John C. Calhoun (1782 to 1850) was an American lawyer and statesman, one of the key political figures of the Antebellum Era. Initially a nationalist, Calhoun spent his early career trying to strengthen and modernize the federal government, but by the 1830s, he had become a strong advocate for states' rights and slavery, leading South Carolina into the Nullification Crisis (1832 to 33). Calhoun served as vice president under two different presidents and spent decades in Congress, where he became recognized as part of the 'Great Triumvirate' of influential US congressmen alongside Henry Clay (1777 to 1852) and Daniel Webster (1782 to 1852). He played a major role in uniting the American South behind the institution of slavery – which he referred to as the 'peculiar institution' – in the decades prior to the American Civil War (1861 to 1865).

John Caldwell Calhoun was born in the Abbeville District of South Carolina on 18 March 1782. He was the fourth of five children born to Patrick Calhoun, a Scotch-Irish immigrant, and his second wife, Martha Caldwell. He was named after his maternal uncle, Major John Caldwell, who had been murdered by Tories (Americans loyal to Britain) a few months earlier. There were no schools in the South Carolina backcountry where Calhoun grew up, leaving him isolated and practically illiterate for most of his childhood. Then, in 1795, the 13-year-old Calhoun was sent to an academy in Georgia run by his brother-in-law, Moses Waddel; though the academy was discontinued shortly thereafter, Calhoun gained access to Waddel's vast library and spent much of his time reading. After his father's death, Calhoun returned home to help manage the family farm. He often plowed the fields himself, working alongside the family's slaves, and spent his free time reading, hunting, and fishing. In the autumn of 1802, Calhoun went to New Haven, Connecticut, to study at Yale College, financed by his older brothers. He was a diligent student who made friends easily, and, in September 1804, he graduated with distinction.

The following year, he began reading law in Litchfield, Connecticut, and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1807. He returned to his home district of Abbeville, where he opened a lucrative law practice and rode the circuit of county courts. Unlike other frontier lawyers like his future colleague Henry Clay, Calhoun took no joy in riding the court circuit; solemn and disciplined, Calhoun "rarely, if ever, swore, smoked, drank, or jested" (Peterson, 24). He was respected in his community and was elected to the state legislature in 1808. During his brief stint, he began courting his first cousin, Floride Bonneau Calhoun (1792 to 1866), from afar. Having first met Floride during his time in New England, Calhoun began periodically sending her letters and communicating through her mother, who was anxious to make the best match for her daughter. They were married outside Charleston in January 1811 and would ultimately have ten children. That same year, he was elected to the US House of Representatives and left South Carolina for the national capital of Washington, D.C., to take his seat in the fateful Twelfth Congress.

As the Twelfth Congress convened in November 1811, the United States was inching closer to war with the United Kingdom. For years now, Britain had imposed restrictions on American trade, which the Royal Navy enforced by seizing American vessels and impressing thousands of American sailors into service – for many Americans, this affront to US national sovereignty could not go unanswered. This was the opinion of a small yet vocal group of freshman congressmen who demanded war with Britain. Known as the 'War Hawks', this clique asserted its dominance over the Twelfth Congress by electing its leader, Henry Clay of Kentucky, as Speaker of the House. Clay, in turn, appointed 29-year-old Calhoun to the House Foreign Relations Committee, where he soon became acting chairman. In this capacity, Calhoun became one of the most vocal War Hawks, eagerly working to advance Clay's bellicose agenda. In a report issued on 1 June 1812, Calhoun urged the "free born sons of America" to fight to preserve the "liberty which our fathers gave us", denouncing the "mad ambition" and "unbounded tyranny" of the British. Shortly after the issuance of Calhoun's report, Congress voted to go to war, sparking the War of 1812 (1812 to 1815).

During the conflict, Calhoun worked tirelessly to raise troops and funds for the war effort, constantly fending off attacks from anti-war congressmen like Daniel Webster. Calhoun was so committed to the war effort that one colleague called him "the young Hercules who carried the war on his shoulders" (quoted in Peterson, 18). This hard work paid off – hostilities ended in 1815 after General Andrew Jackson (1767 to 1845) and his ragtag army defeated a superior British force at the Battle of New Orleans (8 January). To be sure, the war was already over by then – the Treaty of Ghent, signed on 24 December 1814, had restored the prewar borders – but Jackson's victory at New Orleans gave Americans a new sense of national self-confidence, helping to usher in a decade of political stability and nationalism known as the Era of Good Feelings. Calhoun, caught up in this postwar fervor, soon became one of the loudest nationalist voices in Congress. In 1816, he supported the allocation of federal funds for internal improvement projects like roads and canals, championed protective tariffs, and was instrumental in passing the bill that established a national bank, the Second Bank of the United States.

