debut in calling for war after 1807's Chesapeake-Leopard incident. After the war, Calhoun and Clay sponsored a Bonus Bill for public works. With the goal of building a strong nation that could fight a future war, he aggressively pushed for high protective tariffs (to build up industry), a national bank, internal improvements, and many other policies he later repudiated.

In 1817, President James Monroe appointed Calhoun to be Secretary of War, where he served until 1825. As Belko (2004) argues, his management of Indian affairs proved his nationalism. His opponents were the "Old Republicans" in Congress, with their Jeffersonian ideology for economy in the federal government; they often attacked the operations and finances of the war department. Calhoun was a reform-minded executive, who attempted to institute centralization and efficiency in the Indian department, but Congress either failed to respond to his reforms or rejected them. Calhoun's frustration with congressional inaction, political rivalries, and ideological differences that dominated the late early republic spurred him to unilaterally create the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1824. Calhoun's nationalism also manifested itself in his advice to Monroe to sign off on the Missouri Compromise, which most other southern politicians saw as a distinctly bad deal; Calhoun believed that continued agitation of the slavery issue threatened the Union, so the Missouri dispute had to be concluded.

Vice Presidency

Election

Calhoun originally was a candidate for President in the election of 1824, but decided to set his sights on the vice presidency. Thus, while no candidate received a majority in the Electoral College and the election was ultimately resolved by the House of Representatives, Calhoun was elected Vice President in a landslide.

The Adams Administration

Calhoun believed that the outcome of the 1824 presidential election, in which the House made Adams president despite the greater popularity of Jackson, demonstrated that control of the federal government was subject to manipulation of selfish politicians. He, therefore, resolved to thwart Adams' reelection. Adams' nationalist program, which had much in common with Calhoun's former program, seemed to Calhoun calculated to further Clay's and Adams' political interests, so Calhoun opposed it. In 1828, he ran for reelection as the running mate of Andrew Jackson, and thus became one of two Vice Presidents to serve under two presidents (the other being George Clinton).

The Jackson Administration

His wife, Floride Calhoun

Under Andrew Jackson, Calhoun's Vice Presidency remained controversial. Once again, a rift developed between Calhoun and the President.

The Tariff of 1828, also known as the Tariff of Abominations aggravated the rift between Calhoun and the Jacksonians. He had been assured that Jacksonians would reject the bill, but Northern Jacksonians were primarily responsible for its passage. Frustrated, he returned to his South Carolina plantation to write South Carolina Exposition and Protest, an essay rejecting the nationalist philosophy he once advocated.

He now supported the theory of concurrent majority through the doctrine of nullification — that individual states could override federal legislation they deemed unconstitutional. Nullification traced back to arguments by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in writing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, which proposed that states could nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jackson, who supported states rights but believed that nullification threatened the Union, opposed it. The difference, however, between Calhoun's arguments and those of Jefferson and Madison, is that Calhoun explicitly argued for a state's right to secede from the Union, if necessary, instead of simply nullifying certain federal legislation.

At the 1830 Jefferson Day dinner at Jess Brown's Indian Queen Hotel (April 13, 1830), Jackson proposed a toast and proclaimed "Our federal Union, it must be preserved," to which Calhoun replied "the Union, next to our liberty, the most dear." In May 1830, the relationship between Jackson and Calhoun deteriorated further when Jackson discovered that Calhoun - while serving as Monroe's Secretary of War - had requested President Monroe to censure Jackson - at the time a General - for invading Spanish Florida in 1818 without authorization from either Calhoun or President Monroe during the Seminole War. Calhoun defended his 1818 request, stating it was the right thing to do. The feud between him and Jackson heated up as Calhoun informed the President that another attack from his opponents was not hard for others to see, and would have a series of argumentative letters sent to each other - fueled by Jackson's opponents - until Jackson stopped the correspondence in July 1830. By February, 1831, the break between Calhoun and Jackson was final after Calhoun - responding to inaccurate press reports about the feud - published the letters in the United States Telegram [1]. During the break, further damage was also done to Jackson and Calhoun's relationship after Floride Calhoun organized a coalition among Cabinet wives against Peggy Eaton, wife of Secretary of War John Eaton, after it was alleged that John and Peggy Eaton had engaged in an adulterous affair while Mrs. Eaton was still legally married to her first husband, John B. Timberlake - which allegedly drove Timberlake to suicide. The scandal which became known as the Petticoat Affair, or the Peggy Eaton Affair, resulted in the resignation of Jackson's Cabinet except for Secretary of State Martin Van Buren who would lead Jackson's new "Kitchen Cabinet."

Nullification Crisis

Sketch of John C. Calhoun

In 1832, the states rights theory was put to the test in the Nullification Crisis after South Carolina passed an ordinance that claimed to nullify federal tariffs. The tariffs favored Northern manufacturing interests over Southern agricultural concerns, and the South Carolina legislature declared them to be unconstitutional. John Calhoun had also formed a political party in South Carolina known as the Nullifier Party.

