John Caldwell Calhoun March 18, 1782–March 31, 1850 South Carolina Genealogy Trails Transcribed from many sources by Dena Whitesell

John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782–March 31, 1850), was a prominent United States politician who was born on a small plantation in Abbeville County, South Carolina.. His father, Patrick Calhoun, is said to have been born in Donegal, in North Ireland, but to have left Ireland when a small child. The family seems to have emigrated first to Pennsylvania, leaving after Braddock's defeat, to Western Virginia. From Virginia they removed in 1756 to South Carolina settling on Long Cane Creek, in Granville (now Abbeville) county. Patrick Calhoun attained some prominence in the colony, serving in the colonial legislature, and afterwards in the state legislature, and taking part in the War of Independence. In 1770 he had married Martha Caldwell (her being from Charleston, South Carolina), the daughter of another Scottish-Irish settler.

John Calhoun had the opportunity to study under his brother-in-law, the Rev. Moses Waddell (1770-1840), a Presbyterian minister, who afterwards, from 1819 to 1829, was president of the University of Georgia. In 1802 Calhoun entered the junior class in Yale College, and graduated with distinction in 1804. He then studied first at the famous law school in Litchfield, Conn., and afterwards in a law office in Charleston, S.C., and in 1807 was admitted to the bar. He began practice in his native Abbeville district, and soon took a leading place in his profession. In 1808 and 1809 he was a member of the South Carolina legislature, and from 1811 to 1817 was a member of the national House of Representatives.

Calhoun also served as Secretary of State, Secretary of War, and the seventh Vice President. His party affiliation was Democratic-Republican.

After one year in the state House of Representatives, he served from 1811 to 1817 in the U.S. House of Representatives. He became a leader of the "war hawks" and along with Henry Clay, agitated for what became the War of 1812. After the war, he proposed a Bonus Bill for public works. In 1817 he was appointed Secretary of War under James Monroe.

From 1817 to 1825 Calhoun was secretary of war under President Monroe. To him is due the fostering and the reformation of the National Military Academy at West Point, which he found in disorder, but left in a most efficient state. Calhoun was vice-president of the United States from 1825 to 1832, during the administration of John Quincy Adams, and during most of the first administration of Andrew Jackson.

After the election of 1824, Calhoun became Vice President under John Quincy Adams. He soon broke with Adams and the National Republicans, who seemed to favor northern interests. He developed his theory of nullification that states (or minorities) could nullify federal legislation, based on the fact that individual states had ratified the Constitution. The nullification crisis of South Carolina almost degenerated into violence, but coercion by US Navy warships in Charleston averted a secession.

He also became Andrew Jackson's running mate in the election of 1828, and again was Vice President. Jackson opposed the idea of nullification and said in a famous toast, "Our federal Union—it must and shall be preserved." In Calhoun's toast, he replied, "Our Union; next to our liberties most dear." A rift soon developed between Calhoun and Jackson, exacerbated by the Eaton Affair.

On December 28, 1832 he became the first Vice President to resign from office, having accepted election to the United States Senate from his native South Carolina. The Force Bill was proposed by Congress prohibiting states from nullifying federal laws. The Compromise of 1833 settled the matter for a number of years.

Calhoun tried to gag abolitionist press in the U.S. South, which became federal law in 1841 as the 21st Rule. In 1844 he was reappointed Secretary of State by John Tyler. Calhoun returned to the Senate in 1848 and died March 31, 1850 in Washington, DC. He was buried in St. Phillips Churchyard in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1957, United States Senators honored Calhoun as one of the "five greatest senators of all time".

War Hawks were those people in the United States prior to the War of 1812 who favored westward expansion and supported a war against Britain to achieve this. The War Hawks were mostly young members of Congress, primarily from southern and western states, and notably included Speaker of the House Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

The Bonus Bill of 1817 was a bill introduced by John Calhoun to provide United States highways linking The East and South to The West using the earnings Bonus from the Second Bank of the United States. Calhoun argued for it using general welfare and post roads clauses. It was an early example of pork barrel politics. Though he approved of the goals, President James Madison vetoed the bill as unconstitutional.

The U.S. presidential election of 1824 is often considered a realigning election. The previous few years had seen the rare phenomenon of one-party government in the United States, as the Federalist Party had dissolved, leaving only the Republican Party. In this election, the Republican party splintered as four separate candidates sought the presidency. The faction led by Andrew Jackson would evolve into the United States Democratic Party, while the factions led by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay would become the National Republican Party and later the Whigs. 

This election is notable for being the first (and, as of 2005, only) time since the passage of the Twelfth Amendment that the presidential election was thrown into the House of Representatives. It was also the first (and only) time that the president did not win the electoral vote. (It is also often said to be the first election in which the president did not win the popular vote. This is hard to determine, insofar as a quarter of the states did not conduct a popular vote, instead having the state legislature choose their electors.)

Election, 1828
Held on December 2, the U.S. presidential election of 1828 featured a rematch between incumbent President John Quincy Adams and chief rival Andrew Jackson, who was now a candidate under the banner of the new Democratic Party. 

Unlike the 1824 election, no other major candidates appeared in the race, allowing Jackson to consolidate a power base and easily win an electoral victory over Adams. 

Vice President John Caldwell Calhoun of South Carolina would earn the distinction of being the first Vice President to resign from office, doing so on December 28, 1832 to become a Senator from his home state.

Eaton Affair
The Petticoat Affair (also known as the Eaton Affair or the Eaton Malaria) was an 1831 U.S. sex scandal involving members of President Andrew Jackson's Cabinet.

Margaret "Peggy" O'Neale (or O'Neill) was the daughter of a Washington, D.C. boarding-house owner and was renowned for her "vivacious" temperament—the coded implication being that she was overtly flirtatious and sexual at a time when "respectable" women, as a group, were not—who lost her first husband, sailor John Timberlake to suicide. He was allegedly driven to it because of rumors of Peggy's love affair with Jackson's Secretary of War John Henry Eaton. Peggy and Eaton were married shortly after Timberlake's death, throwing the respectable women of the capital into a tizzy.

The anti-Peggy coalition was led by the wife of Vice President John C. Calhoun and a phalanx of other Cabinet wives, while Martin Van Buren, the only bachelor member of the Cabient, allied himself with the Eatons. Jackson was sympathetic to the Eatons, in part, perhaps, because his own beloved late wife, Rachel Donelson Robards had been the subject of equally nasty innuendo. (Her first marriage turned out to have not been completely dissolved prior to her wedding to Jackson.) That said, Jackson's First Lady, Rachel's niece Emily Donelson, nonetheless sided with the Calhoun faction.

The scandal was so intense that several members of the Cabinet finally resigned, including Samuel D. Ingham and John Branch, and Van Buren was elevated to a position as Jackson's favorite (replacing Calhoun) and the de facto heir to the Democratic party. Eventually, Eaton also resigned from the cabinet. Peggy Eaton was made the "Official Hostess" under Jackson.

Compromise of 1833
This American tariff was enacted due to Southern agitation over tariff protection of Northern manufacturing in the early American industrial revolution. It reduced the profits flowing to the North. The terms stated that the tariff rates would be gradually reduced to the rates of the Tariff of 1832 (by about 10%) over 8 years. By 1842, the tariff rates would then be at the levels of 1816 (approximately 20-25% on the value of dutiable goods). It proved that the South could assert some power, and briefly held off the American Civil War.