John
Calhoun was
born in Abbeville, South Carolina, on 18th March, 1782. Educated at
Yale College and the Litchfield Law School,
he was admitted to the bar but after his marriage to the rich heiress,
Floride Bonneau, he concentrated on politics.
Calhoun was elected to South Carolina's state legislature in 1808
and three years
later entered the House of Representatives. As chairman of the foreign
relations committee, he introduced the declaration of war against
Britain in 1812. During this period he emerged as one of the leaders
of the Republican Party.
In 1817 Calhoun was appointed secretary of war, a post he held for
eight years. In 1824 Calhoun was elected vice president under John
Quincy Adams. Four years later he held the same post under Andrew
Jackson but resigned
over
Jackson's unwillingness to allow South Carolina to nullify the protective
tariff introduced in 1828.
In the summer of 1831 Calhoun advocated his belief in nullification.
In his Address
to the people of South Carolina
he
argued that each state was sovereign and the United States Constitution
was a compact among sovereign states. Therefore, according to Calhoun,
any one state, not the Supreme Court,
could declare an act of Congress unconstitutional.
Calhoun upheld the right of people to own slaves and presented the
South's point of view in Senate debates on this issue. In 1844, as
secretary of war, he signed a treaty annexing Texas. However, in 1846
strenuously opposed the Mexican War.
In 1848 Zachary Taylor of the Whig
Party was elected president. The great issue before the nation
was the problem of slavery in the land
taken from Mexico. New Mexico and California were being ruled by military
governors but Taylor favoured them becoming part of the United States.
This became more complicated after the people of California and New
Mexico approved constitutions prohibiting slavery. Calhoun led the
pro-slavery faction in Congress that opposed the admission of California
and New Mexico as free states. John Calhoun died on 31st March, 1850.
(1)
John Caldwell Calhoun, speech in the Senate (4th March, 1850)
How can the Union be saved?
There is but one way by which it can with any certainty; and that
is, by a full and final settlement, on the principle of justice of
all the questions at issue between the two sections. But can this
be done? Yes, easily; not by the weaker party, for it can of itself
do nothing - not even protect itself - but by the stronger. The North
has only to will it to accomplish it - to do justice by conceding
to the South an equal right in the acquired territory, and to do her
duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves to be
faithfully fulfilled and to cease the agitation of the slave question.
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