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Georgia Genealogy Trails "Where your Journey Begins" |
Calhoun County, Georgia
Biography for
John Caldwell Calhoun
John
Caldwell Calhoun (pronounced /kælˈhuːn/; March 18, 1782 – March
31, 1850) was a leading politician and political theorist from South
Carolina during the first half of the 19th century. A powerful
intellect, Calhoun eloquently spoke out on every issue of his day, but
often changed positions. Calhoun began his political career as a
nationalist and proponent of protective tariffs; later, he switched to
states' rights, limited government, nullification and free trade. He is
best known for his intense and original defense of slavery as a
positive good, for his promotion of minority rights, and for pointing
the South toward secession from the Union.
Devoted to the principle of liberty and fearful of corruption, Calhoun built his reputation as a political theorist by his redefinition of republicanism to include approval of slavery and minority rights—with the white South the minority in question. To protect minority rights against majority rule he called for a "concurrent majority" whereby the minority could sometimes block offensive proposals. Increasingly distrustful of democracy, he minimized the role of the Second Party System in South Carolina. Calhoun's defense of slavery became defunct, but his concept of concurrent majority, whereby a minority has the right to object to or perhaps even veto hostile legislation directed against it, has been incorporated into the American value system.
He held several major political offices, carrying out terms in the House, Senate and vice presidency, as well as secretary of war and state. He usually affiliated with the Democrats, but flirted with the Whig Party and considered running for the presidency in 1824 and 1844. As a "war hawk" he agitated in Congress for the War of 1812 to defend American honor against Britain. As Secretary of War under President James Monroe he reorganized and modernized the War Department, building powerful permanent bureaucracies that ran the department, as opposed to patronage appointees.
Although Calhoun died nearly 10 years before the start of the American Civil War, he was an inspiration to the secessionists of 1860–61. Nicknamed the "cast-iron man" for his determination to defend the causes in which he believed, Calhoun supported states' rights and nullification, under which states could declare null and void federal laws which they held to be unconstitutional. He was an outspoken proponent of the institution of slavery, which he famously 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.
Calhoun was one of the "Great Triumvirate" or the "Immortal Trio" of Congressional leaders, along with his Congressional colleagues Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. In 1957, a Senate Committee selected Calhoun as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Robert La Follette, and Robert Taft.
Origins and early life
Calhoun was born on March 18, 1782, the fourth child of Patrick Calhoun and his wife Martha (née Caldwell). His father had joined the Scotch Irish immigration from County Donegal in Ulster to the backcountry of South Carolina, where he married Martha Caldwell.
When his father became ill, the 17-year-old Calhoun quit school to work on the family farm. With his brothers' financial support, he later returned to his studies, earning a degree from Yale College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1804. After studying law at the Tapping Reeve Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut, Calhoun was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1807.
Marriage and family
J. C. Calhoun's wife since 1811, Floride Calhoun, (1792–1866), was the daughter of South Carolina United States Senator and lawyer John E. Colhoun, (1750–1802).
In January 1811, Calhoun married Floride Bonneau Calhoun, a first cousin once removed. The couple had 10 children over 18 years; three died in infancy. Their children were:
1. Andrew Pickens Calhoun (1811-1865),
2. Floride Pure Calhoun (1814-1815),
3. Jane Calhoun (1816-1816),
4. Anna Maria Calhoun (1817-1875),
5. Elizabeth Calhoun (1819-1820),
6. Patrick Calhoun (1821-1858),
7. John Caldwell Calhoun, Jr. (1823-1855),
8. Martha Cornelia Calhoun (1824-1857),
9. James Edward Calhoun (1826-1861) and
10. William Lowndes Calhoun (1829-1858).
During her husband's second term as Vice President, Floride Calhoun was a central figure in the Petticoat affair. She was an active Episcopalian and Calhoun often accompanied her to church. However he never joined a church and rarely mentioned religion; a Presbyterian in his early life, historians believe he was closest to the informal Unitarianism typified by Thomas Jefferson.
War hawk
Calhoun was "a high-strung man of ultra intellectual cast,",[8] and unlike Henry Clay or Andrew Jackson was not noted for charisma or charm (except when dealing with women and children).[9][10] But he was a brilliant intellectual and orator and strong organizer. After his first election to Congress in 1810, he immediately became a leader of the "War Hawks," along with Speaker Henry Clay and South Carolina congressmen William Lowndes and Langdon Cheves. They disregarded European complexities in the wars between Napoleon and Britain, and brushed aside the vehement objections of New Englanders; they demanded war against Britain to preserve American honor and republican values.[11] Clay made Calhoun the acting chairman of the powerful committee on foreign affairs. On June 3, 1812, Calhoun's committee called for a declaration of war in ringing phrases. The episode spread Calhoun's fame nationwide. War—the War of 1812—was declared but it went very badly for the poorly organized Americans, whose ports were immediately blockaded by the British Royal Navy. Several attempted invasions of Canada were fiascos, but the U.S. did seize control of western Canada and broke the power of hostile Indians in battles in Canada and Alabama.
