John C. Calhoun

John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) was a South Carolina lawyer and planter who held nearly every major federal office short of the presidency. Elected to the House in 1810, he was a War Hawk who pressed for the War of 1812 and then for a stronger army, roads and a national bank. He served as Secretary of War under James Monroe and as vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, resigning in 1832 during the nullification crisis. As senator and as John Tyler's Secretary of State he became the foremost political and intellectual defender of slavery and Southern rights until his death in 1850.

Admirers have long credited Calhoun with original political theory on minority rights and the limits of majority rule, and in 1957 a Senate committee chaired by John F. Kennedy selected him for the Senate's hall of fame. Critics, including historian Richard Hofstadter, argue that his concurrent majority protected propertied minorities rather than minorities in general, and that it was built to defend slavery. He owned dozens of enslaved people at his Fort Hill plantation, and his arguments on slavery in the territories were later echoed in the Dred Scott decision. His defense of nullification and sectional rights is widely seen as helping lay the ground for secession and the Civil War. Yale renamed Calhoun College in 2017, and Charleston removed his monument in 2020.