John C. Calhoun

American politician

• Born: March 18, 1782
• Birthplace: Near Calhoun Mills, Abbeville District (now Abbeville), South Carolina
• Died: March 31, 1850
• Place of death: Washington, D.C.

In addition to wielding great influence in national politics for four decades, Calhoun wrote incisively on the problem of protecting minority rights against majority rule in a democracy and is remembered as one of the most innovative political theorists in American history.

Early Life

John C. Calhoun’s birthplace was a small settlement on the Savannah River in South Carolina, near the modern Abbeville. His Scotch-Irish forebears had made their way from Pennsylvania to Bath County, Virginia, then had been forced to migrate to South Carolina by the turmoil of the French and Indian War (1754-1760). The Up Country—as the western part of South Carolina is called—was a wild, untamed region, as evidenced by the murder of Calhoun’s grandmother by marauding Cherokees in 1760. Calhoun’s father, Patrick, was the youngest of four brothers who tenaciously carved out lives in the wilderness surrounding “Calhoun’s Settlement.” Patrick’s first wife having died, he married Martha Caldwell, with whom he produced a daughter and four sons; the next-to-youngest child was named John Caldwell, after one of Martha’s brothers.

Calhoun spent his youth on the family farm working in the fields with his father’s slaves. Patrick’s death in 1796 left John with a future seemingly bound by the needs of the farm and responsibilities to his family. However, upon the urging of an older brother, he enrolled in Yale College in 1802 and was graduated with honors in 1804.

After leaving Yale, Calhoun studied law at Tapping Reeve’s Litchfield (Connecticut) Academy. During the two-year regimen at Litchfield, he developed habits in logic and discipline that would be his trademark in later years. However, he also discovered that the prospect of being an attorney bored him. A stint in Henry De Saussure’s Charleston law office and, shortly thereafter, his opening a successful practice of his own near Abbeville did not enliven his interest. He soon left the profession to become a prosperous planter and to follow his consuming interest in politics.

This career change was made possible by Calhoun’s marriage, in 1811, to his second cousin, Floride Bonneau Calhoun. The marriage brought Calhoun property that, when added to his, allowed him financial independence. Although Floride was ten years his junior, they were quite happy, and the marriage produced nine children. Calhoun would eventually establish residence at a plantation he built near his birthplace. He named it “Fort Hill” because the site once had been a garrison against Indian attack.

By the time of his marriage, Calhoun had developed those traits that would distinguish him for the remainder of his life. Physically imposing, standing over six feet tall, lanky, and with a rather hawklike face, he was craggily handsome. As the years wore away at him, ceaseless labor and care combined with checkered health to render the stern countenance fixed in the minds of students by the photograph taken by Mathew Brady around 1848. In it, Calhoun, nearing sixty, sits with a face that is lined, hollow, and unsmiling, yet lit by an arresting and wild stare. Perhaps this face was merely a mirror of his lifelong personality. Even as a boy, he was overly serious, and he seems to have always conducted relationships outside his family with the same cold logic he applied to his political theories. Anything but outgoing, Calhoun commanded respect but seldom inspired affection. Associates sometimes referred to him as the “cast iron man,” describing a man who, while not unfriendly, nevertheless remained ever aloof and hence, on a personal level, essentially alone and friendless.

Life’s Work

Calhoun entered state politics in 1807 and, after one term in the South Carolina legislature, won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1810. There he joined the ranks of the War Hawks, that group of influential congressmen (Speaker of the House Henry Clay was the most conspicuous of their number) who were intent upon war with Great Britain to protect American maritime rights.

During the War of 1812 , Calhoun steadfastly supported all measures to bolster the nation’s failing defenses. When the Treaty of Ghent ended the war in 1814, he remained convinced that it was only a truce before the renewal of the conflict. Beginning in 1816, he urged the adoption of a national program to prepare for another wave of British aggression. He supported a protective tariff, a national bank, an improved transportation system through federally financed internal improvements, and a large standing army. His nationalism won for him both praise and a place in James Monroe’s cabinet as secretary of war in 1817.

Seeking to correct the many flaws made apparent by the poor showing of American forces in the recent war with Britain, Calhoun initiated numerous improvements for the Army. These included the establishment of new departments, especially those of commissary, quartermaster, and surgeon general. Well suited to the administrative demands of the War Department, he filled the post during Monroe’s two terms with a flair for innovative management.

