CALHOUN, JOHN CALDWELL, an American statesman; born in Abbeville district, S. C., March 18, 1782; gradu ated with distinction at Yale College, in 1804, and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1807. After serving for two sessions in the Legislature of his native State, he was elected to Congress in 1811. From that time until his death, a period of nearly 40 years, he was seldom absent from Washington, being nearly the whole time in the public serv ice, either in Congress or in the Cabinet. When he first entered Congress, the dif ficulties with England were fast ap proaching actual hostilities, and he im mediately took part with that section— the Young Democracy, as they were termed—of the dominant party, whose object it was to drive the still reluctant administration into a declaration of war. They succeeded, and, as a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he reported a bill for declaring war, which was passed in June, 1812. When Mon roe formed his administration, in 1817, Calhoun became Secretary of War.
In 1824, he was chosen Vice-President of the United States under John Q. Ad ams, and again, in 1828, under General Jackson. With the latter, he did not long continue on amicable political rela tions, but entered into fierce oppositioli, when the President, and a majority of Congress, determined to enforce submis sion to the law of 1828, imposing- a heavy protective tariff. It was at this
period that he broached his famous "Nullification Doctrine," which is, sub stantially, that the United States is not a union of the people, but a league or compact between sovereign States, any of which has a right to judge when the compact is broken, and to pronounce any law to be null and void which violates its conditions. In short, Calhoun was the first great advocate of the doctrine of Secession. Hence his advocacy of the extreme doctrine of State-Rights; his censure of the Missouri Compromise, passed 13 years before, when he was himself in the Cabinet; his support of all measures tending to the extension of slave-holding territory; an& finally, his proposal to amend the Constitution by abolishing the single office of the presidency, and creating two presidents, one for the North, and the other for the South, to be in office at the same time. The place in which he advocated these doctrines was his own favorite arena— the floor of the United States Senate. where he continued for the rest of his life, except for a short time at the close of Mr. Tyler's administration, when he accepted the office of Secretary of State, in order to complete a favorite measure —the annexation of Texas. He died in Washington, March 31, 1850.