Calhoun labored to raise troops, to provide funds, to speed logistics, to improve the currency, and to regulate commerce to aid the war effort. Disasters on the battlefield made him double his legislative efforts to overcome the obstructionism of John Randolph of Roanoke and Daniel Webster and other opponents of the war. With Napoleon apparently gone, and the British invasion of New York defeated, peace was achieved on Christmas, 1814. Before that news reached New Orleans, a massive British invasion force was utterly defeated at the Battle of New Orleans, which made a national hero out of General Andrew Jackson. The mismanagement of the Army during the war distressed Calhoun, and he resolved to strengthen the War Department so it would never fail again.[12]
Nationalist
After the war, Calhoun and Clay sponsored a Bonus Bill for public works. With the goal of building a strong nation that could fight future wars, Calhoun aggressively pushed for high protective tariffs (to build up industry), a national bank, internal improvements (such as canals and ports), and many other nationalist policies he later repudiated.
Calhoun expressed his nationalism in advising Monroe to approve the Missouri Compromise, which most other Southern politicians saw as a distinctly bad deal. Calhoun believed that continued agitation on the slavery issue threatened the Union, so he wanted the Missouri dispute to be concluded.[citation needed]
John Quincy Adams concluded in 1821 that: "Calhoun is a man of fair and candid mind, of honorable principles, of clear and quick understanding, of cool self-possession, of enlarged philosophical views, and of ardent patriotism. He is above all sectional and factious prejudices more than any other statesman of this Union with whom I have ever acted."[14] Historian Charles Wiltse agrees, noting, "Though he is known today primarily for his sectionalism, Calhoun was the last of the great political leaders of his time to take a sectional position—later than Daniel Webster, later than Henry Clay, later than Adams himself."
An observer commented that Calhoun was "the most elegant speaker that sits in the House... His gestures are easy and graceful, his manner forcible, and language elegant; but above all, he confines himself closely to the subject, which he always understands, and enlightens everyone within hearing; having said all that a statesman should say, he is done." His talent for public speaking required systematic self-discipline and practice. A later critic noted the sharp contrast between his hesitant conversations and his fluent speaking styles, adding that Calhoun "had so carefully cultivated his naturally poor voice as to make his utterance clear, full, and distinct in speaking and while not at all musical it yet fell pleasantly on the ear."
Secretary of War: 1817–25
In 1817, President James Monroe appointed Calhoun Secretary of War, where he served until 1825. Calhoun continued his role as a leading nationalist during the "Era of Good Feeling". He proposed an elaborate program of national reforms to the infrastructure that would speed economic modernization. His first priority was an effective navy, including steam frigates, and in the second place a standing army of adequate size; and as further preparation for emergency "great permanent roads," "a certain encouragement" to manufactures, and a system of internal taxation which would not be subject like customs duties to collapse by a war-time shrinkage of maritime trade. He spoke for a national bank, for internal improvements (such as harbors, canals and river navigation) and a protective tariff that would help the industrial Northeast and, especially, pay for the expensive new infrastructure. The word "nation" was often on his lips, and his conscious aim was to enhance national unity which he identified with national power.
After the war ended in 1815 the "Old Republicans" in Congress, with their Jeffersonian ideology for economy in the federal government, sought at every turn to reduce the operations and finances of the War Department. In 1817, the deplorable state of the War Department led four men to turn down requests to fill the Secretary of War position before Calhoun finally accepted the task. Political rivalry, namely, Calhoun's political ambitions as well as those of William H. Crawford, the Secretary of the Treasury, over the pursuit of the 1824 presidency also complicated Calhoun's tenure as War Secretary.
Calhoun proposed an expansible army similar to that of France under Napoleon, whereby a basic cadre of 6,000 officers and men could be expanded into 11,000 without adding additional officers or companies. Congress wanted an army of adequate size in case American interests in Florida or the west led to war with Britain or Spain. However the nation was satisfied by the diplomacy that produced the Convention of 1818 with Britain and the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 with Spain, the need for a large army disappeared, and Calhoun could not prevent cutbacks in 1821.
As secretary, Calhoun had responsibility for management of Indian affairs. A reform-minded modernizer, he attempted to institute centralization and efficiency in the Indian department, but Congress either failed to respond to his reforms or responded with hostility. 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. He supervised the negotiation and ratification of 38 treaties with Indian tribes.
Vice Presidency Election
Vice president John C. Calhoun
Calhoun originally was a candidate for President of the United States in the election of 1824. After failing to win the endorsement of the South Carolina legislature, he decided to be a candidate for Vice President. As no presidential candidate received a majority in the Electoral College, the election was ultimately resolved by the House of Representatives. Calhoun was elected Vice President in a landslide. Calhoun served four years under Adams, and then, in 1828, won re-election as Vice President running with Andrew Jackson.
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 Andrew Jackson, demonstrated that control of the federal government was subject to manipulation by Adams and Henry Clay. Calhoun resolved to thwart Adams and Clay's nationalist program. He opposed it even as he held office with them.[citation needed] In 1828, Calhoun ran for reelection as the running mate of Andrew Jackson. He thus became one of two vice presidents to serve under two presidents
Nullification
Under Andrew Jackson, Calhoun's vice presidency was also controversial. In time he developed a rift over policy with President Jackson, this time about hard cash, a policy which he considered to favor Northern financial interests. Calhoun opposed the Tariff of 1828 (also known as the Tariff of Abominations.) Calhoun had been assured that Jacksonians would reject the bill, but Northern Jacksonians were primarily responsible for its passage. Frustrated, Calhoun returned to his South Carolina plantation to write "South Carolina Exposition and Protest", an essay rejecting the nationalist philosophy he once advocated.
