The Ideas that Made the Confederacy

By Samuel Coffman

John Caldwell Calhoun was one of the premier American intellectuals active in the South in the decades preceding the Civil War. His intellectual drive to preserve the South is seen years before Americans today view the Southern ideas at risk of being overruled. By closely analyzing Calhoun’s writing and decisions he made as vice president and later as senator, we can see Calhoun help lay the groundwork for secession. Even with his untimely death in 1850, years before secession culminated in the Civil War, Calhoun’s intellectual ideas were a vital part of the secession narrative, the formation of the Confederacy, and the effort to protect the rights of slave owners. Additionally, they reflect the current push by U.S. politicians to continue amending the balance of power to protect personal interests and minority beliefs. 

John C. Calhoun was born in 1782 in South Carolina. Growing up with limited resources, he attended Yale College and studied law at Tapping Reeve’s Litchfield Law School in Connecticut. Throughout his career he served in the South Carolina Legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives. He served as the Secretary of War under President James Monroe before running for President in the Election of 1824. 

After recognizing that he would not win enough support for the presidency, Calhoun ran as the Vice-Presidential candidate and received large support from the Electoral College. Calhoun was elected on December 1, 1824. The decision in the four-way Presidential race between John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay was delayed after no candidate received enough electoral votes. Calhoun would be the Vice President to whomever won the Presidential election; eventually John Quincy Adams secured the vote (1).

Calhoun and Adams had continual disagreements, one of which was fought over the role of the Vice President as the presiding officer of the Senate. In a series of eleven letters written under pseudonyms and published in the press, Vice President Calhoun and President Adams (or one of Adams’ close advisors), argued over the abilities of the Vice President after Calhoun refused to stop debating during a senator’s speech. 

Senator John Randolph of Virginia was giving a speech opposing President Adams and Secretary of State Henry Clay. Vice President Calhoun refused to interrupt the speech as the presiding officer, leading to the criticism in the press. In “Onslow’s [Calhoun’s] Second Letter to the ‘Patrick Henry’ [J.Q. Adams or Disciple],” Calhoun wrote, “whatever right the Vice-President possess over order, must be derived from Senate; and, therefore, he can exercise no power in adopting rules or enforcing them” (2).

Calhoun did not believe that the Vice President could exert much authority over the Senate because he did not inherently hold power over another branch of government. His only ability was to enforce the rules that the Senate gave to the presiding officer, and to keep the legislative body inside the constraints that it established for itself. His intellectual belief as shown in the letters debating the checks of power affected the way he governed, the way he legislated, and the way he protected the South. 

Calhoun fundamentally believed that the promise of America was power shared among the people. He did not want the Vice President, any Vice President, to have too much control over the legislative branch. He always wanted to force power down. Now of course, the hypocrisy in this idea was the inability to extend power to enslaved people. He did not hold the belief that enslaved people should have any sort of political power. But to ensure the federal government would not exert too much power, it would need to be shared among the electorate that was appropriate in Calhoun’s eyes: the state governments. It is why he was so approving of states’ rights. 

Calhoun was incredibly concerned with the government’s ability to oppress people. As an intellectual, he saw the need for political theories he had spent his career building to be shared. Robert Elder puts it in his biography of Calhoun, Calhoun: American Heretic, “Realizing that the political moment and his persistent cough meant that he no longer had the luxury of time, Calhoun turned his attention that spring to writing two works [A Disquisition on Government and A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States]” (3). In Calhoun’s Disquisition published the year after his death, he wrote, “Government, although intended to protect and preserve society, has itself a strong tendency to disorder and abuse of its powers …” (4). His belief that the American people would need protection from a tyrannical government motivated him in every level of government that he served to push for the balance of power to shift towards the states rather than the federal government. 

The idea of protecting the American people from a tyrannical government is still present in today’s politics. It’s the catalyst for politicians on both sides of the aisle to win elections, pass legislation, and explain their actions when they come under fire. Former President Donald Trump has been working to expand the power of the executive branch should he return to the oval office in 2025. His goal is “to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House…” (5). One could argue that Calhoun would be opposed to this expansion of executive power, but the two men’s motivations for changes in the balance of power are similar. Both want to use the power of government to protect the way of life they believe in and further along their political careers and personal interests. Calhoun might understand Trump’s efforts to use power to protect his way of life, regardless of its popularity among the American public. 

Calhoun’s Disquisition is philosophical and theoretical in nature, but practically was his response to what he perceived as Northern aggression. He saw a future where the South’s freedom to own enslaved people would have minority support and the majority would remove that freedom. In his patriotism for his country, he questioned how the republic could remove the liberty of some based on the beliefs of any. He foresaw that this overreach could lead to secession. Calhoun identified the distinction between the North and South in America, and his disquisition, written twelve years before the first Southern state’s secession, lays the philosophical groundwork for the idea. The sectionalism rich in his ideas made space for the idea of a distinct society that was set apart from the North.

