#johnc.calhoun

Compromise of 1850

The Compromise of 1850 was a series of five bills passed by the US Congress in September 1850 to diffuse a sectional crisis brewing between the 'free states' of the North and the 'slave states' of the South. The crisis was sparked by a disagreement over whether slavery should be allowed to expand into the so-called 'Mexican Cession', the 529,000 square miles of territory seized from Mexico after the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Under the Compromise of 1850, California was admitted into the Union as a free state, while slavery in the rest of the territory – such as in New Mexico and Utah – would be decided through 'popular sovereignty,' meaning that settlers would decide on whether to prohibit slavery or not. This compromise did not resolve the dispute but only postponed the conflict over slavery that would culminate in the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Background: Mr. Polk's War

In 1844, James K. Polk (1795-1849) won election to the US presidency on a platform of expansionism; promising to lead the United States toward its 'Manifest Destiny', Polk declared his intention to wrest the Oregon Territory from the British, seize all Mexican territory north of 31°, and annex the newly independent Republic of Texas. Initially, this ambitious policy fell quite short of its goals. Polk was forced to settle for a treaty that established the Oregon boundary at the 49th parallel – less than was hoped for – while Mexico declined to sell any territory at all. But when Texas joined the Union in December 1845 as the 28th state, Polk saw a new opportunity for conquest; Mexico had not recognized Texas' independence and viewed its annexation by the US as a hostile act. Polk and his partisans continued to provoke Mexico, ultimately leading to the Mexican-American War. At the end of that conflict, Mexico was forced to give up vast amounts of territory, including Utah, New Mexico, and California. Polk had achieved his goal – by the end of his single term, the United States had expanded by two-thirds, growing more than it had under any other president.

Mr. Polk's War, as the conflict had been derisively called, was quite polarizing – while Polk's own Democratic Party supported the expansion of the United States by any means necessary, members of the Whig Party viewed the conflict as an unjust war and believed that its main objective had been to expand the institution of slavery and increase the political power of the slave-holding South. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had fixed the boundary between 'slave states' and 'free states' by prohibiting slavery north of the 36°30' north latitude parallel. But since most of the land conquered from Mexico was beneath that boundary, several new 'slave states' could potentially be carved out from the territory. In 1846, anti-slavery representatives tried to prevent this with the Wilmot Proviso, which declared that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part" of the territory acquired from Mexico – the proviso passed in the House, but it was defeated in the Senate, where the South exerted greater power. Though the Wilmot Proviso failed, it rejuvenated the national debate over the question of slavery, an issue that had been festering beneath the country's surface for decades.

Opponents of slavery – often called Free Soilers – believed that the institution was not only a moral evil but also stood in the way of progress. As historian James M. McPherson writes, Free Soilers argued that "free labor was more efficient than slave labor because it was motivated by the inducement of wages and the ambition for upward mobility rather than by the coercion of the lash" (55). Slavery must therefore be kept out of the new territories to encourage free labor and progress there. But the slave-holding South interpreted these statements as an attack against its social system. As the global demand for cotton grew, Southern planters became more reliant on slave labor to cultivate the crop. Additionally, it was believed that slave labor was necessary to allow the slave-holding gentry time to cultivate the arts, literature, and to pursue public office. An attack on slavery was therefore viewed as an attack on the Southern way of life; to preserve this, Southerners sought to expand slavery wherever they could, to maintain a strong pro-slavery voting bloc in Congress.

The question of whether slavery would be allowed in the newly acquired territories threatened to dominate the US presidential election of 1848. Polk had declined to seek re-election; worn out by his time in office, he would be dead before the end of the decade. Instead, the Democrats nominated Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, who championed the idea of 'popular sovereignty' – this meant that the settlers of the territories should decide for themselves whether they wanted slavery or not. The Whigs, needing to carry states where annexation had been popular, decided to avoid the question of slavery for the time being and nominated General Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), hero of the Mexican War. Taylor was an odd choice – he had been mostly unpolitical prior to his run for office, leaving many Americans unsure as to what his political positions were. However, he was a slaveholder who owned over a hundred slaves himself, leaving many pro-slavery voters feeling comfortable that he would support their position. Taylor won the election, carrying 8 of the 15 slave states, and was inaugurated on 4 March 1849. But little did anyone realize that Taylor's election heralded a political storm that was just about to break.