Calhoun proposed the theory of a concurrent majority through the doctrine of nullification—"the right of a State to interpose, in the last resort, in order to arrest an unconstitutional act of the General Government, within its limits." Nullification can be traced back to arguments by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in writing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. They had proposed that states could nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Jackson, who supported states' rights but believed that nullification threatened the Union, opposed it. Calhoun differed from Jefferson and Madison in explicitly arguing for a state's right to secede from the Union, if necessary, instead of simply nullifying certain federal legislation. James Madison rebuked supporters of nullification, stating that no state had the right to nullify federal law.
At the 1830 Jefferson Day dinner at Jesse Brown's Indian Queen Hotel, Jackson proposed a toast and proclaimed, "Our federal Union, it must be preserved." Calhoun replied, "the Union, next to our liberty, the most dear."
In May 1830, Jackson discovered that Calhoun had asked President Monroe to censure then-General Jackson for his invasion of Spanish Florida in 1818. Calhoun was then serving as James Monroe's Secretary of War (1817–1823). Jackson had invaded Florida during the Seminole War without explicit public authorization from Calhoun or Monroe. Calhoun's and Jackson's relationship deteriorated further.
Calhoun defended his 1818 position. The feud between him and Jackson heated up as Calhoun informed the President that he risked another attack from his opponents. They started an argumentative correspondence, fueled by Jackson's opponents, until Jackson stopped the letters in July 1830.
By February 1831, the break between Calhoun and Jackson was final. Responding to inaccurate press reports about the feud, Calhoun had published the letters in the United States Telegraph.
More upheaval came when his wife Floride Calhoun organized Cabinet wives against Peggy Eaton, wife of Secretary of War John Eaton. The scandal, which became known as the "Petticoat affair" or the "Peggy Eaton affair", ripped apart the cabinet and created an intolerable situation for Jackson. Jackson saw attacks on Eaton stemming ultimately from the political opposition of Calhoun, and he used the affair to consolidate control over his cabinet, forcing the resignation of several members and ending Calhoun's influence in the cabinet.
Nullification crisis
Sketch of John C. Calhoun
In 1832, states' rights theory was put to the test in the Nullification Crisis, after South Carolina passed an ordinance that nullified federal tariffs. The tariffs favored northern manufacturing interests over southern agricultural concerns. The South Carolina legislature declared them unconstitutional. Calhoun had formed a political party in South Carolina explicitly known as the Nullifier Party.
In response to the South Carolina move, Congress passed the Force Bill, which empowered the President to use military power to force states to obey all federal laws. Jackson sent US Navy warships to Charleston harbor. South Carolina then nullified the Force Bill. 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.
Calhoun had earlier suggested that the doctrine of nullification could lead to secession. In his 1828 essay "South Carolina Exposition and Protest", Calhoun argued that a state could veto any law it considered unconstitutional.
U.S. Senator
John C. Calhoun, painted by Rembrandt Peale, 1834
With his break with Jackson complete, in 1832, Calhoun ran for the Senate rather than continue as Vice President. Because he had expressed nullification beliefs during the crisis, his chances of becoming President were very low. After the Compromise Tariff of 1833 was implemented, the Nullifier Party, along with other anti-Jackson politicians, formed a coalition known as the Whig Party. Calhoun sided with the Whigs until he broke with key Whig Senator Daniel Webster over slavery, as well as the Whigs' program of "internal improvements". Many Southern politicians opposed these as improving Northern industrial interests at the expense of Southern interests. Whig Party leader Henry Clay sided with Daniel Webster on these issues. Calhoun was the first vice president in U.S. history to resign from office (Spiro Agnew did so in 1973). He achieved his greatest influence and most lasting fame as a Senator.
Slavery
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.[citation needed] He was a major advocate of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, which required the co-operation of local law enforcement officials in free states to return escaped slaves.
Whereas other Southern politicians had excused slavery as a necessary evil, in a famous February 1837 speech on the Senate floor, Calhoun asserted 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.
Calhoun's home, Fort Hill, on the grounds that became part of Clemson University, in Clemson, South Carolina.
In that speech, he stated: "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."
After a one-year service as Secretary of State (April 1, 1844 – March 10, 1845), Calhoun returned to the Senate in 1845. He participated in the epic political struggle over the expansion of slavery in the Western states. Regions were divided as to whether slavery should be allowed in the formerly Imperial Spanish and Mexican lands. The debate over this issue culminated in the Compromise of 1850.
Democratic politics
To restore his national stature, Calhoun cooperated with Jackson's successor Martin Van Buren, who became president in 1837. Democrats were very hostile to national banks, and the country's bankers had joined the opposition Whig Party. The Democratic replacement was the "Independent Treasury" system, which Calhoun supported and which went into effect. Calhoun, like Jackson and Van Buren, attacked finance capitalism, which he saw as the common enemy of the Northern laborer, the Southern planter, and the small farmer everywhere. His goal, therefore, was to unite these groups in the Democratic Party, and to dedicate that party to states' rights and agricultural interests as barriers against encroachment by government and big business.