The Southern intellectuals of the mid-1800s did not just think that slavery was their political right. Many, like Calhoun, saw slavery as the key institution to their flourishing society. They believed they had built an incredibly modern society, even with the contradictions that we see today. Robert Elder, in his biography of Calhoun addresses this well: “So concerned with power being checked and bound to preserve liberty for himself and his fellow white Americans, Calhoun saw no contradiction in exercising the most extreme and total form of power [slave ownership]…”

  In congruence with that statement,  while Calhoun fights for liberty, he excludes enslaved people from his efforts.  enslaved people. Calhoun believed in a natural order of humanity. He writes in Disquisition, 

“It is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty. It is…a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving;–and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded, and vicious, to be capable either of appreciating or enjoying it” (4).

Unfortunately, Calhoun can only view the Constitution through the lens of his racism. It’s how on the one hand he can advocate for the liberty he believes America promises yet seek to protect the South’s right to withhold that liberty from enslaved people. While he is blind to the contradictions, his belief in his version of America led him to keep writing.  

Calhourn wrote “A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States” as his analysis on the core values of the American republic. He believed that his generation lacked an adequate interpretation of the founding principles and took it upon himself, as an active intellectual thinker, to write one. He takes the time to define his idea of why our system of government is federal.

He wrote, “To express it more concisely, it is federal and not national, because it is the government of a community of States, and not the government of a single State of nation” (6). To understand Calhoun as an intellectual, it is key to recognize how reverent he was towards the founding of the United States. He was patriotically supportive of the founding documents, holding more reverence for the Constitution than he did for the feelings of the electorate, calling the Constitution, “my letter of instruction…” (3). Yet his brand of patriotism was one that will always protect the Southern way of life in owning enslaved people. Where he can find support for this way of life from the Founding Fathers’ words, he will use them. Where he can identify the need for states’ rights, he will, always with the goal in mind to protect the South. 

After Calhoun resigned the Vice Presidency, he was appointed the senator for South Carolina, later appointed Secretary of State, and once again returned to the senate. In his second term as senator, in one of his final speeches to the legislative body before his death, Calhoun gave the “Speech on the Slavery Question” on March 4, 1850. It echoed Calhoun’s long-running idea that the country was abandoning the original vision while directly defending the rights of slave owners of the South. At this point, these issues were increasingly tense among the political class, and Calhoun contemplated the possibility of the Union being too far gone from preservation. 

His hypocrisy is clearly shown in the “Speech on the Slavery Question” through possible solutions he presents for consideration. He wanted the federal government to step in and deed equal territory to the South, to limit debate over slavery completely, and to add an amendment to the Constitution protecting the institution of slavery.  For a man motivated to withhold the ability of the federal government to act, his hypocrisy is shown in such willingness for federal action with the added provision that it is to protect slavery. Even in one of his final speeches before his death, his vision was never changed. This, again, brings suspicion that Calhoun would actually be supportive of a modern effort in expanding federal power to protect minority political beliefs he agrees with. Instead of a constant belief in a certain balance of power, his thoughts are contingent upon who the federal government’s actions will favor. He would always be blinded by his love for the South’s society that was built on a system of racism protecting the slave owning elite. 

John Calhoun’s own state of South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in 1860; it’s fitting that the South Carolinian himself is openly recognizing the idea that Southerners will not stand for the abolishment of their rights. Calhoun says in his speech, “It will be found in the belief in the people of the Southern States, as prevalent in the discontent itself, that they cannot remain, as things now are, consistently with honor and safety, in the Union” (6). Calhoun was unequivocally one of the leading intellectuals and advocates for the South’s right to secede, yet he was not alone, a fact that he reminded all who encountered his speech. He referred to “the people of the Southern States” as disapproving of the Union’s actions. Theoretically, he was speaking on the Senate floor representing the South’s interests —not all the people of the South of course, but the elites that elected him to the body. 

His view of American values that was clouded by racism appeared once again in this speech. He spent a few paragraphs referencing the social order of the South. “…the Southern Section regards the relation [of the races] as one which cannot be destroyed without subjecting the two races to the greatest calamity.” This moment of American history was deeper than just race. This moment put on display how the domination by race formed an entire society and caused an increasing sectionalism in America. The South believed they were the pinnacle of the social order, that the relation between the two races was correct morally and beneficial to both. Understanding Calhoun’s influence on secession requires scholars of intellectual history to understand just how deep he believed in his society. Much of his support for slavery was because of his personal racist beliefs, but that was not the only reason secession happened. Reading Calhoun’s words allows us to see that secession was the culmination of having two societies. He contemplates the possibility of  a war, “If the agitation goes on, the same force, acting with increased intensity…will finally snap every cord, when nothing will be left to hold the State together except force” (6). Additionally, he informs the Senate that the South is ready to take up arms, “If you are unwilling we should part in peace, tell us so, and we shall know what to do, when you reduce the question submission or resistance” (6).

