biography
| name: |
Calhoun, John C(aldwell)
|
pronunciation:
[kalhoon]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1782–1850)
|
| biography:
| US vice-president and orator, born in Abbeville district, South Carolina, USA. During a long political career, he served as secretary of war (1817–25) and secretary of state (1844), and was vice-president under two presidents. During the War of 1812, he was a ‘War Hawk’ in Congress. In 1824 he sought the presidency but received the office of vice-president under John Quincy Adams (1825–9). He feuded with Adams and then supported Andrew Jackson in the 1828 elections, becoming his vice-president (1829–32). Originally a nationalist, by the late 1820s he had become a firm advocate of states' rights, particularly the right of the state to nullify the effects of a federal law within that state's borders. In 1832 the Nullification Crisis in South Carolina led him to resign the vice-presidency and to accept a vacant Senate seat from South Carolina, having been frustrated by the rules that prevented a vice-president from speaking out on the issue of nullification. He remained in the Senate until his death, with the exception of a brief period as secretary of state to President Tyler (1844). Although his views on states' rights and slavery have long since been repudiated, no one has ever doubted his sincerity and eloquence. |
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