Foreign policy
When Whig president William Henry Harrison died after a month in office in 1841, vice president John Tyler took office. Tyler was a former Democrat and broke bitterly with the Whigs, and named Calhoun Secretary of State in 1844. Public opinion was inflamed about the Oregon country, claimed by both Britain and the U.S. Calhoun compromised by splitting the area down the middle at the 49th parallel, ending the war threat.
Texas
Tyler and Calhoun were eager to annex the independent Republic of Texas, which wanted to join the Union. Texas was slave country and anti-slavery elements in the North denounced annexation as a plot to enlarge the Slave Power (that is, the excess political power controlled by slave owners). When the Senate could not muster a two-thirds vote to pass a treaty of annexation with Texas, Calhoun devised a joint resolution of the Houses of Congress, requiring only a simple majority; Texas joined the Union. Mexico had warned all along that it would go to war if Texas joined the Union; war broke out in 1846.
The evils of war and political parties
Calhoun was consistently opposed to the war with Mexico from its very beginning, arguing that an enlarged military effort would only feed the alarming and growing lust of the public for empire regardless of its constitutional dangers, bloat executive powers and patronage, and saddle the republic with a soaring debt that would disrupt finances and encourage speculation. Calhoun feared, moreover, that Southern slave owners would be shut out of any conquered Mexican territories (as almost happened with the Wilmot Proviso).
Anti-slavery Northerners denounced the war as a Southern conspiracy to expand slavery; Calhoun saw a conspiracy of Yankees to destroy the South. By 1847 he decided the Union was threatened by a totally corrupt party system. He believed that in their lust for office, patronage and spoils, politicians in the North pandered to the antislavery vote, especially during presidential campaigns, and politicians in the slave states sacrificed Southern rights in an effort to placate the Northern wings of their parties. Thus, the essential first step in any successful assertion of Southern rights had to be the jettisoning of all party ties. In 1848–49, Calhoun tried to give substance to his call for Southern unity. He was the driving force behind the drafting and publication of the "Address of the Southern Delegates in Congress, to Their Constituents." It listed the alleged Northern violations of the constitutional rights of the South, then warned southern voters to expect forced emancipation of slaves in the near future, followed by their complete subjugation by an unholy alliance of unprincipled Northerners and blacks, and a South forever reduced to "disorder, anarchy, poverty, misery, and wretchedness." Only the immediate and unflinching unity of Southern whites could prevent such a disaster. Such unity would either bring the North to its senses or lay the foundation for an independent South. But the spirit of union was still strong in the region and fewer than 40% of the southern congressmen signed the address, and only one Whig.
Southerners believed his warnings and read every political news story from the North as further evidence of the planned destruction of the southern way of life. The climax was the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860, which led immediately to the secession of South Carolina, followed by six other cotton states. They formed the new Confederate States of America, which, in accord with Calhoun's theory, did not have any political parties.
Slavery
Calhoun was shaped by his own father, Patrick Calhoun, a prosperous upstate planter who supported the Revolutionary War but opposed ratification of the federal Constitution. The father was a staunch slaveholder who taught his son that one's standing in society depended not merely on one's commitment to the ideal of popular self-government but also on the ownership of a substantial number of slaves. Flourishing in a world in which slaveholding was a badge of civilization, Calhoun saw little reason to question its morality as an adult. He never visited Europe. Calhoun believed that the spread of slavery into the back country of his own state improved public morals by ridding the countryside of the shiftless poor whites who had once held the region back. He further believed that slavery instilled in the white who remained a code of honor that blunted the disruptive potential of private gain and fostered the civic-mindedness that lay near the core of the republican creed. From such a standpoint, the expansion of slavery into the backcountry decreased the likelihood for social conflict and postponed the declension when money would become the only measure of self worth, as had happened in New England. Calhoun was thus firmly convinced that slavery was the key to the success of the American dream.
On February 6, 1837, Calhoun took the floor of the Senate to declare that slavery was a "positive good." Senator William Rives of Virginia earlier had referred to slavery as an evil that might become a "lesser evil" in some circumstances. Calhoun believed that conceded too much to the abolitionists: "I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—-a positive good... I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other." A year later in the Senate (January 10, 1838), Calhoun repeated this defense of slavery as a "positive good": "Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world."[33] Calhoun rejected the belief of Southern Whigs such as Henry Clay that all Americans could agree on the "opinion and feeling" that slavery was wrong, although they might disagree on the most practicable way to respond to that great wrong. Calhoun's constitutional ideas acted as a viable conservative alternative to Northern appeals to democracy, majority rule and natural rights.
Rejects Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850, devised by Clay and Democratic leader Stephen Douglas, was designed to solve the controversy over the status of slavery in the vast new territories acquired from Mexico. Calhoun, back in the Senate but too feeble to speak, wrote a blistering attack on the compromise. A friend read his speech, calling upon the Constitution, which upheld the South's right to hold slaves; warning that the day "the balance between the two sections" was destroyed would be a day not far removed from disunion, anarchy, and civil war. Could the Union be preserved? Yes, easily; the North had only to will it to accomplish it; to agree to a restoration of the lost equilibrium of equal North–South representation in the Senate; and to cease "agitating" the slavery question. Calhoun had precedent and law on his side of the debate. But the North had time and rapid population growth due to industrialization, and the Compromise was passed.
Death
Grave of John C. Calhoun, St. Philip's Church yard, Charleston, South Carolina, 1865
Calhoun died in Washington, D.C. in March 1850 of tuberculosis, at the age of 68. He was buried in St. Philip's Church yard in Charleston, South Carolina.