As one observer remarked, Calhoun was "the most elegant speaker that sits in the House…his gestures are easy and graceful, his manner forcible, and language elegant" (quoted in Jewett, 143). In 1817, President James Monroe (served 1817 to 1825) selected Calhoun as his Secretary of War. Calhoun used this position to strengthen the army and modernize the navy. In 1818, he denounced General Jackson's controversial invasion of Spanish Florida. Calhoun claimed that neither he nor Monroe had ordered the invasion and urged the president to disavow Jackson's conduct and even court-martial him to avoid conflict with Spain; the situation was resolved the next year, when Spain ceded Florida to the US. In 1820, Calhoun supported the Missouri Compromise, which temporarily diffused the sectional crisis over the issue of slavery. The compromise prohibited slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel, effectively solidifying the distinction between the 'free states' of the North and the 'slave states' of the South.

More than any of his contemporaries, Calhoun wanted desperately to be president, an ambition that would continually elude him. His first presidential bid came in 1824, when he joined the crowded, five-way race between John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and William H. Crawford. After failing to win the endorsement of the South Carolina legislature, Calhoun realized he did not have the necessary support. He withdrew his candidacy and instead let his name be put forward for the office of vice president. Calhoun easily won election, carrying 182 electoral votes, but the presidential race was too close to call and was ultimately handed off to be decided by the House of Representatives. Adams was finally declared the winner, and he and Calhoun were inaugurated on 4 March 1825. However, when Adams appointed Clay as secretary of state, Calhoun felt betrayed – traditionally, the State Department was seen as a stepping stone to the presidency, leading Calhoun to suspect that Adams was implicitly acknowledging Clay as his successor.

In addition to this personal slight, the shifting political climate in Calhoun's home state of South Carolina helped isolate him from the administration. In 1825, the price of cotton in South Carolina dropped from 32 cents a pound to only 13 cents a pound. Frustrated cotton producers blamed the high protective tariff policies implemented by Adams, accusing these tariffs of benefiting New England manufacturers at the expense of Southern planters. Furthermore, many of these same South Carolinians were angry about the restrictions on slavery imposed by the Missouri Compromise, believing that Congress should not be allowed to interfere with the institution. Calhoun, who had previously supported the tariffs and the Missouri Compromise, was put in an awkward position – ultimately, he chose to satisfy his political base, distancing himself from both the Adams administration and his prior nationalist convictions. By 1826, he was writing anonymous essays attacking Adams, and, in June, he offered his support to Jackson for another presidential run. As historian Daniel Walker Howe puts it, "Calhoun could still hope to become Jackson's heir, if not Adams's" (251).

Jackson accepted Calhoun's support, and, in the election of 1828, they beat Adams and his new running mate, Richard Rush. On 4 March 1829, Jackson was inaugurated, and Calhoun became the second man to serve as vice president under two different presidents (George Clinton having been the first). But it would not take long for Calhoun to run afoul of this president as well. In 1829, his wife, Floride Calhoun, refused to associate with Peggy Eaton, wife of the Secretary of War, due to Mrs. Eaton's reputation as an adulteress. Soon, the wives of other cabinet secretaries followed Floride's lead, and the Eatons found themselves isolated in Washington. Jackson sided with the Eatons and ordered his cabinet members to control their wives. But when the women of Washington continued to snub Peggy Eaton, Jackson grew enraged, feeling as though he had lost control of his cabinet. This scandal, called the Petticoat Affair, was settled by Martin Van Buren (1782 to 1862), who arranged for the entire cabinet to resign en masse so that Jackson could start fresh.

Van Buren sought to succeed Jackson as president – to achieve this goal, however, he needed Calhoun out of the way. By 1831, he decided to turn Jackson against the vice president, convincing him that the Calhouns had purposefully instigated the Petticoat Affair to undermine Jackson's administration. To support this claim, Van Buren produced the letters from Calhoun's time as secretary of war, in which he had condemned Jackson's conduct in Florida. This was all the proof Jackson needed that his vice president was against him. "I have this moment," he said, " proves Calhoun a villain" (quoted in Howe, 341). From that moment, Calhoun lost influence in the administration. In an attempt to get revenge on Van Buren, Calhoun cast a tie-breaking vote that blocked his nomination for minister to Great Britain. This backfired, however, as it only seemed to confirm the notion that Calhoun was opposed to Jackson's agenda.

Finding himself isolated, Calhoun turned his focus back to South Carolina, which was still struggling financially. Cotton prices had continued to fall, with many planters blaming their misfortunes on the Tariff of 1828, which they referred to as the 'Tariff of Abominations'. Calhoun felt the pressure from his home state to do something, with some radicals even pushing for secession if the tariff were not repealed. In late 1828, Calhoun wrote an anonymous treatise entitled South Carolina Exposition and Protest, in which he laid out a plan to force the lowering of the tariff. According to Calhoun, each state was a sovereign polity, bound to the Union only through mutual agreement. Should the federal government pass an unjust law – like the Tariff of Abominations – it was within each state's rights to declare that law 'null and void' within its own borders. This political theory, called 'nullification', was Calhoun's attempt to assert states' rights without resorting to secession, although he did countenance secession as a last resort. In 1831, after his fallout with Jackson, Calhoun went public with his views in an address written from his Fort Hill plantation. In it, he denies the federal judiciary as the sole arbiter of the Constitution and argues that states' rights must serve as a check on the otherwise "unlimited and despotic" power of the federal government (quoted in Howe, 399).

