Congressional Giants. J. Michael Martinez
ideals.
John C. Calhoun
For modern audiences, John Caldwell Calhoun is the most difficult member of the Great Triumvirate to understand or appreciate. He is remembered as an ardent apologist for state rights and slavery. Because ultimately he landed on the wrong side of history, his legacy is tainted. Why couple with him celebrated legislative giants such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster? Calhoun was simply another crass, heartless, and self-interested southerner dressing up his racist views under a blanket of constitutional niceties that, when stripped away, do not survive serious scrutiny, or so his detractors, then and now, have charged.
It wasn’t always that way. Young Calhoun was a nationalist who sought to improve America’s position in, and preparedness for, world affairs. He never questioned the legitimacy of slavery as a defensible institution, it is true, but few white Americans of the time argued against the existence of the institution. At the start of his long career, Calhoun was not quite the zealous proslavery advocate and state rights champion he was to become. Time and circumstances changed him.88
He was born in the Abbeville District, South Carolina, on March 18, 1782, the fourth of five children born to Patrick Calhoun, a farmer, planter, and eventual member of the South Carolina state legislature, and his wife, Martha. Patrick fought in the American Revolution, but opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution because he feared it would strip too much power from the states, an anti-centralist position his son later adopted. In 1796, Patrick Calhoun died, leaving thirteen-year-old John to help operate the family business since his siblings had already left home.
As a child of the South Carolina frontier, Calhoun’s life was difficult, and his future appeared bleak. Yet he refused to accept his lot in life. Aside from working to support his family, he read and studied mostly on his own, although he briefly attended an academy in Georgia. It was obvious that the young man was gifted. His brothers recognized his potential, and they decided to cultivate it by sending him to Yale College in Connecticut. The opportunity forever altered the trajectory of his life and career.89
While he was a student at Yale, Calhoun encountered Timothy Dwight, the university’s president, a committed Federalist. Dwight bitterly opposed President Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans, arguing passionately for the right of secession should New England choose to separate from the rest of the Union. It is ironic that Calhoun was first exposed to secession—which came to be identified so closely with the southern states, and with Calhoun himself—while under the tutelage of a northern man, and a Federalist at that.90
He excelled at his studies, graduating as Yale’s valedictorian in 1804. Afterward, Calhoun remained in Connecticut to study at Litchfield Law School, the first school of its kind in the United States. He returned to South Carolina and became a member of the bar in 1807. Although Calhoun did not especially enjoy practicing law, he developed a knack for it. His arguments were logical, and his manner serious. Like the other members of the Great Triumvirate, he was known for his superior oratorical style. He was not quite a match for Webster or Clay in eloquence, but Calhoun established a reputation for logical reasoning and tightly argued opinions. He possessed a pleasant baritone voice and a self-confident, arguably arrogant public persona that impressed and often intimidated others. He was truly a cast-iron man.91
He enjoyed one success after another, beginning with his personal life. In 1811, he married a first cousin once removed, Floride Bonneau Calhoun. The couple produced ten children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. Their daughter Anna Maria later married Thomas Green Clemson, founder of the South Carolina University that still bears his name.92
Even as he raised a family, Calhoun threw himself into politics, his lifelong passion. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1810, he arrived in Washington, DC, the same year that Henry Clay became a congressman, and two years before Daniel Webster. Although he and Clay would differ on many political issues in subsequent years, in 1811 they were united in their calls for the United States to declare war against Great Britain. The war hawks, a faction of which Clay and Calhoun were leading members, believed that Great Britain’s attacks on American shipping threatened the health of the nation and undermined its values. Calhoun helped prepare the Report on Foreign Relations as well as the War Report of 1812, two documents that laid the groundwork for an armed confrontation with the English. He also served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which played an instrumental role in pushing the country toward war.93
After war erupted during the summer of 1812, events did not occur as Calhoun and his colleagues had hoped. American forces suffered a series of humiliating defeats, and the national economy suffered. Worried about the country’s welfare as well as his own political career, Calhoun became indefatigable in his efforts to raise troops, provide sufficient funding to finance military operations, and regulate trade to alleviate the economic hardships precipitated by the fighting. He had done much to usher in the war, but he was equally determined to see that American soldiers had everything necessary to turn the tide.
Because he was so tied to the war, Calhoun’s reputation suffered with every battlefield defeat. His fortunes improved at war’s end, however. With the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in December 1814, and General Andrew Jackson’s victory in the Battle of New Orleans the following month, the war became more popular. American public opinion swung in Calhoun’s favor. The war years had been a dark time, but the cessation of hostilities revealed a proud, undefeated nation. Calhoun’s stock rebounded.94
He had been dismayed by the poor management of the war. Calhoun witnessed firsthand the hazards of decentralization when it came to conducting national affairs, especially with the military. After their experience under oppressive British rule during the colonial period, Americans had distrusted a standing army, preferring instead to rely on a voluntary militia system. The system had failed during the War of 1812, Calhoun believed, and he thought he saw the solution. The United States needed a professional army. It also needed a system of permanent, high-quality roads as well as a central bank of the United States to handle financing. In short, he became a powerful voice for national authority.
Given his desire to see improvements in the military, it was only natural that Calhoun joined the cabinet. In this case, a new president, James Monroe, found that few men of promise desired to manage the War Department when the administration commenced in 1817. Monroe finally offered the position to Calhoun, and he accepted. He now was well placed to enact his program, calling for an improved navy and a system of internal taxation to finance it.95
Calhoun’s tenure was stormy. He and Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford, both of whom harbored presidential aspirations, became rivals within the Monroe administration. Perhaps more damaging to Calhoun’s quest to improve wartime preparations than Crawford’s opposition, Americans were wary of spending money on military affairs in the aftermath of the War of 1812. State rights advocates, fearing any federal interference with slavery, urged Calhoun and Crawford to resist promoting policies that would strengthen the central government. In March 1821, Congress reflected this mistrust of big government by passing a new law, the Reduction Act, to cut the number of enlisted men in half as well as trim the officer corps. Despite his fear that Americans had learned nothing about military preparedness from the war, Calhoun also understood that his future political prospects required him to placate state right advocates. He acquiesced when the Reduction Act passed.96
Native American relations, always problematic in the early American republic, were becoming an urgent political issue during the 1820s as ever more white settlers headed west. Because Indian affairs were under his department, Calhoun developed a plan to relocate some tribes to western lands to avoid conflicts with state governments in the eastern United States. Monroe accepted the proposal. General Andrew Jackson’s invasion of Florida in 1818, which President Monroe had not approved, complicated Calhoun’s efforts to negotiate Indian treaties. In fact, he grew so frustrated with the political realities of dealing with tribes that he created the Bureau of Indian Affairs with the War Department to handle the innumerable details involved in managing Native American issues.97
Calhoun was still serving as secretary of war when the Missouri Crisis occurred in 1819. Watching