Calhoun's fierce defense of states' rights and support for the Slave Power had influence beyond his death. Southern supporters drew from his thought in the growing divide between Northern and Southern states on this issue. They wielded the threat of Southern secession to back slave state demands.
Source: Wikipedia
Devoted to the principle of liberty and fearful of corruption, Calhoun built his reputation as a political theorist by his redefinition of republicanism to include approval of slavery and minority rights—with the white South the minority in question. To protect minority rights against majority rule he called for a "concurrent majority" whereby the minority could sometimes block offensive proposals. Increasingly distrustful of democracy, he minimized the role of the Second Party System in South Carolina. Calhoun's defense of slavery became defunct, but his concept of concurrent majority, whereby a minority has the right to object to or perhaps even veto hostile legislation directed against it, has been incorporated into the American value system.
He held several major political offices, carrying out terms in the House, Senate and vice presidency, as well as secretary of war and state. He usually affiliated with the Democrats, but flirted with the Whig Party and considered running for the presidency in 1824 and 1844. As a "war hawk" he agitated in Congress for the War of 1812 to defend American honor against Britain. As Secretary of War under President James Monroe he reorganized and modernized the War Department, building powerful permanent bureaucracies that ran the department, as opposed to patronage appointees.
Although Calhoun died nearly 10 years before the start of the American Civil War, he was an inspiration to the secessionists of 1860–61. Nicknamed the "cast-iron man" for his determination to defend the causes in which he believed, Calhoun supported states' rights and nullification, under which states could declare null and void federal laws which they held to be unconstitutional. He was an outspoken proponent of the institution of slavery, which he famously 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.
Calhoun was one of the "Great Triumvirate" or the "Immortal Trio" of Congressional leaders, along with his Congressional colleagues Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. In 1957, a Senate Committee selected Calhoun as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Robert La Follette, and Robert Taft.
Origins and early life
Calhoun was born on March 18, 1782, the fourth child of Patrick Calhoun and his wife Martha (née Caldwell). His father had joined the Scotch Irish immigration from County Donegal in Ulster to the backcountry of South Carolina, where he married Martha Caldwell.
When his father became ill, the 17-year-old Calhoun quit school to work on the family farm. With his brothers' financial support, he later returned to his studies, earning a degree from Yale College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1804. After studying law at the Tapping Reeve Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut, Calhoun was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1807.
Marriage and family
J. C. Calhoun's wife since 1811, Floride Calhoun, (1792–1866), was the daughter of South Carolina United States Senator and lawyer John E. Colhoun, (1750–1802).
In January 1811, Calhoun married Floride Bonneau Calhoun, a first cousin once removed. The couple had 10 children over 18 years; three died in infancy. Their children were:
1. Andrew Pickens Calhoun (1811-1865),
2. Floride Pure Calhoun (1814-1815),
3. Jane Calhoun (1816-1816),
4. Anna Maria Calhoun (1817-1875),
5. Elizabeth Calhoun (1819-1820),
6. Patrick Calhoun (1821-1858),
7. John Caldwell Calhoun, Jr. (1823-1855),
8. Martha Cornelia Calhoun (1824-1857),
9. James Edward Calhoun (1826-1861) and
10. William Lowndes Calhoun (1829-1858).
During her husband's second term as Vice President, Floride Calhoun was a central figure in the Petticoat affair. She was an active Episcopalian and Calhoun often accompanied her to church. However he never joined a church and rarely mentioned religion; a Presbyterian in his early life, historians believe he was closest to the informal Unitarianism typified by Thomas Jefferson.
War hawk
Calhoun was "a high-strung man of ultra intellectual cast,",[8] and unlike Henry Clay or Andrew Jackson was not noted for charisma or charm (except when dealing with women and children).[9][10] But he was a brilliant intellectual and orator and strong organizer. After his first election to Congress in 1810, he immediately became a leader of the "War Hawks," along with Speaker Henry Clay and South Carolina congressmen William Lowndes and Langdon Cheves. They disregarded European complexities in the wars between Napoleon and Britain, and brushed aside the vehement objections of New Englanders; they demanded war against Britain to preserve American honor and republican values.[11] Clay made Calhoun the acting chairman of the powerful committee on foreign affairs. On June 3, 1812, Calhoun's committee called for a declaration of war in ringing phrases. The episode spread Calhoun's fame nationwide. War—the War of 1812—was declared but it went very badly for the poorly organized Americans, whose ports were immediately blockaded by the British Royal Navy. Several attempted invasions of Canada were fiascos, but the U.S. did seize control of western Canada and broke the power of hostile Indians in battles in Canada and Alabama.
Calhoun labored to raise troops, to provide funds, to speed logistics, to improve the currency, and to regulate commerce to aid the war effort. Disasters on the battlefield made him double his legislative efforts to overcome the obstructionism of John Randolph of Roanoke and Daniel Webster and other opponents of the war. With Napoleon apparently gone, and the British invasion of New York defeated, peace was achieved on Christmas, 1814. Before that news reached New Orleans, a massive British invasion force was utterly defeated at the Battle of New Orleans, which made a national hero out of General Andrew Jackson. The mismanagement of the Army during the war distressed Calhoun, and he resolved to strengthen the War Department so it would never fail again.[12]
Nationalist
After the war, Calhoun and Clay sponsored a Bonus Bill for public works. With the goal of building a strong nation that could fight future wars, Calhoun aggressively pushed for high protective tariffs (to build up industry), a national bank, internal improvements (such as canals and ports), and many other nationalist policies he later repudiated.
