John C. Calhoun

John Calhoun

John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was an American politician. He served as a powerful member of Congress and senator from South Carolina from 1832 to 1843, and from 1845 to 1850. He also served as Vice President of United States from 1825 to 1832 under President John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, and as an influential Secretary of War, 1817-25. He considered runs for the presidency. Starting as a leading nationalist and modernizer, after 1828 Calhoun reversed directions and became the foremost spokesman for states rights and slavery. Calhoun was a powerful intellectual leader of the South who aggressively supported slavery, Calhoun expanded the notion of republicanism to include the need to protect minority rights against majority rule; his approach was the "concurrent majority." Increasing distrustful of democracy, he minimized the role of the Second Party System in South Carolina. The leaders of the secession movement in the decade after his death looked to Calhoun as a hero.

Secretary of War: 1817-25

Calhoun continued his role as a leading nationalist during the "Era of Good Feeling" during the Monroe administration, 1817-25. 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.

As secretary, Calhoun's 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.

Nullification

Calhoun was most famous for his advocacy of nullification, which allows individual states to cancel a federal law it considers unconstitutional. He was the secret author of South Carolina Exposition and Protest, a document that advocated the nullification of the Tariff of 1828. The document was submitted to the South Carolina legislature as a resolution, but it was not passed.

In 1832, the South Carolina legislature passed a resolution that declared the federal tariff of 1828 void. President Andrew Jackson was incensed and the Congress passed the Force Bill, threatening military intervention. The incident was known as the Nullification Crisis. In 1833, Henry Clay helped Jackson and South Carolina to reach a compromise, ending the possibility of an armed invasion of South Carolina.

Most historians argue that nullification (and, in 1860) secession) were reactionary efforts to turn back the abolitionist assault on slavery. Wood (2003) rejects the assumption that Calhoun and his followers were un-American because they resorted to nullification. Woods argues that the longstanding conservative Southern interpretation of republican ideology and its persistence in the South and says the "Nullifiers" viewed their attempts at nullification and secession as well within the framers' views of republicanism. The Constitution produced by the federal convention of 1787 and the structure of the new government that was formed after the Bill of Rights in 1791 further illuminate the significance of the connection between states' rights, nullification, and republicanism.

Slavery

Calhoun ardently supported the institution of slavery, which he saw as a "positive good".

Political philosophy

The Disquisition on Government was a book that incorporated Calhoun's reasoned views on government as seen from the point of view of the permanent minority (the South). Begun in 1843, and virtually finished in 1848, it elaborates the doctrine of his South Carolina Exposition and Protest. Its keynote is the idea of a concurrent majority. Simple majority government always results in despotism over the minority unless some way is devised to secure the assent of all classes, sections, and interests. The argument is close-knit and convincing if one accepts the belief of Calhoun that the states retain absolute sovereignty over the Constitution and can do with it as they wish. This doctrine could be made effective by nullification. But Calhoun believed that the clear recognition of rights on the part of the states on the one hand and of the national majority on the other would prevent matters ever coming to a crisis. South Carolina and other southern states, in the three decades preceding the Civil War, had provided legislatures in which the vested interests of land and slaves dominated in the upper houses, while the popular will of the numerical majority prevailed in the lower houses. This was done in conscious acceptance of the doctrine of the Disquisition. The Disquisition was published shortly after his death as was his other book, Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States.

Bibliography

• Bartlett, Irving H. John C. Calhoun: A Biography (1994)
• Cheek, H. Lee, Jr. Calhoun and Popular Rule: The Political Theory of the Disquisition and Discourse. (2001). 202 pp.
• Coit, Margaret, L John C. Calhoun: American Portrait 620pp; excerpt and text search
• Niven, John. John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography (1993) excerpt and text search

Primary sources

• Calhoun, John Caldwell. A Disquisition on Government edited by Richard Kenner Crallé (1851) 406 pp. online edition
• Calhoun, John C. John C. Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches edited by H. Lee Cheek, (2003) excerpt and text search
• Calhoun, John C. Papers of John C. Calhoun (28 volumes, 1959-2003) edited by Clyde N. Wilson et al.

External links

• Congressional biography
• South Carolina "Exposition"
• Timeline