John C. Calhoun: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:00, 6 November 2005

Revision as of 01:02, 6 November 2005

Line 27:

On [[December 28]], [[1832]] he became the first Vice President to resign from office, having accepted election to the United States Senate from his native South Carolina. The [[Force Bill]] was proposed by Congress prohibiting states from nullifying federal laws. The [[Compromise of 1833]] settled the matter for a number of years.

Calhoun led the pro-slavery faction in the senate in the 1830s and 1840s, opposing both [[abolitionism]], and attempts to limit the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Unlike previous generations of Southern politicians, who had execused slavery as a regrettable but nevertheless necessary institution, Calhoun defended slavery as a ''positive good'', on explicitly white supremacist grounds. In a [[February 1837]] [[Wikisource:Slavery a Positive Good|speech on the Senate floor]], he stated: "I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good -- a positive good" [http://douglassarchives.org/calh_a59.htm]. Calhoun's fierce defense of slavery and determination to advance the slave states' cause politically played a major role in deepening, and entrenching, the growing divide between the northern and southern states on this issue, wielding the threat of southern [[secession]] to back slave-state demands. He was a major advocate of the [[Fugitive Slave Law]], which enforced the co-operation of Free States in returning escaping slaves. Slavery as an issue was also to split both the Methodist and Baptist churches in America along north-south lines, divisions in which Calhoun had a significant influence.

==Secretary of State==