In a study conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center from 2018, only 22% of high school students could identify that protections for slavery were embedded in our founding documents and only 8% correctly say that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War (7). Current education does not adequately inform students of Calhoun’s or any southern intellectuals long-held beliefs that led to the protection of slavery, eventual secession of the South, and the Civil War of the United States. 

Additionally, modern politicians like Trump are still seeking to use the balance of power in the federal government to directly protect his supporters and grow his own power. According to the New York Times, these actions aren’t just for philosophical beliefs, but “reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands” (5). The support of a plurality of the people have become inconsequential to Trump’s actions, and instead he is motivated to take actions for his own personal interest, not accounting for the long-term effects of his words.

Calhoun did not survive long enough to see how his words truly made an impact through secession, but his legacy lived on for years after his death. The sheet of stamps show how Calhoun was immortalized because of his ideas. This sheet is from 1862, printed for the Confederate States of America. Stamps made for the seceded states featuring a former Senator, Secretary of State, and Vice President of the United States of America.

The ideas that Calhoun wrote in Disquisition and Discourse, the ideas he defended in his speeches and letters, culminated in a move that Calhoun never got to see. The South secedes, his home state of South Carolina being the first to do so, largely because of the ideas that Calhoun was instrumental in forming. 

He cannot seek to imagine a practical way for the Union to be preserved but avoid war without any concessions from the South. Here war becomes the most plausible idea for him. However, even with his place in the legacy of the Confederacy, he does not blame himself for the dissolution of the Union. Closing out his speech on the Senate floor, Calhoun says,“Having faithfully done my duty to the best of my ability, both to the union and my section…I shall have the consolation…that I am free from all responsibility.” He died that same month, and was buried in his home state of South Carolina, free from all responsibility of the South’s coming course of action, clean of the blood that would be spilled by Americans and of Americans. 

Calhoun’s views are embedded in our American society today. These ideas reflect the push by former U.S. President Trump to consolidate power over the legislative branch. His efforts to prevent the certification of the Electoral College in the U.S. Senate, to hold his grip on power and push forward his political views was unprecedented. Yet, it lies in a similar vein with Calhoun’s actions: pushing forward intellectual ideas to protect your own political way of life and keep power in the hands of people whom they agreed with.

We must accept the fact that Calhoun’s views led to the dissolution of the Union, the Civil War, and continued to influence political thought. With his death a decade before President Lincoln’s inauguration, Calhoun’s importance is largely overshadowed. A study of intellectual history, however, can help Americans today grasp a clearer picture of the period leading up to the Civil War. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen puts it best in her book The Ideas that Made America, “The official version of American intellectual history goes something like this: it is an approach to understanding the American past by way of ideas and the people who made or were moved by them” (8).

We cannot truly understand the decision of secession without understanding the decades-long intellectual push that formulated the idea into a reality. Understanding Calhoun’s work is understanding the intellectual history, and the physical history, of what President Obama called America’s original sin of slavery (9). John Caldwell Calhoun spent his years protecting the South’s power and influence, ensuring that his section could make the decision it needed to when the time came, whether Calhoun was still around to help or not. 

References

1. “John C. Calhoun.” John C. Calhoun | Founder and Key Historical Figures | History | About | Clemson University, South Carolina, www.clemson.edu/about/history/bios/john-c-calhoun.html. 
2. Calhoun, Onslow’s [Calhoun] Second Letter to ‘Patrick Henry’ [J.Q. Adams or Disciple],” 27 June 1826
3. Elder, Robert. Calhoun: American Heretic. New York: Basic books, 2021. “John C. Calhoun.” John C. Calhoun | Founder and Key Historical Figures | History | About | Clemson University, South Carolina, www.clemson.edu/about/history/bios/john-c-calhoun.html.
4. Calhoun, John C. “Selection from A Disquisition on Government.” Hollinger, David A. and Charles Capper. The American Intellectual Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 480-490.
5. Swan, Jonathan, et al. “Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 July 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html.
6. Calhoun, John C. “A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States.” H. Lee Cheek, Jr. John C. Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches. Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2003. 60-222.
7. Shuster, Kate. “Teaching Hard History.” Southern Poverty Law Center, 31 Jan. 2018, www.splcenter.org/20180131/teaching-hard-history.
8. Ratner-Rosenhagen, Jennifer. The Ideas That Made America: a Brief History, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2019. 1.
9. “Transcript: Barack Obama’s Speech on Race.” NPR, 18 Mar. 2008, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88478467.