Calhoun expressed his nationalism in advising Monroe to approve the Missouri Compromise, which most other Southern politicians saw as a distinctly bad deal. Calhoun believed that continued agitation on the slavery issue threatened the Union, so he wanted the Missouri dispute to be concluded.[citation needed]
John Quincy Adams concluded in 1821 that: "Calhoun is a man of fair and candid mind, of honorable principles, of clear and quick understanding, of cool self-possession, of enlarged philosophical views, and of ardent patriotism. He is above all sectional and factious prejudices more than any other statesman of this Union with whom I have ever acted."[14] Historian Charles Wiltse agrees, noting, "Though he is known today primarily for his sectionalism, Calhoun was the last of the great political leaders of his time to take a sectional position—later than Daniel Webster, later than Henry Clay, later than Adams himself."
An observer commented that Calhoun was "the most elegant speaker that sits in the House... His gestures are easy and graceful, his manner forcible, and language elegant; but above all, he confines himself closely to the subject, which he always understands, and enlightens everyone within hearing; having said all that a statesman should say, he is done." His talent for public speaking required systematic self-discipline and practice. A later critic noted the sharp contrast between his hesitant conversations and his fluent speaking styles, adding that Calhoun "had so carefully cultivated his naturally poor voice as to make his utterance clear, full, and distinct in speaking and while not at all musical it yet fell pleasantly on the ear."
Secretary of War: 1817–25
In 1817, President James Monroe appointed Calhoun Secretary of War, where he served until 1825. Calhoun continued his role as a leading nationalist during the "Era of Good Feeling". He proposed an elaborate program of national reforms to the infrastructure that would speed economic modernization. His first priority was an effective navy, including steam frigates, and in the second place a standing army of adequate size; and as further preparation for emergency "great permanent roads," "a certain encouragement" to manufactures, and a system of internal taxation which would not be subject like customs duties to collapse by a war-time shrinkage of maritime trade. He spoke for a national bank, for internal improvements (such as harbors, canals and river navigation) and a protective tariff that would help the industrial Northeast and, especially, pay for the expensive new infrastructure. The word "nation" was often on his lips, and his conscious aim was to enhance national unity which he identified with national power.
After the war ended in 1815 the "Old Republicans" in Congress, with their Jeffersonian ideology for economy in the federal government, sought at every turn to reduce the operations and finances of the War Department. In 1817, the deplorable state of the War Department led four men to turn down requests to fill the Secretary of War position before Calhoun finally accepted the task. Political rivalry, namely, Calhoun's political ambitions as well as those of William H. Crawford, the Secretary of the Treasury, over the pursuit of the 1824 presidency also complicated Calhoun's tenure as War Secretary.
Calhoun proposed an expansible army similar to that of France under Napoleon, whereby a basic cadre of 6,000 officers and men could be expanded into 11,000 without adding additional officers or companies. Congress wanted an army of adequate size in case American interests in Florida or the west led to war with Britain or Spain. However the nation was satisfied by the diplomacy that produced the Convention of 1818 with Britain and the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 with Spain, the need for a large army disappeared, and Calhoun could not prevent cutbacks in 1821.
As secretary, Calhoun had responsibility for management of Indian affairs. A reform-minded modernizer, he attempted to institute centralization and efficiency in the Indian department, but Congress either failed to respond to his reforms or responded with hostility. 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. He supervised the negotiation and ratification of 38 treaties with Indian tribes.
Vice Presidency Election
Vice president John C. Calhoun
Calhoun originally was a candidate for President of the United States in the election of 1824. After failing to win the endorsement of the South Carolina legislature, he decided to be a candidate for Vice President. As no presidential candidate received a majority in the Electoral College, the election was ultimately resolved by the House of Representatives. Calhoun was elected Vice President in a landslide. Calhoun served four years under Adams, and then, in 1828, won re-election as Vice President running with Andrew Jackson.
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 Andrew Jackson, demonstrated that control of the federal government was subject to manipulation by Adams and Henry Clay. Calhoun resolved to thwart Adams and Clay's nationalist program. He opposed it even as he held office with them.[citation needed] In 1828, Calhoun ran for reelection as the running mate of Andrew Jackson. He thus became one of two vice presidents to serve under two presidents
Nullification
Under Andrew Jackson, Calhoun's vice presidency was also controversial. In time he developed a rift over policy with President Jackson, this time about hard cash, a policy which he considered to favor Northern financial interests. Calhoun opposed the Tariff of 1828 (also known as the Tariff of Abominations.) Calhoun had been assured that Jacksonians would reject the bill, but Northern Jacksonians were primarily responsible for its passage. Frustrated, Calhoun returned to his South Carolina plantation to write "South Carolina Exposition and Protest", an essay rejecting the nationalist philosophy he once advocated.
