John C. Calhoun
John C. Calhoun moved from War Hawk nationalism to the nullification and slavery crises, making him one of Antebellum America's most systematic theorists of state power.
Born March 18, 1782 / Died March 31, 1850
On March 18, 1782, in Abbeville District, South Carolina, John C. Calhoun was born into an upcountry planter family shaped by Revolutionary memory and frontier politics. He graduated from Yale College in 1804, studied law at the Litchfield Law School, and entered South Carolina politics with an unusual command of political theory. Those institutions prepared him for a national career in Congress and the cabinet.
Calhoun first gained prominence as a War Hawk during the War of 1812, then served as secretary of war, vice president, senator, and intellectual leader of South Carolina's resistance to tariff policy. His South Carolina Exposition and Protest of 1828 and his role in the Nullification Crisis of 1832 turned the Constitution into a battleground over state interposition and federal authority. In the 1830s and 1840s he also became one of the leading congressional defenders of slavery as a positive good.
Calhoun's constitutional theory fed later secessionist argument and remained deeply entangled with the coming of the Civil War. Debates over nullification, minority rights, and the reach of national power continued to return to the doctrines he forged in the Senate and in South Carolina politics.
Key Contributions
- His beliefs heavily influenced the South's secession from the Union in 1860 and 1861.
- Calhoun was the first of two vice presidents to resign from the position, the second being Spiro Agnew, who resigned in 1973.
- John C. Calhoun died on March 31, 1850.
Related Events
Nullification Crisis begins
On November 24, 1832, a South Carolina convention declared the Tariff of 1828 and the Tariff of 1832 void, forcing Andrew Jackson to answer nullification with a federal defense of the Union.
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