Calhoun adroitly remained aloof from the angry political turmoil that marked the end of the Era of Good Feelings and the beginning of the formation of a new national party system. Elected to the vice presidency in 1824 and 1828, he thus served in the administrations of both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, despite the bitter feud between the two. At the end of the 1820’s, it appeared that he would succeed Andrew Jackson as president with Jackson’s blessing, but the Nullification Controversy in South Carolina irrevocably estranged them and nearly ruined Calhoun’s political career.

In spite of his earlier advocacy of the protective tariff, Calhoun became convinced that steadily increasing its duties financially victimized southern agriculturalists for the benefit of northern industrialists. When he wrote “South Carolina Exposition and Protest” in 1828, which stated his theory of nullification, it marked a significant turning point in his political career. Because he still hoped to attain the presidency, he kept secret his authorship of the doctrine. By turns, however, he was rapidly transformed from an American nationalist into a southern sectionalist. Elaborating upon Thomas Jefferson’s ideas in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Calhoun declared that a state could nullify a federal law it deemed unconstitutional or harmful to its interests by refusing to enforce the statute within its borders. Essentially then, nullification was a device whereby a minority could protect itself against the harmful will of the majority.

When South Carolina attempted to apply his theory by nullifying the Tariff of 1832, it brought the nation to the brink of civil war. Dismissing nullification as illegal, Jackson threatened to invade South Carolina to enforce federal law, and when it was revealed that Calhoun was the doctrine’s father, Jackson branded him a subversive. In disgrace with the administration, Calhoun resigned the vice presidency, his national reputation in shambles. However, the governor of South Carolina promptly appointed him to the Senate, and there he worked feverishly with Henry Clay to draft a compromise tariff that helped to diminish the immediate crisis.

After the Nullification Controversy, Calhoun dropped all vestiges of his earlier nationalism and became the champion of southern planter interests in particular and southern rights in general. In the process, he earned the admiration of many southerners, and in South Carolina he came to exert virtually total control over a political system that only occasionally was not a reflection of his will. His towering reputation and talent made him a fixture in the Senate, wherein he increasingly focused his intellectual and political energies on combating what he perceived as northern assaults upon the southern way of life. Even his brief absence from the Senate—to serve as John Tyler’s secretary of state from 1844 to 1845—was marked by his sectionalism: He successfully managed the annexation of Texas into the Union as a slave state.

As a strident antislavery movement grew in the North, Calhoun countered that slavery was a positive good. He opposed the Mexican War (which most of his southern colleagues supported) because he feared that northerners would try to exclude slavery from Western territories gained in the conflict. When his fears proved true, he was ultimately persuaded that northern restriction of slavery in the territories was a preliminary step toward the thorough abolition of the institution in the South as well. The result, he thought, would be economic and social chaos, avoidable only by the South’s secession from the Union.

Calhoun’s apprehension over both abolitionism and secession compelled him in his final months to attempt the unification of the South into an implacable front threatening secession. By so menacing the Union he hoped to frighten the North into concessions on the slavery question. Therein lay the safety of the South and the Union as well. His plan was unsuccessful, and as the nation reeled ominously toward disruption under the compounded sectional crises of 1850, he appeared before the Senate on March 4, 1850, almost for the last time. So ill that a colleague had to read his speech, Calhoun sat glowering from his chair as the chamber and crowded galleries heard his dire prediction that northern agitation over the slavery issue would inevitably destroy the Union. His warning, unhappily prophetic, went unheeded. As the nation strained toward yet another compromise, his shattered health forced him to his deathbed. He died on March 31, 1850, in his Washington quarters. His last words were “The South… the poor South.”

Significance

John C. Calhoun ranks as one of the most innovative political theorists in American history. Beginning with his complex arguments to justify nullification, he ever afterward sought legal and logical means whereby to protect minority rights against the overriding and insensible will of the majority. His fears over the diminishing influence of the South in national councils drove him, in 1843, to begin drafting proposals for significant innovations in American constitutional government. The notion of the concurrent majority became central to his thesis in both A Disquisition on Government (1851) and A Discourse on the Constitution of the United States (1851).

In these works, Calhoun declared that the nation comprised not only sections and states but also communities, each of these last possessing a unique character and interests different from the rest. The problem lay in the fact that any one community might be significantly smaller in relation to the others. The great danger in a democracy thoroughly wedded to majority rule, he insisted, was that a combination of larger communities could unjustly impose its will on any such minority through sheer force of numbers, ignoring the rights and privileges of the injured community. The resulting tyranny of the majority would be the very antithesis of the American ideal of government.

