John C. Calhoun
John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was an American politician. He served as Vice President of United States from 1825 to 1832 under President John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. He also served as a senator from South Carolina from 1832 to 1843, and from 1845 to 1850.
Nullification
Calhoun was most famous for his advocacy of nullification, which is the invalidation of federal laws by individual states. 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 void. President 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.
Slavery
Calhoun ardently supported the institution of slavery, going as far as characterizing slavery as a "positive good". The later Southern secession that led to the American Civil War was partly influenced by Calhoun.
Ideas
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 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.
Bibliography
- Coit, Margaret, L John C. Calhoun: American Portrait 620pp; excerpt and text search
Primary sources
- Calhoun, John Caldwell. A Disquisition on Government edited by Richard Kenner Crallé (1851) 406 pp. online edition