Calhoun proposed the theory of a concurrent majority through the doctrine of nullification—"the right of a State to interpose, in the last resort, in order to arrest an unconstitutional act of the General Government, within its limits." Nullification can be traced back to arguments by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in writing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. They had proposed that states could nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Jackson, who supported states' rights but believed that nullification threatened the Union, opposed it. Calhoun differed from Jefferson and Madison in explicitly arguing for a state's right to secede from the Union, if necessary, instead of simply nullifying certain federal legislation. James Madison rebuked supporters of nullification, stating that no state had the right to nullify federal law.
At the 1830 Jefferson Day dinner at Jesse Brown's Indian Queen Hotel, Jackson proposed a toast and proclaimed, "Our federal Union, it must be preserved." Calhoun replied, "the Union, next to our liberty, the most dear."
In May 1830, Jackson discovered that Calhoun had asked President Monroe to censure then-General Jackson for his invasion of Spanish Florida in 1818. Calhoun was then serving as James Monroe's Secretary of War (1817–1823). Jackson had invaded Florida during the Seminole War without explicit public authorization from Calhoun or Monroe. Calhoun's and Jackson's relationship deteriorated further.
Calhoun defended his 1818 position. The feud between him and Jackson heated up as Calhoun informed the President that he risked another attack from his opponents. They started an argumentative correspondence, fueled by Jackson's opponents, until Jackson stopped the letters in July 1830.
By February 1831, the break between Calhoun and Jackson was final. Responding to inaccurate press reports about the feud, Calhoun had published the letters in the United States Telegraph.
More upheaval came when his wife Floride Calhoun organized Cabinet wives against Peggy Eaton, wife of Secretary of War John Eaton. The scandal, which became known as the "Petticoat affair" or the "Peggy Eaton affair", ripped apart the cabinet and created an intolerable situation for Jackson. Jackson saw attacks on Eaton stemming ultimately from the political opposition of Calhoun, and he used the affair to consolidate control over his cabinet, forcing the resignation of several members and ending Calhoun's influence in the cabinet.
Nullification crisis
Sketch of John C. Calhoun
In 1832, states' rights theory was put to the test in the Nullification Crisis, after South Carolina passed an ordinance that nullified federal tariffs. The tariffs favored northern manufacturing interests over southern agricultural concerns. The South Carolina legislature declared them unconstitutional. Calhoun had formed a political party in South Carolina explicitly known as the Nullifier Party.
In response to the South Carolina move, Congress passed the Force Bill, which empowered the President to use military power to force states to obey all federal laws. Jackson sent US Navy warships to Charleston harbor. South Carolina then nullified the Force Bill. 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.
Calhoun had earlier suggested that the doctrine of nullification could lead to secession. In his 1828 essay "South Carolina Exposition and Protest", Calhoun argued that a state could veto any law it considered unconstitutional.
U.S. Senator
John C. Calhoun, painted by Rembrandt Peale, 1834
With his break with Jackson complete, in 1832, Calhoun ran for the Senate rather than continue as Vice President. Because he had expressed nullification beliefs during the crisis, his chances of becoming President were very low. After the Compromise Tariff of 1833 was implemented, the Nullifier Party, along with other anti-Jackson politicians, formed a coalition known as the Whig Party. Calhoun sided with the Whigs until he broke with key Whig Senator Daniel Webster over slavery, as well as the Whigs' program of "internal improvements". Many Southern politicians opposed these as improving Northern industrial interests at the expense of Southern interests. Whig Party leader Henry Clay sided with Daniel Webster on these issues. Calhoun was the first vice president in U.S. history to resign from office (Spiro Agnew did so in 1973). He achieved his greatest influence and most lasting fame as a Senator.
Slavery
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.[citation needed] He was a major advocate of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, which required the co-operation of local law enforcement officials in free states to return escaped slaves.
Whereas other Southern politicians had excused slavery as a necessary evil, in a famous February 1837 speech on the Senate floor, Calhoun asserted 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.
Calhoun's home, Fort Hill, on the grounds that became part of Clemson University, in Clemson, South Carolina.
In that speech, he stated: "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."
After a one-year service as Secretary of State (April 1, 1844 – March 10, 1845), Calhoun returned to the Senate in 1845. He participated in the epic political struggle over the expansion of slavery in the Western states. Regions were divided as to whether slavery should be allowed in the formerly Imperial Spanish and Mexican lands. The debate over this issue culminated in the Compromise of 1850.
Democratic politics
To restore his national stature, Calhoun cooperated with Jackson's successor Martin Van Buren, who became president in 1837. Democrats were very hostile to national banks, and the country's bankers had joined the opposition Whig Party. The Democratic replacement was the "Independent Treasury" system, which Calhoun supported and which went into effect. Calhoun, like Jackson and Van Buren, attacked finance capitalism, which he saw as the common enemy of the Northern laborer, the Southern planter, and the small farmer everywhere. His goal, therefore, was to unite these groups in the Democratic Party, and to dedicate that party to states' rights and agricultural interests as barriers against encroachment by government and big business.
Foreign policy
When Whig president William Henry Harrison died after a month in office in 1841, vice president John Tyler took office. Tyler was a former Democrat and broke bitterly with the Whigs, and named Calhoun Secretary of State in 1844. Public opinion was inflamed about the Oregon country, claimed by both Britain and the U.S. Calhoun compromised by splitting the area down the middle at the 49th parallel, ending the war threat.
