John C. Calhoun Essay, Research Paper
John Caldwell Calhoun, statesman and political philosopher, was vice-
president, a congressman, secretary of war, senator, secretary of state, and a
leading champion of Southern rights. [Netscape 1] Throughout his life, Calhoun
kept advocating for the South and pushing for the growth of the South. Threw
his career as the vice-president, he kept pushing Jackson to help out his fellow
Southerners and keep the South alive. [Bartlett 26]
He was born on a farm near Abbeville, S.C., on Mar. 18, 1782. His
father, Patrick Calhoun, a man of Scotch-Irish decent, was a very religious man
that treated John very harshly. His father owned more than a score of slaves,
was a judge, and had served in the South Carolina legislature for a while,
fighting to get more representation for the newly set up land that he represented.
[Faber 74-75] John attended college at Yale and graduated in 1804. He studied
in the law school of Tapping Reeves in Litchfield, CN. He was admitted to the
South Carolina bar in 1807 and quickly established a practice near his home in
Abbeville. [Von Holst 37] He married a distant cousin in 1811 and had 9
children. This marriage brought him a large fortune. He enlarged his fortune
and in 1825 he built a plantation, called Fort Hill, in his native area. [Bartlett 39]
He was a very handsome man that had piercing eyes throughout his life. In his
later years, he was thought of as a “thinking machine”, speaking very quickly
and always very earnestly. He concerned himself with political philosophy, idea,
and business. [Niven 49] As one author wrote: “John C. Calhoun is best
remembered as an American statesman and a political philosopher.” [Netscape
1]
Calhoun began his political career by being elected to the South Carolina
state legislature in 1808 and 2 years later won election to the United States
House of Representatives. During his Congressional term, Henry Clay made
Calhoun the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and he and other “War
2
Hawks” and advocated strongly for the War of 1812. [Faber 76] He led the
effort in the House to build up a strong Army, and after the war he continued to
work for a stronger , military establishment. [Niven 98]
Calhoun entered James Monroe’s Cabinet (1817-1825) as secretary of
war as a nationalist. [Bracelet 87] He became less and less militaristic through
his life. In 1812 he said that, “a war, just and necessary in its origin, wisely and
vigorously carried on, and honorably terminated.” [Niven 208] But in 1846, he
refused to vote for the declaration of war against Mexico. He thought that the
grounds that the President set for this war was wrong and said, “I regard peace
as a positive good, and war as a positive evil.” [Von Holst 107] In 1821, John
Quinsy Adams appraised Calhoun as:
A man of fair and candid mind…of enlarged philosophical views,
and of ardent patriotism. He is above all sectional and factional
prejudices more than any other statesman of the Union. [Bartlett
91]
Calhoun was J. Q. Adams’s vice president from 1825-1829 and was elected
vice-president again in 1828 under Andrew Jackson. [Netscape 1] This time in
history is referred to as the Nullification Crisis which refers to the Nullification of
the Tariff of Abominations by South Carolina and the turmoil that it caused.
[Bartlett 102] Calhoun had hoped to run for the presidency after Jackson left the
White House but during Jackson’s first term they had their share of conflicts.
Jackson discovered that Calhoun criticized his invasion of Florida in 1818 and
Jackson blew a fuse. Calhoun began to despise even the sight of Jackson.
[Morris 96] Calhoun anonymously wrote the “South Carolina Exposition” in
response to the Tariff of 1829 or the Tariff of Abominations. He argued that the
state had the right to “nullify” a Federal document, if the state believed that it
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was unconstitutional. Calhoun believed that the Tariff of 1828 was a direct
attack on the South by depressing the foreign markets for the cotton in the
South. [Niven 180-181] As one author put it:
Calhoun had been driven by what he believed was the growing
weakness of his state and his section in an industrialized society.
