Congressional Giants. J. Michael Martinez

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      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 the Democratic candidate, James Knox Polk, of Tennessee. Calhoun would support Polk’s presidential candidacy in exchange for a pledge to support Texas annexation and oppose the Tariff of 1842. Calhoun also wanted Polk to dissolve the Washington Globe, a Democratic newspaper. When Polk agreed to the terms, Calhoun threw his weight behind the Democrat. Polk won the election. The lame duck Tyler administration managed to push through a joint House and Senate measure expressing support for annexation, and a treaty soon followed.¹²¹

      Polk came into office, and Calhoun returned to the U.S. Senate representing South Carolina. He had helped Polk win the presidency, but Calhoun soon showed his well-known independent streak. Polk prosecuted a war against Mexico over disputed lands in south Texas, and Calhoun opposed the war. He understood that during wartime, a president assumes extraordinary powers that require greater government centralization, which Calhoun opposed. Although he voted against prosecuting the war, he believed that any new territory acquired as a result of the conflict should be open to slavery. When Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot proposed that the peculiar institution be banned from newly acquired lands, Calhoun was one of many southern members of Congress to howl in protest at the proviso.¹²²

      Calhoun was open to political compromise when it was possible to do so without undermining state rights and the honor of the South. In one instance, he worked with the Polk administration to reach a compromise with Great Britain over the Oregon territory. The president supported the concept of Manifest Destiny, which called for Americans to gobble up territory from coast to coast. Great Britain still claimed ownership to lands encompassing present-day British Columbia as well as the western states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. During the 1844 presidential election, Democratic expansionists had used the slogan “54–40 or fight” to argue that the United States should go to war if the British did not recognize American claims north of the 54–40 line. Calhoun worked with his successor, Secretary of State James Buchanan, to negotiate a treaty that essentially split the difference, allowing England to retain British Columbia at the 49th parallel and ceding other territory to the United States. The Senate ratified the treaty in 1846.¹²³

      Although Calhoun remained an integral participant in national affairs during this time, his health declined as he entered his sixties. A recurring bout of tuberculosis left him sidelined. His last major act as a public figure occurred shortly before his death, when Congress debated the series of laws known as the Compromise of 1850. He was sixty-eight years old when the measures came before the Senate. Although he was too short of breath to speak, he wanted his views made known. On March 4, 1850, Calhoun’s friend and colleague, Senator James Mason of Virginia, agreed to read a statement on the South Carolinian’s behalf.¹²⁴

      He was in no mood for compromise, despite Henry Clay’s plea to preserve the Union even at great cost. When Calhoun appeared in the Senate chamber that March 4, he looked ghastly. It was clear that he was not long for the world. “Acting under the advice of my friends, and apprehending that it might not be in my power to deliver my sentiments before the termination of the debate, I have reduced to writing what I intended to say,” he explained, his voice little more than a whisper, a far cry from the booming Calhoun voice of old. He turned it over to Mason, who stepped forward. “It affords me great pleasure to comply with the request of the honorable senator,” Mason said in agreeing to read the remarks aloud.

      Calhoun, speaking through Mason, opened with conciliatory words. “I have, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion,” СКАЧАТЬ