John Caldwell Calhoun was born on March 18th, 1782 in South Carolina. His parents, Martha and Patrick Calhoun, were very wealthy Scots who also practiced the religion of Calvinism. As a judge, Patrick owned over twenty slaves and would at one point be apart of the state legislature. John was educated his whole childhood, and he would eventually attend Yale University since he was so bright.
After graduating from Yale in 1804, Calhoun went to law school in Connecticut, where he graduated in 1807. He would move back down to a town outside of Charleston, South Carolina where his family grew up to start his law practice. Calhoun worked his way up to be apart of South Carolina’s state legislature and found a way to get elected to the House of Representatives.…show more content… Her large sum of wealth enabled him to become a statesman. This got him started on his path to becoming a large influence on the war of 1812 and the early days of The United States of America.
John C. Calhoun was born in the South and also a Jeffersonian Republican, later becoming one of the leaders of the Democratic-Republican party. These two things influenced his political views greatly.
He followed in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson being an advocate for states’ rights. Also, like Jefferson, he was in favor of Nullification, that is invalidating a law if the state sees it as unconstitutional. He was a major factor in the Nullification Crisis, happening in the years 1832-1833.
Being from the South, Calhoun was an avid supporter of slavery. He fought strongly against the abolitionists that were trying to rid the south of slaves.He supported the Tariff of Abominations when it was first passed, but repealed his support after listening to the argument of the people from the south. The Tariff of Abominations favored the North over the South because it did not help agriculturally, so farmers would either have to buy from the North or pay the tariff on goods coming from