John C. Calhoun
John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), was a prominent U.S. statesman and spokesman for the slave-plantation system of the antebellum South. As a young congressman from South Carolina, he helped steer the United States into war with Great Britain and established the Second Bank of the United States. Calhoun went on to serve as U.S. secretary of war, vice president and briefly as secretary of state. As a longtime South Carolina senator, he opposed the Mexican-American War and the admission of California as a free state, and was renowned as a leading voice for those seeking to secure the institution of slavery. A nationalist at the outset of his political career, Calhoun was one of the leading War Hawks who maneuvered the unprepared United States into war with Great Britain in 1812.
A candidate for the presidency in 1824, Calhoun was the object of bitter partisan attacks from other contenders. Dropping out of the race, he settled for the vice presidency and was twice elected to that position. But after Andrew Jackson’s assumption of the presidency in 1829, Calhoun found himself isolated politically in
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In this essay he claimed original sovereignty for the people acting through the states and advocated state veto or nullification of any national law that was held to impinge on minority interests. He later developed the argument in his two essays Disquisition on Government and Discourse on the Constitution, presenting the classic case for minority rights within the framework of majority rule. A moderate during the nullification crisis of 1832-1833, Calhoun joined with Henry Clay in working out the Compromise