In response, Congress passed the Force Bill, which empowered the president to use military power to force states to obey all federal laws, and Jackson sent US Navy warships to Charleston Harbor. South Carolina then nullified the Force Bill. But tensions cooled after both sides agreed to the Compromise Tariff of 1833, a proposal by Senator Henry Clay to change the tariff law in a manner which satisfied Calhoun, who by then was in the Senate.

The humor in this is that Calhoun argued for the Doctrine of Nullification, which had gone as far as to suggest secession, anonymously, making his true opinions unknown to Jackson. Calhoun had written the 1828 doctrine South Carolina Exposition and Protest- which argued that a state could veto any law it considered unconstitutional [2]. The break between Jackson and Calhoun was complete, and, in 1832, Calhoun ran for the Senate rather than remain as Vice President; because he exposed his nullification beliefs during the nullification crisis, his chances of becoming President were very low [3]. After the Compromise Tariff of 1833 was put into effect, the Nullifier Party, along with other anti-Jackson politicians would form a coalition known as the Whig Party, which Calhoun would side with until he broke with key Whig party Senator Daniel Webster over slavery; Whig party leader Clay also would side with Webster over the slavery subject as well.

U.S. Senator and views on slavery

John C. Calhoun

On December 28, 1832, Calhoun accepted election to the United States Senate from his native South Carolina, becoming the first Vice President to resign from office in U.S. history. He would achieve his greatest influence and most lasting fame as a senator.

Calhoun led the pro-slavery faction in the Senate in the 1830s and 1840s, opposing both abolitionism and attempts to limit the expansion of slavery into the western territories. He was also a major advocate of the Fugitive Slave Law, which enforced the co-operation of Free States in returning escaping slaves.

Calhoun couched his defense of the institution of slavery in terms of (white male) Southerners' liberty and self-determination. And whereas other Southern politicians had excused slavery as a necessary evil, in a famous February 1837 speech on the Senate floor, Calhoun went further, asserting that slavery was a "positive good." He rooted this claim on two grounds—white supremacy and paternalism. All societies, Calhoun claimed, are ruled by an elite group which enjoys the fruits of the labor of a less-privileged group. But unlike in the North and Europe, in which the laboring classes were cast aside to die in poverty by the aristocracy when they became too old or sick to work, in the South slaves were cared for even when no longer useful:

Calhoun's home, Fort Hill, in Clemson, South Carolina.

"I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe—look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poorhouse."

Calhoun's fierce defense of slavery and support for the Slave Power played a major role in deepening the growing divide between the Northern and Southern states on this issue, wielding the threat of Southern secession to back slave-state demands.

After a one year break as Secretary of State, Calhoun returned to the Senate in 1845, participating in the epic Senate struggle over the expansion of slavery in the Western states that produced the Compromise of 1850. But his health deteriorated and he died in March 1850, of tuberculosis in Washington, D.C., at the age of 68, and was buried in St. Phillips Churchyard in Charleston, South Carolina.

John C. Calhoun in his final years.

Legacy

During the Civil War, the Confederate government honored Calhoun on a one-cent postage stamp, which was printed but never officially released (as seen below).

Calhoun was also honored by his alma mater, Yale University, which named one of its undergraduate residence halls "Calhoun College." (In recent years some students have called for the residence hall to be renamed, either by dropping the name of the slavery defender entirely or by hyphenating Calhoun's name with the name of a civil rights leader. Their efforts have not been successful, but the issue flares periodically.) The university also erected a statue of Calhoun in Harkness Tower, a prominent campus landmark.

Confederate postage stamp depicting John C. Calhoun.

Clemson University is also part of Calhoun's legacy. The campus occupies the site of Calhoun's Fort Hill plantation, which he bequeathed to his wife and daughter, who promptly sold it to a relative along with 50 slaves, receiving $15,000 for the 1100 acres and $29,000 for the slaves. When that owner died, Thomas Green Clemson foreclosed the mortgage as administrator of his mother-in-law's estate, thus regaining the property from his in-laws' widow. Clemson's chief claim to fame, prior to founding the university in his will, was having served as ambassador to Belgium — a post he obtained through the influence of his father-in-law, who was Secretary of State at the time. In 1888, after Calhoun's daughter had died, Clemson wrote a will bequeathing his father-in-law's former estate to South Carolina on the condition that it be used for an agricultural university to be named "Clemson." A nearby town named for Calhoun was renamed Clemson in 1943.

Calhoun is also the namesake for Calhoun Community College in Decatur, Alabama and Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, Minnesota. John C. Calhoun Drive, a well known street named after him, is located in Orangeburg, South Carolina. In 1957, United States Senators honored Calhoun as one of the "five greatest senators of all time."