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John C. Calhoun: Champion of the Antebellum South

John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) was an American lawyer and statesman, one of the key political figures of the Antebellum Era. Initially a nationalist, Calhoun spent his early career trying to strengthen and modernize the federal government, but by the 1830s, he had become a strong advocate for states' rights and slavery, leading South Carolina into the Nullification Crisis (1832-33). Calhoun served as vice president under two different presidents and spent decades in Congress, where he became recognized as part of the 'Great Triumvirate' of influential US congressmen alongside Henry Clay (1777-1852) and Daniel Webster (1782-1852). He played a major role in uniting the American South behind the institution of slavery – which he referred to as the 'peculiar institution' – in the decades prior to the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Early Life

John Caldwell Calhoun was born in the Abbeville District of South Carolina on 18 March 1782. He was the fourth of five children born to Patrick Calhoun, a Scotch-Irish immigrant, and his second wife, Martha Caldwell. He was named after his maternal uncle, Major John Caldwell, who had been murdered by Tories (Americans loyal to Britain) a few months earlier. There were no schools in the South Carolina backcountry where Calhoun grew up, leaving him isolated and practically illiterate for most of his childhood. Then, in 1795, the 13-year-old Calhoun was sent to an academy in Georgia run by his brother-in-law, Moses Waddel; though the academy was discontinued shortly thereafter, Calhoun gained access to Waddel's vast library and spent much of his time reading. After his father's death, Calhoun returned home to help manage the family farm. He often plowed the fields himself, working alongside the family's slaves, and spent his free time reading, hunting, and fishing. In the autumn of 1802, Calhoun went to New Haven, Connecticut, to study at Yale College, financed by his older brothers. He was a diligent student who made friends easily, and, in September 1804, he graduated with distinction.

The following year, he began reading law in Litchfield, Connecticut, and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1807. He returned to his home district of Abbeville, where he opened a lucrative law practice and rode the circuit of county courts. Unlike other frontier lawyers like his future colleague Henry Clay, Calhoun took no joy in riding the court circuit; solemn and disciplined, Calhoun "rarely, if ever, swore, smoked, drank, or jested" (Peterson, 24). He was respected in his community and was elected to the state legislature in 1808. During his brief stint, he began courting his first cousin, Floride Bonneau Colhoun (1792-1866), from afar. Having first met Floride during his time in New England, Calhoun began periodically sending her letters and communicating through her mother, who was anxious to make the best match for her daughter. They were married outside Charleston in January 1811 and would ultimately have ten children. That same year, he was elected to the US House of Representatives and left South Carolina for the national capital of Washington, D.C., to take his seat in the fateful Twelfth Congress.

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Petticoat Affair

The Petticoat affair, also called the Eaton affair, was a political scandal that rocked Washington, D.C., from 1829 to 1831, during the early years of Andrew Jackson's presidency. Revolving around the rumored sexual promiscuity of Peggy Eaton, wife of the US secretary of war, the affair divided Jackson's cabinet and reshuffled the leadership of the fledgling Democratic Party.

Background

Shortly after winning the presidency in the election of 1828, General Andrew Jackson set about building his cabinet. Aside from Martin Van Buren – a prominent New York politician selected as secretary of state – the president's cabinet consisted of little-known figures who were chosen mostly for their loyalty to Jackson himself or because of their hatred for Henry Clay, Jackson's chief political rival. The most consequential of these appointments would prove to be John Henry Eaton as secretary of war. A former US senator from Tennessee, Eaton was a longtime Jackson loyalist who had become one of the general's few close friends. The pair had met in the Tennessee militia during the War of 1812, with Eaton having served under Jackson in the famous Battle of New Orleans (8 January 1815). In 1817, Eaton had completed the first biography of Jackson, in which he praised the general's career and defended some of his more controversial actions. Suffice to say, Eaton was someone Jackson felt he could trust – for Jackson, as a Washington outsider who wholeheartedly believed the national capital was full of corruption, this kind of trust was a rare commodity, indeed.

The new president's conclusion that Washington was corrupt had not sprung from nowhere. Despite having won the popular vote in the previous presidential election of 1824, Jackson had lost the race to John Quincy Adams, who had been able to obtain more electoral votes when the final decision was handed to the House of Representatives. A bitter Jackson attributed this to Adams' status as a Washington insider, a notion that seemed vindicated when Adams appointed Henry Clay as his secretary of state – Jackson and his followers believed that Adams and Clay had struck a 'corrupt bargain' whereby Clay was given the State Department in return for his support for Adams. Four years later, Jackson ran against Adams again in a presidential election that became vitriolic and personal. Adams' partisans had gone so far as to slander Jackson's marriage, claiming that his wife, Rachel Donelson Jackson, had not been legally divorced from her first spouse when the couple had first started living together as husband and wife. Deeply distraught by these accusations of bigamy, Rachel had died of a heart attack shortly after her husband's victory in December 1828, a loss Jackson blamed on his political opponents.

