Volume 8 Number 032 John C. Calhoun –Part II

Lead: In 1832 as a part of a rising and bitter dispute with Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun became the first vice president to resign from office.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: In 1828 South Carolinian and career politician John C. Calhoun was elected Vice President. He had also served as vice president in the previous administration of John Quincy Adams. It was no secret that Calhoun nursed Presidential ambitions. Early in his career, Calhoun was an ardent nationalist who actively supported the War of 1812, Federal spending to construct roads and other parts of the national infrastructure and a protective tariff to protect fledgling America industry from overseas competition. However, after additional tariff laws were passed in 1824 and 1828 and sectional differences began to intensify. Not surprisingly considering as a southerner Calhoun sided with the cotton south, calling the 1828 tariff “the tariff of abominations.” Southerners resented higher tariffs because the levies hurt southern attempts to sell goods to Europe and forced southerners to pay higher prices for manufactured goods made in the north. Calhoun authored an anonymous document entitled The South Carolina Exposition and Protest in which he argued for the idea of nullification – that states should have the power to ignore or nullify any federal laws that they view as unconstitutional. Calhoun defended nullification as a means for southern states to protect the institution of slavery and other southern interests without leaving the Union. In 1832 South Carolina nullified the tariff, and although a compromise fashioned by Henry Clay was reached the next year, it merely papered over sectional differences. The nullification crisis amplified the sectional differences that would crescendo three decades later into Civil War. By 1832, the relationship between President Andrew Jackson and his Vice President Calhoun had become deeply embittered. Hostility over the nullification issue, moved Calhoun to resign. He reentered the Senate, where until his death he promoted the interests of the south. Relations between the two finally reached the breaking point during the so- called “Peggy Eaton Affair,” a Washington adultery scandal. Mrs. Calhoun, the acknowledged social leader of the nation’s capital, led the ladies of Washington in ostracizing Peggy O’Neale Eaton, wife of Secretary of War John Eaton. Gossip had it that Peggy had committed adultery before her marriage to John, though the offense was committed with John himself. Jackson, a widower, was a good friend of the Eatons and tried to quell criticism of Peggy. Most of Jackson’s cabinet resigned and Calhoun and Jackson became the bitterest of enemies. John C. Calhoun spent the last twenty years of his life in the Senate, a staunch advocate of slavery and states’ rights. He died in 1850, shortly after the debates that led to the Compromise of 1850. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Resources

The American Presidency, John C. Calhoun http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/vp/upcal.html

Bartlett, Irving H. John C. Calhoun. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1993.

“Calhoun, John C.” http://www.britannica.com

“Calhoun, John C.” Comptons Encyclopedia Online http://www.comptons.com/encyclopedia/home.html

Devine, Robert A., et al. America Past and Present. New York: Longman, Inc., 1998.

Niven, John. John C. Calhoun and the Price of the Union. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.

Peterson, Merril D. The Great Triumvirate. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.