Calhoun believed that his notions of federal-state relations were a natural extension of Jeffersonian theories of limited government. He cited arguments developed by Jefferson and Madison in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions opposing the oppressive Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. If a minority did not possess the authority to resist a majority, it would be possible for the federal government to become ever more centralized, eventually eclipsing the states altogether and making a mockery of the carefully crafted system of federalism established by the Founders.109
Jackson initially appeared to be a state rights advocate, but he and Calhoun parted ways over nullification. Jackson recognized, even if Calhoun turned a blind eye, that allowing a state to nullify federal laws would only lead to chaos and disorder. The proper method of opposing federal control was through participation in federal lawmaking. Replacing the tyranny of the majority with the tyranny of the minority was not a viable solution to the crises of the 1820s and 1830s.110
In July 1832, Jackson signed a new tariff law. He knew it would be unpopular in the South, and so he had pushed Congress to lower the tariff rates. If it were simply a matter of a specific rate, Jackson’s compromise effort might have placated all but the most hardened nullifiers, but emotions were too raw and opinions too fixed to allow for reasoned debate. The South Carolina legislature took the audacious step of nullifying both the 1828 and 1832 tariffs, declaring them void.
Never a man to back down from a fight, Jackson prepared U.S. Navy ships to embark for the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina, and threatened to hang any man, including Calhoun, who supported nullification or secession. In his “Proclamation to the People of South Carolina” in December 1832, the president contended that nullification was a constitutional absurdity that could not and would not be tolerated.111
By the time the crisis erupted, Calhoun had resigned the vice presidency and entered the U.S. Senate. He helped to defuse the crisis by working with Henry Clay to craft a new tariff with slightly higher rates in exchange for Clay’s agreement to denounce Jackson’s military threats. Looking ahead to the next presidential election, Clay was eager to garner even a modicum of southern support, and he never minded denouncing “King Andrew,” anyhow. Congress then enacted a force bill allowing Jackson the authority to use the military to put down nullifiers should they take up arms.112
Calhoun’s resignation as vice president in December 1832 came as no surprise. It had been a longtime coming. Calhoun was a philosophical proponent of nullification in an administration that vigorously opposed the concept. As Jackson prepared to enter his second term with a new vice president, Martin Van Buren, Calhoun had only three months left in office. He decided not to wait, resigning from the vice presidency before the end of his term. A day later, stepped into his new role as a U.S. senator representing South Carolina.113
Now that he could speak freely as a South Carolina man once again, Calhoun was liberated. Recognizing that the presidency probably was beyond his reach, he need not pull his punches, or moderate his views. He came out strongly against many of Jackson’s actions, including the president’s decision to remove federal funds from the Second Bank of the United States and deposit them into state banks. He also voted to censure Jackson for removing the funds, which contributed to the economic downturn known as the Panic of 1837.114
With the Democratic-Republican Party dissolved, along with the short-lived Nullifier Party, Calhoun was politically adrift. He occasionally voted with the Whig Party to oppose the Jackson administration, but he was never an ideological Whig. The party pushed for internal improvements and increased government centralization, and Calhoun thought such measures were dangerous. For that reason, among others, he could not support William Henry Harrison, the Whigs’s 1840 presidential candidate. Eventually, following Jackson’s retirement, Calhoun gravitated to the Democratic Party.115
When it was clear that American politics was shifting during the 1840s, Calhoun’s hopes for the presidency revived. Perhaps they had never disappeared in the first place. After more than a decade of service in the Senate, he resigned in March 1843 to focus on another presidential campaign. His years as a southern man, increasingly shrill in his public defense of slavery, had alienated him from his allies. Once upon a time, he and Henry Clay had been war hawks together, and they had shared a Whig opposition to Andrew Jackson. Those days were long past. Calhoun now was a man without a party, and his efforts to launch a viable presidential bid in 1844 failed as a consequence.116
The strange nature of the decade’s politics became clear after Harrison’s inauguration. The new president served for only a month before he unexpectedly died. His vice president, John Tyler, stepped into the executive mansion. Like Calhoun, Tyler had attached himself to the Whig Party, but it was never a good union. Leading Whigs such as Henry Clay became disillusioned with the new man, viewing him as an impostor.117
If Calhoun never quite fit comfortably into the ideological or party splits of the 1840s, his discomfiture had its advantages. President Tyler was also a man without strong party ties. Calhoun was not wrong to think that he might be rewarded with a cabinet post. A proud man, he would accept nothing less than the premier position, secretary of state. At the beginning of the Tyler administration, Daniel Webster occupied the chair. After his departure, Tyler chose Abel P. Upshur from Virginia as his new secretary. Upshur’s tenure lasted only eight months. He was one of six people killed on February 28, 1844, when a ship’s gun exploded on the steamship USS Princeton while he and President Tyler were on board. It was sheer luck that Tyler himself escaped injury.118
It was an ill wind for the administration, but it blew in Calhoun’s direction. The president had not intended to offer the secretary of state position to Calhoun, but a Virginia Whig, Henry Wise, spoke out of turn and extended the offer through a proxy. When President Tyler learned of Wise’s unauthorized action, he was apoplectic, but he could not disavow the offer without harming his relationship with Wise. Because Wise was one of Tyler’s few congressional allies, the president, through gritted teeth, agreed to add Calhoun to the cabinet.119
The pressing issue of the day was whether Texas should be annexed as part of the United States. Secretary Upshur, who shared Tyler’s affinity for annexation, had been negotiating secretly with the Republic of Texas lest Mexico, already suspicious of U.S. designs on Texas and the possibility that the republic’s border might be extended farther southward, learn of the talks and threaten war. Calhoun agreed with Upshur and Tyler on the annexation question, but he was a greater political liability to Tyler than Upshur had been. By 1844, Calhoun was viewed as an extreme southern partisan who naturally wanted to annex Texas so that slavery could spread westward. Upshur had operated behind the scenes, mostly in the shadows; consequently, he had enjoyed room to maneuver. Upshur slyly downplayed the role of slavery in the negotiations. With the fiercely partisan John C. Calhoun as the new secretary of state, it was clear that the Tyler administration sought to bring Texas into the fold, which provided ammunition to both the Mexican government and antislavery northern men who feared what annexation would do to the United States.
As Tyler had feared, Calhoun’s participation triggered a political backlash. When Senator Benjamin Tappan of Ohio, an annexation opponent, leaked several documents, including a letter from Calhoun to British Ambassador Richard Pakenham defending slavery, the Senate refused to ratify the annexation treaty. Tyler’s plan was in shambles, but Calhoun had emerged stronger from the episode, at least in the South. He had gone on record as a strong apologist for slavery, and he had forced potential presidential candidates to come out in favor of, or against, annexation.120
Calhoun’s political machinations did not improve his presidential prospects. After he recognized that he could not capture the 1844 nomination, he cut a deal with