Calhoun also has a landing on the Santee Cooper River in Santee, South Carolina named after him. Calhoun Monument stands in Charleston, South Carolina. Calhoun Street, a large thoroughfare in Charleston was also named after Calhoun and the USS John C. Calhoun was a Fleet Ballistic Missile nuclear submarine, under sail from 1963 to 1994.

Facts

• Calhoun was the first cousin of Joseph Calhoun and John Ewing Colhoun. He was also the son-in-law of John Ewing Colhoun having married his daughter Floride Bonneau Colhoun. This would make his wife also be his first cousin once removed. (see Cousin) Two other distant cousins of his are Andrew Pickens and Francis Wilkinson Pickens.
• Calhoun was the first Vice President of the United States to have his photo taken.
• Calhoun is one of only two vice presidents to resign from the vice presidency (Spiro T. Agnew being the other).
• Calhoun is one of only two vice presidents to serve in the United States cabinet after their vice presidency (Henry A. Wallace being the other).
• Calhoun was the last person re-elected to the vice presidency until Thomas Marshall's re-election more than eight decades later in 1916.

See also

• List of places named for John C. Calhoun
• Floride Calhoun
• John Quincy Adams
• Andrew Jackson
• The Petticoat Affair

References

Primary sources

• The Papers of John C. Calhoun Edited by Clyde N. Wilson; 28 volumes, University of South Carolina Press, 1959-2003. [4]; contains all letters, pamphlets and speeches by JCC and most letters written to him.
• speech in the Senate, January 13, 1834, -- "fanatics and madmen of the North"  "No, Sir, State rights are no more."
• speech on the bill to continue the charter of the Bank of the United States, March 21, 1834
• speech on the Senate floor September 18, 1837, on the bill authorizing an issue of Treasury Notes
• speech on his amendment to separate the Government and the banks, October 3, 1837
• reply to Clay March 10, 1838, the Clay-Calhoun debate -- "Whatever the Government receives and treats as money, is money"
• Slavery a Positive Good, speech on the Senate floor, February 6, 1837.
• Calhoun, John C. Ed. H. Lee Cheek, Jr. Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches (Conservative Leadership Series), 2003. ISBN 0-89526-179-0.
• Calhoun, John C. Ed. Ross M. Lence, Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, 1992. ISBN 0-86597-102-1.
• "Correspondence Addressed to John C. Calhoun, 1837-1849," Chauncey S. Boucher and Robert P. Brooks, eds., Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1929. 1931

Academic secondary sources

• Bartlett, Irving H. John C. Calhoun: A Biography (1993)
• Belko, William S. "John C. Calhoun and the Creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs: An Essay on Political Rivalry, Ideology, and Policymaking in the Early Republic." South Carolina Historical Magazine 2004 105(3): 170-197. ISSN 0038-3082
• Brown, Guy Story. "Calhoun's Philosophy of Politics: A Study of A Disquisition on Government"
• Capers; Gerald M. John C. Calhoun, Opportunist: A Reappraisal 1960.
• Capers Gerald M., "A Reconsideration of Calhoun's Transition from Nationalism to Nullification," Journal of Southern History, XIV (Feb., 1948), 34-48. online in JSTOR
• Cheek, Jr., H. Lee. Calhoun And Popular Rule: The Political Theory Of The Disquisition And Discourse. (2004) ISBN 0-8262-1548-3
• Ford Jr., Lacy K. Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860 (1988)
• Ford Jr., Lacy K. "Republican Ideology in a Slave Society: The Political Economy of John C. Calhoun, The Journal of Southern History. Vol. 54, No. 3 (Aug., 1988), pp. 405-424 in JSTOR
• Ford Jr., Lacy K. "Inventing the Concurrent Majority: Madison, Calhoun, and the Problem of Majoritarianism in American Political Thought," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 19-58 in JSTOR
• Gutzman, Kevin R. C., "Paul to Jeremiah: Calhoun's Abandonment of Nationalism," in _The Journal of Libertarian Studies_ 16 (2002), 3-33.
• Hofstadter, Richard. "Marx of the Master Class" in The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (1948)
• Niven, John. John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union (1988)
• Peterson, Merrill. The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (1987)
• Rayback Joseph G., "The Presidential Ambitions of John C. Calhoun, 1844-1848," Journal of Southern History, XIV (Aug., 1948), 331-56. online in JSTOR
• Wiltse, Charles M. John C. Calhoun, Nationalist, 1782-1828 (1944) ISBN 0-8462-1041-X; John C. Calhoun, Nullifier, 1829-1839 (1948); John C. Calhoun, Sectionalist, 1840-1859 (1951); the standard scholarly biography

External links

• United States Congress. "John C. Calhoun (id: C000044)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Works by John C. Calhoun at Project Gutenberg
• University of Virginia: John C. Calhoun - Timeline, quotes, & contemporaries, via University of Virginia
• John C. Calhoun House at Clemson University.
• Other images via The College of New Jersey: [5], [6], [7]
• Response to Calhoun's Disquisition
• Find-A-Grave profile for John C. Calhoun

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