John C. Calhoun

John Caldwell Calhoun was born in 1782 in the South Carolina backcountry, the son of a planter. He graduated from Yale College, studied law, and married Floride Bonneau Colhoun, a cousin, gaining a plantation worked by enslaved people. Elected to Congress in 1810, he was one of the 'war hawks' who pressed for the War of 1812. He served as secretary of war under James Monroe and as vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, but he broke with Jackson and resigned in 1832 to enter the Senate. He developed the theory of nullification, the claim that a state could refuse to enforce a federal law it judged unconstitutional, and South Carolina used it against a federal tariff in 1832. Calhoun became the leading Southern defender of slavery, which he called a 'positive good', and of the rights of the slaveholding states. He also served as secretary of state. His Disquisition on Government, published after his death, proposed a 'concurrent majority' to protect minority interests. He opposed the Compromise of 1850 and died in Washington that year.

John C. Calhoun is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Son of a Presbyterian, he adhered to his father's religion. Source: Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (via Wikisource)