Calhoun's 'Fort Hill Address' caused an uproar across the country. If proven, the theory of nullification could be a major tool for the advancement of states' rights, particularly regarding the protection of slavery. If South Carolina could successfully nullify the tariff, then any Southern state could nullify a federal law that restricted their 'peculiar institution'. On 24 November 1832, South Carolina held a 'Nullification Convention' in which it proclaimed the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 to be unconstitutional, and that it would not be lawful to "enforce payment of duties imposed by the said acts within the limits of this state" (quoted in Howe, 404). In December, Calhoun resigned from the vice presidency in favor of filling a US Senate seat, so he could fight for nullification in Congress. President Jackson, however, was not about to have his authority tested. At his urging, Congress passed the Force Bill on 2 March 1833, which would allow Jackson to use military force to uphold federal authority in South Carolina. In the end, no such coercion was necessary; Clay and Calhoun agreed to the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which would gradually lower tariff rates until they reached 1816 levels.

After the Nullification Crisis, Calhoun continued to oppose Jackson from the Senate. In 1834, he denounced Jackson's attempt to kill the Second Bank of the United States by removing federal funds and depositing them in loyal 'pet' banks, believing this was an overreach of executive authority – on 28 March 1834, he joined with senators from the newly formed Whig Party to vote to censure the president. Jackson clearly still considered his former vice president to be a thorn in his side; when, at the end of his presidency in 1837, he was asked if he had any regrets, Jackson replied, "I regret I was unable to shoot Henry Clay or to hang John C. Calhoun" (quoted in senate.gov). Calhoun refused to attend the inauguration of Van Buren in 1837, although he constantly aligned himself with the policies of Van Buren's Democratic Party.

By this point, Calhoun had finished his transformation from a nationalist to a champion of states' rights, with a particular focus on protecting slavery. On 6 February 1837, Calhoun made an address to the Senate in which he denied the traditional Jeffersonian notion that slavery was an unfortunate institution that must some day be rectified; instead, he argued that slavery was a 'positive good' not only for the masters but also for the slaves themselves. "I hold that in the present state of civilization," he declared, "where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences as well as intellectual, are brought together…is instead of an evil, a good" (quoted in Howe, 480). The abolition of slavery would lead not only to race conflict, he said, but class conflict as well, as it would open the door to unregulated industrial capitalism. "There is and always has been in an advanced stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital," he said, arguing that slavery, "exempts us from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict" (ibid).

These ideas soon turned Calhoun into a leader of the proslavery movement in Congress. His efforts to unite the American South behind the preservation of their 'peculiar institution' helped heighten sectional tensions in the years before the Civil War. In 1844, President John Tyler (served 1841 to 1845) chose Calhoun as his next secretary of state, hoping that Calhoun could help him finish negotiations for the annexation of Texas. However, Calhoun's association with the slavery issue proved problematic; the question of Texas' annexation suddenly became a question of adding another 'slave state' to the Union. Nevertheless, Congress narrowly approved a resolution offering annexation to Texas, which Tyler signed shortly before leaving office in March 1845. Texas' admission to the Union increased tensions with Mexico, leading to the Mexican-American War (1846 to 1848), which Calhoun opposed, fearing that the conflict would degrade White supremacy in the United States by adding non-White citizens to the country.

In February 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War, forcing Mexico to cede 529,000 square miles (1,370,103 km²) of land to the US. This reignited the sectional crisis, as Congress argued whether slavery should be allowed to expand into these new territories. Calhoun, of course, opposed any restrictions on the expansion of slavery. Dying of tuberculosis and too weak to speak for himself, Calhoun wrote a speech that his friend James Mason of Virginia read out to the Senate on 4 March 1850. In it, Calhoun argued against the admission of California as a 'free state', claiming that such an act would ruin the "equilibrium between the two sections" (quoted in McPherson, 72). He claimed that the "aggression" of the North was destroying Southern institutions and, unless things were reversed, the Southern states could not "remain in the Union consistently with their honor and safety" (ibid).

He opposed the Compromise of 1850, proposed by Clay and Stephen A. Douglas (1813 to 1861), although he would not live to see its passage. On 31 March 1850, Calhoun died at his boarding house in Washington, at the age of 68. As if anticipating the bloodshed of the Civil War, he uttered his final words: "The South! The poor South!" Calhoun left behind an enigmatic legacy. Initially a nationalist who dreamt of bettering the Union, he became a fierce supporter of states' rights and Southern slavery. He did as much as any single individual to bring on the Civil War. Shortly after the war, poet Walt Whitman (1819 to 1892) claimed to have heard a Union soldier say:

I have seen Calhoun's monument… It is the desolated, ruined South; nearly the whole generation of young men between seventeen and fifty destroyed or maim'd; all the old families used up—the rich impoverish'd, the plantations cover'd with weeds…all that is Calhoun's real monument.

(Whitman, 54)