John C. Calhoun

South Carolina theorist of states rights and nullification who dominated the Senate's antebellum debates.

Overview

Calhoun served as representative, Secretary of War, Vice President under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Senator from 1832 to 1843 and 1845 to 1850, and Secretary of State. He fashioned the doctrine of nullification, holding that states could void federal laws, an idea tested in the 1832 crisis over tariffs. In his later Senate years he defended slavery as a positive good and argued that concurrent majorities were needed to protect minority sections. His rigorous constitutional theory made him, with Clay and Webster, the third member of the Great Triumvirate whose debates defined the era.