Biography:

John C. Calhoun was the South’s most vocal champion of state’s rights and most recognized symbol of the Old South. Born in Abbeville, in the South Carolina Piedmont, in 1782, Calhoun attended Yale and Litchfield Law School in Connecticut, and returned to his native South Carolina, where he briefly practiced law and then entered politics. After a term in the state legislature, Calhoun was elected to Congress as a Democratic Republican in 1811. He resigned in 1817 to become secretary of war for President James Monroe (1817-25), was elected vice president of the United States in 1824 with President John Quincy Adams and then in 1824 with President Andrew Jackson. He served as Jackson’s vice president from 1824 until December 28, 1832, when he resigned after winning election to the US Senate to fill a vacancy. Reelected in 1834 and 1840, he served in the Senate until March 1843. From 1844 to 1845 he served as secretary of state under President John Tyler, when he was again elected to fill a vacancy in the US Senate. He remained in the Senate until his death on March 31, 1850. Calhoun badly wanted, but never achieved, the presidency, despite three strong attempts.
 
When Calhoun first entered national politics in 1811, he was a leading supporter of strong government, supporting a national road system, the second Bank of the United States, a strong military, and a protective tariff. In the 1830s, however, Calhoun became an extreme proponent of state’s rights and a strict construction of the Constitution. In 1831 he began publically defending nullification, the right of any state to nullify—or declare unconstitutional—objectionable federal legislation; Congress would then need to amend the Constitution to reinstate the nullified law. The tariff was the immediate object of the nullification debate, but Calhoun and other nullifiers were more concerned about protecting southern slavery. Most state’s rights advocated did not embrace Calhoun’s doctrine. By 1832, President Jackson broke with his vice president over such policy issues as well as over Calhoun’s role in the Eaton affair, in which several cabinet members and their wives ostracized Peggy Eaton, the new wife of John Eaton, secretary of war, for alleged adultery with Eaton while she was married to another man.