John C. Calhoun

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John C. Calhoun 1849
Signature of Calhoun

John Caldwell Calhoun (born March 18, 1782 in Calhoun Mills near Abbeville , Abbeville County , South Carolina , † March 31, 1850 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician . He was the seventh Vice President of the United States from 1825 to 1832 under Presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson , a longtime US Senator and Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President John Tyler . Calhoun was one of the strongest advocates of slavery in the United States .

Life

Portrait of Calhoun from 1834

Calhoun completed - with interruptions - a degree in law . After being admitted to the bar in 1807, he began practicing alongside work on the family's farm in Abbeville. In 1811 he married a distant cousin, Floride Bonneau Calhoun , with whom he had ten children.

Career as a politician

He was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1808 and 1809 . From March 4, 1811 to November 3, 1817 he represented the Democratic Republican Party and, as the successor to his cousin Joseph Calhoun, the sixth congressional electoral district of his home state South Carolina in the House of Representatives of the United States . From October 8, 1817 to March 4, 1825, he was appointed as the successor to William Harris Crawford as Secretary of War in the cabinet of US President James Monroe . He is considered one of the most influential heads of this department in the 19th century. He was then until December 28, 1832 Vice President in the governments of rival Presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.

After he was elected senator, the Democrat politician resigned from office on December 28, 1832 in the wake of the nullification crisis . This was the first of only two Vice President resignations in US history. (The second was that of Spiro Agnew in 1973, who resigned on charges of bribery.)

He gained importance less as Vice President than as spokesman in the Senate , where he made the long political path from being a nationalist and whip in the war of 1812 to being the spokesman for the southern states and their secessionist aspirations. In the interests of the southern states, he formulated the nullification doctrine , which stated that individual states had the right not to implement federal laws that were harmful to them. In the 1832 crisis, which involved a controversial customs law , federal troops were even deployed in South Carolina when it first threatened secession . In this crisis, Calhoun acted as the spokesman for the southern planter aristocracy, and during the secession of 1861, he was not least referred to.

Calhoun represented his state in the Senate as the successor to Robert Young Hayne until March 3, 1843 and then again from November 26, 1845 until his death on March 31, 1850. During the years 1845 and 1846 he was chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance. From April 1, 1844 to March 10, 1845, he served as Secretary of State in the cabinet of President John Tyler .

John C. Calhoun died of tuberculosis on March 31, 1850 at the age of 68 and was buried in St. Philip's Churchyard in Charleston .

Advocate of slavery

Calhoun led the pro-slavery faction in the Senate in the 1830s and 1840s. For example, he fought against the Wilmot Proviso . He was one of the strongest proponents of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

John was shaped by his father Patrick Calhoun, a wealthy slave owner. Calhoun believed that it was slavery that made the American Dream possible. While other southern politicians viewed slavery as a necessary evil, he viewed it as a positive good, as he made clear in his 1837 Senate address. Slavery is based on the physical and mental superiority of the white over the black. In addition, there would never have been a society where people were not exploited.

Commemoration

In the 1960s, the United States Navy named the submarine USS John C. Calhoun after him. Several cities - Calhoun, Georgia - and counties are named after him: Calhoun County (Alabama) , Calhoun County (Arkansas) , Calhoun County (Florida) , Calhoun County (Georgia) , Calhoun County (Illinois) , Calhoun County (Iowa) , Calhoun County, Michigan , Calhoun County, Mississippi , Calhoun County, South Carolina , Calhoun County, Texas, and Calhoun County, West Virginia .

additional

In the feature film Amistad (1997) he is played by Arliss Howard .

Fonts

  • The papers of John C. Calhoun . University of South Carolina Press, Columbia 1959-2003 (28 volumes)
  • Union and Liberty. The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun , edited by Ross M. Lence. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis 1992. ISBN 0-86597-102-1 .

literature

  • Irving H. Bartlett: John C. Calhoun. A biography . WW Norton, New York 1994, ISBN 0-393-03476-3 .
  • Richard Hofstadter : John C. Calhoun. The Marx of the Master Class . In: The same: The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made it . First edition: Alfred Knopf, New York 1948.
  • Theodore R. Marmor: The career of John C. Calhoun. Politician, social critic, political philosopher . Garland, New York 1988. ISBN 0-8240-5138-6 .
  • John Niven: John C. Calhoun and the prize of union. A biography . Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge 1993. ISBN 0-8071-1858-3 .

Web links

Commons : John C. Calhoun  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikiquote: John C. Calhoun  - Quotes
Wikisource: John C. Calhoun  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gary Hart : James Monroe (= The American Presidents Series. Ed. By Arthur M. Schlesinger , Sean Wilentz . The 5th President). Times Books, New York City 2005, ISBN 0-8050-6960-7 , p. 77.
  2. ^ Law Library: Wilmot Proviso .
  3. ↑ a b Irving H. Bartlett: John C. Calhoun. A biography . New York 1994, p. 227.
  4. ↑ Irving H. Bartlett: John C. Calhoun. A biography . New York 1994, p. 228.
  5. ↑ Senator John C. Calhoun Sees Slavery as a "Positive Good" (1837)
personal data
SURNAME Calhoun, John C.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Calhoun, John Caldwell (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION United States Secretary of State, US Vice President
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1782
PLACE OF BIRTH near Abbeville , South Carolina
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1850
Place of death Washington, DC