Реферат: John C Calhoun Essay Research Paper John

weakness of his state and his section in an industrialized society.

Uncertain about a future in which the slave-plantation system

seemed to be increasingly on the defensive, Calhoun, with his

speculative mind and his latent insecurity, tended toward

rationalizing a potential minority position as the only proper

political logic that was blessed by Jeffersonian precedent and

confirmed by historical fact. [Niven 181

Jackson began to threaten military force to collect the duties in South

Carolina. [Morris 165] In 1832, Calhoun resigned the vice-presidency and was

elected to the senate so that he could defend South Carolina’s cause and in

1832 South Carolina proclaimed that the Tariff of 1828 was null and void in the

state of South Carolina. South Carolina expected the other Southern states to

follow suit and also nullify the Tariff. This didn’t occur and so Henry Clay

stepped in and negotiated a compromise tariff that would lower the tariffs over

many years. [Netscape 1] That cooled things down and averted a Civil War for

the time being.

In the Senate, in the 1830s, Calhoun attacked the abolitionists, as one

author wrote:

Demanding that their publications be excluded from the mails, that

their petitions not be received by Congress, and finally that a stop

be put to agitation against slavery in the North as had been done in

the South. [Bartlett 210]

By 1837, Calhoun was defending slavery as “a positive good” and had become

an advocate for the suppression of open discussion and a free press. [Von Holst

122] Calhoun’s shift from national to a sectional (South, specifically South

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Carolina) position ruined his chances for the presidency but he continued to

strive for that office. [Morris 199] He had now become slavery’s strongest

defender. [Bartlett 235] Although Calhoun had made it abundantly clear in his