Texas
Tyler and Calhoun were eager to annex the independent Republic of Texas, which wanted to join the Union. Texas was slave country and anti-slavery elements in the North denounced annexation as a plot to enlarge the Slave Power (that is, the excess political power controlled by slave owners). When the Senate could not muster a two-thirds vote to pass a treaty of annexation with Texas, Calhoun devised a joint resolution of the Houses of Congress, requiring only a simple majority; Texas joined the Union. Mexico had warned all along that it would go to war if Texas joined the Union; war broke out in 1846.
The evils of war and political parties
Calhoun was consistently opposed to the war with Mexico from its very beginning, arguing that an enlarged military effort would only feed the alarming and growing lust of the public for empire regardless of its constitutional dangers, bloat executive powers and patronage, and saddle the republic with a soaring debt that would disrupt finances and encourage speculation. Calhoun feared, moreover, that Southern slave owners would be shut out of any conquered Mexican territories (as almost happened with the Wilmot Proviso).
Anti-slavery Northerners denounced the war as a Southern conspiracy to expand slavery; Calhoun saw a conspiracy of Yankees to destroy the South. By 1847 he decided the Union was threatened by a totally corrupt party system. He believed that in their lust for office, patronage and spoils, politicians in the North pandered to the antislavery vote, especially during presidential campaigns, and politicians in the slave states sacrificed Southern rights in an effort to placate the Northern wings of their parties. Thus, the essential first step in any successful assertion of Southern rights had to be the jettisoning of all party ties. In 1848–49, Calhoun tried to give substance to his call for Southern unity. He was the driving force behind the drafting and publication of the "Address of the Southern Delegates in Congress, to Their Constituents." It listed the alleged Northern violations of the constitutional rights of the South, then warned southern voters to expect forced emancipation of slaves in the near future, followed by their complete subjugation by an unholy alliance of unprincipled Northerners and blacks, and a South forever reduced to "disorder, anarchy, poverty, misery, and wretchedness." Only the immediate and unflinching unity of Southern whites could prevent such a disaster. Such unity would either bring the North to its senses or lay the foundation for an independent South. But the spirit of union was still strong in the region and fewer than 40% of the southern congressmen signed the address, and only one Whig.
Southerners believed his warnings and read every political news story from the North as further evidence of the planned destruction of the southern way of life. The climax was the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860, which led immediately to the secession of South Carolina, followed by six other cotton states. They formed the new Confederate States of America, which, in accord with Calhoun's theory, did not have any political parties.
Slavery
Calhoun was shaped by his own father, Patrick Calhoun, a prosperous upstate planter who supported the Revolutionary War but opposed ratification of the federal Constitution. The father was a staunch slaveholder who taught his son that one's standing in society depended not merely on one's commitment to the ideal of popular self-government but also on the ownership of a substantial number of slaves. Flourishing in a world in which slaveholding was a badge of civilization, Calhoun saw little reason to question its morality as an adult. He never visited Europe. Calhoun believed that the spread of slavery into the back country of his own state improved public morals by ridding the countryside of the shiftless poor whites who had once held the region back. He further believed that slavery instilled in the white who remained a code of honor that blunted the disruptive potential of private gain and fostered the civic-mindedness that lay near the core of the republican creed. From such a standpoint, the expansion of slavery into the backcountry decreased the likelihood for social conflict and postponed the declension when money would become the only measure of self worth, as had happened in New England. Calhoun was thus firmly convinced that slavery was the key to the success of the American dream.
On February 6, 1837, Calhoun took the floor of the Senate to declare that slavery was a "positive good." Senator William Rives of Virginia earlier had referred to slavery as an evil that might become a "lesser evil" in some circumstances. Calhoun believed that conceded too much to the abolitionists: "I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—-a positive good... I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other." A year later in the Senate (January 10, 1838), Calhoun repeated this defense of slavery as a "positive good": "Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world."[33] Calhoun rejected the belief of Southern Whigs such as Henry Clay that all Americans could agree on the "opinion and feeling" that slavery was wrong, although they might disagree on the most practicable way to respond to that great wrong. Calhoun's constitutional ideas acted as a viable conservative alternative to Northern appeals to democracy, majority rule and natural rights.
Rejects Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850, devised by Clay and Democratic leader Stephen Douglas, was designed to solve the controversy over the status of slavery in the vast new territories acquired from Mexico. Calhoun, back in the Senate but too feeble to speak, wrote a blistering attack on the compromise. A friend read his speech, calling upon the Constitution, which upheld the South's right to hold slaves; warning that the day "the balance between the two sections" was destroyed would be a day not far removed from disunion, anarchy, and civil war. Could the Union be preserved? Yes, easily; the North had only to will it to accomplish it; to agree to a restoration of the lost equilibrium of equal North–South representation in the Senate; and to cease "agitating" the slavery question. Calhoun had precedent and law on his side of the debate. But the North had time and rapid population growth due to industrialization, and the Compromise was passed.
Death
Grave of John C. Calhoun, St. Philip's Church yard, Charleston, South Carolina, 1865
Calhoun died in Washington, D.C. in March 1850 of tuberculosis, at the age of 68. He was buried in St. Philip's Church yard in Charleston, South Carolina.
Calhoun's fierce defense of states' rights and support for the Slave Power had influence beyond his death. Southern supporters drew from his thought in the growing divide between Northern and Southern states on this issue. They wielded the threat of Southern secession to back slave state demands.
Source: Wikipedia
