Calhoun, John C

Calhoun, John C(aldwell)

John Calhoun, detail of a daguerreotype by Mathew Brady, c. 1849.

(credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born March 18, 1782, Abbeville district, S.C., U.S.—died March 31, 1850, Washington, D.C.) U.S. politician. A graduate of Yale University, he became an ardent Jeffersonian Republican and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1811–17). As a leader of the War Hawks, he introduced the declaration of war against Britain in June 1812 (see War of 1812). From 1817 to 1825 he served as U.S. secretary of war. He was elected vice president in 1824 (under John Quincy Adams) and again in 1828 (under Andrew Jackson). In the 1830s he became an extreme advocate of strict construction of the U.S. Constitution, a champion of states' rights, a defender of slavery, and a supporter of nullification. In 1832 he resigned the vice presidency and was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1850; he was briefly secretary of state in 1844–45. His exuberant defense of slavery as a “positive good” aroused strong anti-Southern feeling in the free states.