Uncertain about a future in which the slave-plantation system
seemed to be increasingly on the defensive, Calhoun, with his
speculative mind and his latent insecurity, tended toward
rationalizing a potential minority position as the only proper
political logic that was blessed by Jeffersonian precedent and
confirmed by historical fact. [Niven 181
Jackson began to threaten military force to collect the duties in South
Carolina. [Morris 165] In 1832, Calhoun resigned the vice-presidency and was
elected to the senate so that he could defend South Carolina’s cause and in
1832 South Carolina proclaimed that the Tariff of 1828 was null and void in the
state of South Carolina. South Carolina expected the other Southern states to
follow suit and also nullify the Tariff. This didn’t occur and so Henry Clay
stepped in and negotiated a compromise tariff that would lower the tariffs over
many years. [Netscape 1] That cooled things down and averted a Civil War for
the time being.
In the Senate, in the 1830s, Calhoun attacked the abolitionists, as one
author wrote:
Demanding that their publications be excluded from the mails, that
their petitions not be received by Congress, and finally that a stop
be put to agitation against slavery in the North as had been done in
the South. [Bartlett 210]
By 1837, Calhoun was defending slavery as “a positive good” and had become
an advocate for the suppression of open discussion and a free press. [Von Holst
122] Calhoun’s shift from national to a sectional (South, specifically South
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Carolina) position ruined his chances for the presidency but he continued to
strive for that office. [Morris 199] He had now become slavery’s strongest
defender. [Bartlett 235] Although Calhoun had made it abundantly clear in his
letters to his friends that he was willing to run for the presidency if chosen, no
one expected him to act like a candidate. [Bartlett 237] He occasionally gave a
some hints as to his intentions. For instance, he made it a point to join the Irish
Immigrant Society of New York in order to emphasize his pride in being the son
of an Irish immigrant. It pulled great weight with the working class in New York.
[Bartlett 238] He declared his candidacy in 1843 but withdrew to accept
appointment as secretary of state for the last year of John Tyler’s term. [Niven
264] During his service to Tyler, Calhoun wrote a letter to the British minister in
Washington, arguing that annexation was necessary to protect slavery in the U.
S. A. and making it a point to show that freed Negroes are deaf, dumb, blind,
and insane in far higher proportions than those in slavery. This letter didn’t help
his cause in Congress and the first treaty for the annexation of Texas didn’t pass
Congress. [Von Holst 241] In 1844, Texas was admitted into the Union by a
joint resolution of Congress. This kept sectional balance in the union by
enlarging the slavery area of the U. S. A. [Netscape 1]
Calhoun returned to the Senate in 1845, where he first opposed the war
against Mexico and then the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prohibited
slavery in all territories acquired from Mexico by that war. Calhoun called
Mexico the “forbidden fruit.” He knew that if America had a war with Mexico, it
would be fought for all the wrong reasons. [Bartlett 341] During his stay in the
Senate, he was able to secure passage of the Gag Rules, which forbade the
discussion of slavery on the floor of Congress. He denounced the Compromise
of 1850, which did not guarantee the right of Southerners to take their slave into
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all territories of the Union. Unfortunately, he never got the chance to see the
Compromise of 1850 adopted. [Niven 293]
It was his tragedy to become the spokesman for the dying institution of
slavery. [Morris 268] “His fierce defense of the South made him the hero of his
own region. At the same time, it made him hated in the North during this period
when sectional enmity grew increasingly bitter.” [Faber 79]As one author wrote,
“Calhoun’s last appearance in Congress was on 7 March 1850, as he heard and
approved Daniel Webster’s appeal for sectional peace. Three days earlier, too
ill to speak, Calhoun sat in the Senate as his speech was read for him. he died
in Washington on 31 March 1850.” [Netscape 1] To conclude, the words of one
author were, “Calhoun’s thought dominated the southern mind.” [Heritage 101]
His writing in defense of the rights of the South as a minority region within the
Union are a significant contribution to American political theory. [Von Holst 155]
Bibliography
1. American Heritage. August 1960: 101
2. Bartlett, Irving H. John C. Calhoun: A Biography. New York: Norton, 1993.
3. Faber, Doris and Harold. American Government: Great Lives. New York:
Macmillian, 1988.
4. Morris, James. “The South, The poor South!” New York: Viking-Penguin,
1986.
5. Netscape. John Caldwell Calhoun, 1782-1850.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~alcalhou/jcc.htm
6. Niven, John. John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography. USA:
Thomson-Shore, Inc., 1988.
7. Von Holst, Hermann E. John C. Calhoun. New York: Houghton, Mifflin,
Boston, 1980.
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