Congressional Giants. J. Michael Martinez

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СКАЧАТЬ the English. He also served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which played an instrumental role in pushing the country toward war.⁹³

      After war erupted during the summer of 1812, events did not occur as Calhoun and his colleagues had hoped. American forces suffered a series of humiliating defeats, and the national economy suffered. Worried about the country’s welfare as well as his own political career, Calhoun became indefatigable in his efforts to raise troops, provide sufficient funding to finance military operations, and regulate trade to alleviate the economic hardships precipitated by the fighting. He had done much to usher in the war, but he was equally determined to see that American soldiers had everything necessary to turn the tide.

      Because he was so tied to the war, Calhoun’s reputation suffered with every battlefield defeat. His fortunes improved at war’s end, however. With the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in December 1814, and General Andrew Jackson’s victory in the Battle of New Orleans the following month, the war became more popular. American public opinion swung in Calhoun’s favor. The war years had been a dark time, but the cessation of hostilities revealed a proud, undefeated nation. Calhoun’s stock rebounded.⁹⁴

      He had been dismayed by the poor management of the war. Calhoun witnessed firsthand the hazards of decentralization when it came to conducting national affairs, especially with the military. After their experience under oppressive British rule during the colonial period, Americans had distrusted a standing army, preferring instead to rely on a voluntary militia system. The system had failed during the War of 1812, Calhoun believed, and he thought he saw the solution. The United States needed a professional army. It also needed a system of permanent, high-quality roads as well as a central bank of the United States to handle financing. In short, he became a powerful voice for national authority.

      Given his desire to see improvements in the military, it was only natural that Calhoun joined the cabinet. In this case, a new president, James Monroe, found that few men of promise desired to manage the War Department when the administration commenced in 1817. Monroe finally offered the position to Calhoun, and he accepted. He now was well placed to enact his program, calling for an improved navy and a system of internal taxation to finance it.⁹⁵

      Calhoun’s tenure was stormy. He and Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford, both of whom harbored presidential aspirations, became rivals within the Monroe administration. Perhaps more damaging to Calhoun’s quest to improve wartime preparations than Crawford’s opposition, Americans were wary of spending money on military affairs in the aftermath of the War of 1812. State rights advocates, fearing any federal interference with slavery, urged Calhoun and Crawford to resist promoting policies that would strengthen the central government. In March 1821, Congress reflected this mistrust of big government by passing a new law, the Reduction Act, to cut the number of enlisted men in half as well as trim the officer corps. Despite his fear that Americans had learned nothing about military preparedness from the war, Calhoun also understood that his future political prospects required him to placate state right advocates. He acquiesced when the Reduction Act passed.⁹⁶

      Native American relations, always problematic in the early American republic, were becoming an urgent political issue during the 1820s as ever more white settlers headed west. Because Indian affairs were under his department, Calhoun developed a plan to relocate some tribes to western lands to avoid conflicts with state governments in the eastern United States. Monroe accepted the proposal. General Andrew Jackson’s invasion of Florida in 1818, which President Monroe had not approved, complicated Calhoun’s efforts to negotiate Indian treaties. In fact, he grew so frustrated with the political realities of dealing with tribes that he created the Bureau of Indian Affairs with the War Department to handle the innumerable details involved in managing Native American issues.⁹⁷

      Calhoun was still serving as secretary of war when the Missouri Crisis occurred in 1819. Watching as members of Congress strove to balance the admission of free states and slave states into the Union, Calhoun believed that the country would not be dissolved, but he understood that the crisis exacerbated a growing rift between North and South. He also knew where his allegiance would lie if the sections could not resolve their differences. Calhoun was a southern man, and he never forgot that fact. Even as he pursued national policies within the Monroe administration, he was mindful of his home region’s interests and desires.⁹⁸

      When the 1824 presidential election season commenced, Calhoun threw his hat into the ring. His rivals, Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, and Henry Clay, could claim broader political support than he. It soon became obvious that Calhoun could not win the nomination, but he was a consensus choice for the vice presidency. When the presidential election ended in a stalemate, the election went into the House of Representatives. John Quincy Adams, a Massachusetts man, emerged as the victor. Calhoun was his lieutenant.⁹⁹

      In a later era, presidential and vice presidential candidates ran as a single ticket, but in 1824 it was possible to have the chief executive and his secondary officer from different parties and political ideologies. Such was the case with Adams and Calhoun. They shared few, if any, political goals. They did not enjoy warm personal relations. Nothing suggested that these very different personalities would work well together, and they did not. Calhoun soon became disillusioned with the Adams administration, especially the president’s support for high tariffs and internal improvements.¹⁰⁰

      During these years, the South was becoming ever more isolated from the North as the slavery issue took center stage. Fearful that northern men would support policies to limit the extension of slavery into new territories, southern representations became ever more vocal in their support for state rights. Calhoun had voiced support for national laws, but he owed his political viability to the South. He could not afford to alienate his constituents. As the South moved away from supporting national policies, Calhoun followed along. Whether his political evolution was as principled as he argued is a matter of debate.

      What is not disputed is Calhoun’s estrangement from the Adams administration. Anyone watching political developments during John Quincy Adams’s presidency clearly saw the animosity building among the Democrats who believed that their man Andrew Jackson had been denied his place in the executive mansion. Sensing the shifting political tides, in 1826 Calhoun wrote a letter to Jackson offering his support in the next presidential election. It was an audacious act for a sitting vice president to throw his allegiance to someone other than his chief, but, then again, John C. Calhoun was an audacious man.¹⁰¹

      Just as Calhoun had never been close to Adams, he was not a thoroughgoing Jacksonian. The uneducated backwoodsman with the populist rhetoric was the antithesis of the Yale-educated South Carolinian and his well-developed sense of manners and propriety. A southern man with an aristocratic bent simply did not behave as Jackson did. Still, Calhoun understood how to practice politics as well as anyone. Jackson upheld southern values and state rights far better than Adams, who hailed from the antislavery North. Jackson owned slaves and was amenable to imposing his will on nonwhites. The opportunistic Calhoun believed, with some justification, that Jackson would offer a better deal than Adams. Their divergent opinions on nullification and the Union were some years in the future.¹⁰²

      In the election of 1828, Jackson won the presidency, resoundingly defeating Adams. Calhoun once again became vice president, making him only the second man in American history to serve as vice president under two separate presidents.¹⁰³ If Calhoun had hoped to enjoy better relations with Jackson than he had with Adams, however, he was badly mistaken. From the outset, their relationship was strained, and it only grew worse with time.

      It began with the so-called Petticoat Affair. Modern audiences may find the entire episode silly and hardly worthy of presidential attention or debate, but contemporaries viewed it differently. It was customary at the time for the wives of cabinet members to invite each other to Washington social events as a common courtesy. Calhoun’s wife, Floride, organized a group of cabinet wives to shun Peggy Eaton, the wife of incoming Secretary of War John СКАЧАТЬ