To avoid this result, Calhoun proposed that each unique community, regardless of its size, be given an equal voice in matters affecting the whole nation. A majority obtained under this arrangement would not reflect merely numerical strength, but would assure a general concurrence from all sectors of the society. In short, a concurrent majority would protect the rights of any minority. To reinforce the method further, he proposed instituting a dual presidency, one executive from each major section, each to have a veto on national measures.

Neither A Discourse on the Constitution of the United States nor A Disquisition on Government was completed when Calhoun died—indeed, his involvement in the sectional controversy of 1850 and his labors on these manuscripts combined to destroy his health—but they were published posthumously in 1851. They were lauded at the time by many southerners and scorned by many northerners. Calhoun’s theories were complicated and made more so by the occasionally obscure prose of the former work. The latter work was often simply misunderstood. As the nation stumbled toward the disruption he had predicted, and after it had suffered the terrible Civil War, he was dismissed as both an ugly prophet of secession and a major cause of the catastrophe that followed.

Undoubtedly, before the Civil War Calhoun influenced in some degree the thinking of virtually every southerner and, it might be argued, a significant number of northerners. Nevertheless, subsequent scholarship has been unable to reach a consensus about Calhoun and the real meaning of the theories he produced. Cited as a major contributor to the outbreak of the Civil War, he also has been praised for tirelessly searching for ways to avoid it. Branded as little more than a sophisticated opportunist, always seeking his own advancement, he also has been eulogized as a careful statesman, aloof from the ordinary concerns of office and election. Labeled a stultifying obstructionist of the majority will, he also has been hailed as an innovative protector of minority rights.

In spite of the diversity of interpretation, one certainty emerges. For all of his imagination and mental agility, Calhoun never escaped the boundaries of his time and place. He bent his considerable talents to protecting and even extending the institution of slavery, a mockery of the ideals of liberty and, even in his time, disgraced by the considered judgment of humankind. Possessed of boundless vision, he yet remained blind to the fundamental evil of slavery and thus was at once a great man and a tragic figure.

Bibliography

Bartlett, Irving H. John C. Calhoun: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. Scholarly biography, tracing Calhoun’s evolution from ardent nationalist to advocate of sectionalism and nullification.

Calhoun, John C. The Papers of John C. Calhoun. Edited by Frank M. Merriwether, et al. 28 vols. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959-2003. An ambitious project, consisting of Calhoun’s papers from 1801 to 1850, with skillful editorial comment integrated throughout.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun. Edited by Ross M. Lence. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992. Includes Calhoun’s two major political works, A Disquisition on Government and A Discourse on the Government and Constitution of the United States, printed in their entirety. Also contains some of Calhoun’s speeches and papers.

Capers, Gerald M. John C. Calhoun, Opportunist: A Reappraisal. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1960. A revisionist biography that argues that self-interest was the primary motive for all of Calhoun’s actions. Marred by a polemical tone, but valuable as a counterweight to uncritical biographers.

Coit, Margaret L. John C. Calhoun: An American Portrait. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950. Pulitzer Prize-winning biography that offers an extraordinarily favorable view of its subject. Coit lauds the agrarian ideal and praises Calhoun as its defender who resisted the evils of an industrial society. The most humanized depiction of Calhoun, but frequently overly sympathetic.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. John C. Calhoun. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970. A brief compilation consisting of selections from Calhoun’s writings, contemporary observations about him, and scholarly interpretations regarding his political theories. A good introductory survey of the diversity of modern scholarly opinion concerning those theories.

Freehling, William. Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. An excellent work on the great crisis that marked Calhoun’s shift from nationalism to sectionalism. Includes a good description of his reluctant participation in the event and provides a penetrating analysis of the real significance of nullification.

Hamilton, Holman. Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1964. An indispensable study of the complex problems afflicting the nation at the time of Calhoun’s death. His significant part in the drama is competently portrayed and explained.

Lindsey, David. Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun. Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron’s Educational Series, 1973. Dual biography of these major figures that is surprisingly thorough, given its brevity. Offers a good introduction to Jackson and Calhoun and is marked by measured judgments supported by broad research.

Wiltse, Charles M. John C. Calhoun, Nationalist, 1782-1828. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. John C. Calhoun, Nullifier, 1829-1839. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. John C. Calhoun, Sectionalist, 1839-1850. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1951. Grounded in decades of research and loaded with a wealth of detail, these three works make up an almost definitive biography. Especially good in placing Calhoun in perspective with the social, economic, and political forces of the early nineteenth century, but somewhat imbalanced by an overly sympathetic view of Calhoun and his ideas while hypercritical of his adversaries.