To make matters more difficult, Jackson also saw dissent from his own vice president, John C. Calhoun. While Jackson was a staunch Unionist who sought to expand the power of the presidency, Calhoun was a leading proponent of states' rights, who had recently begun to champion the right to nullification – that is, a state's ability to 'nullify' a federal law it believed to be unjust. With the economy of the South stifled by the unpopular Tariff of 1828 – known as the 'Tariff of Abominations' – and the looming question of slavery becoming more and more of a regional issue, states like Calhoun's native South Carolina were looking to fight back against the federal government through nullification, a step that many saw as a precursor to secession.

Andrew Jackson

Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl (Public Domain)

Finally, Jackson saw opposition in the form of the Second Bank of the United States, a rising institution that could perhaps rival the federal government as a center of power. With Jackson's vision of a strong presidency facing threats from all sides – 'corrupt' Washington insiders, proponents of states' rights and nullification, powerful bankers – it is easy to see why he valued loyalty in his cabinet. Little did he know, his cabinet members would soon have their loyalty tested in a scandal that would shape the development of the burgeoning Democratic Party. It would all begin with the secretary of war, John Henry Eaton – or, more specifically, with his wife.

John C. Calhoun: Le champion du Vieux Sud

John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) était un avocat et homme d'État américain, l'une des figures politiques clés de l'époque dite du "Vieux Sud" (Antebellum South). D'abord nationaliste, Calhoun passa le début de sa carrière à essayer de renforcer et de moderniser le gouvernement fédéral, mais dans les années 1830, il devint un fervent défenseur des droits des États et de l'esclavage, entraînant la Caroline du Sud dans la crise de nullification (1832-1833). Calhoun occupa le poste de vice-président sous deux présidents différents et passa plusieurs décennies au Congrès, où il fut reconnu comme l'un des membres du "grand triumvirat" des membres influents du Congrès américain, aux côtés de Henry Clay (1777-1852) et Daniel Webster (1782-1852). Il joua un rôle majeur dans l'union du Sud américain derrière l'institution de l'esclavage – qu'il qualifiait d'"institution particulière" – dans les décennies qui précédèrent la guerre de Sécession (1861-1865).

Caso Petticoat

El caso Petticoat, también conocido como Asunto Eaton, fue un escándalo político que estremeció Washington, D.C., desde 1829 hasta 1831, durante los primeros años de la presidencia de Andrew Jackson. La controversia giraba alrededor de la supuesta promiscuidad de Peggy Eaton, esposa del secretario de Guerra de Estados Unidos. Esta situación dividió el gabinete de Jackson y dio paso a una reestructuración del liderazgo del Partido Demócrata.

Débat Webster-Hayne

Le débat Webster-Hayne fut une série de discours croisés entre le sénateur Daniel Webster du Massachusetts et le sénateur Robert Y. Hayne de Caroline du Sud en janvier 1830. Ce qui commença comme un débat sur la vente des terres occidentales se transforma en une dispute sur la nature même de l'Union américaine, anticipant la crise de nullification et, en fait, la guerre de Sécession (ou guerre civile américaine).

Compromis de 1850

Le compromis de 1850 était une série de cinq lois adoptées par le Congrès américain en septembre 1850 afin d'apaiser une crise régionale qui couvait entre les "États libres" du Nord et les "États esclavagistes" du Sud. Cette crise avait été déclenchée par un désaccord sur la question de savoir si l'esclavage devait être autorisé à s'étendre au territoire dit "cession mexicaine", soit 529 000 miles carrés de territoire pris au Mexique après la guerre américano-mexicaine (1846-1848). En vertu du compromis de 1850, la Californie fut admise dans l'Union en tant qu'État libre, tandis que l'esclavage dans le reste du territoire, notamment au Nouveau-Mexique et en Utah, serait décidé par "souveraineté populaire", ce qui signifiait que les colons décideraient eux-mêmes d'interdire ou non l'esclavage. Ce compromis ne résolut pas le différend, mais ne fit que reporter le conflit sur l'esclavage qui allait culminer avec la guerre de Sécession (1861-1865).

Affaire Petticoat

L'affaire Petticoat (affaire des jupons), également appelée affaire Eaton, fut un scandale politique qui secoua Washington de 1829 à 1831, pendant les premières années de la présidence d'Andrew Jackson. L'affaire, qui tournait autour des rumeurs de promiscuité sexuelle de Peggy Eaton, épouse du secrétaire américain à la guerre, divisa le cabinet de Jackson et résulta en un remaniement de la direction du tout jeune parti démocrate.