Calhoun the Political Philosopher
JOSEPH KELLY
Rollins College
John C. Calhoun’s name is probably the one most associated with the doctrine of
nullification. This could be for a number of reasons. Perhaps it is because, as vice
president of the United States, he was the highest-ranking government official to side
with the nullifiers. Perhaps it is because he penned the original drafts of the famous
“South Carolina Exposition” and “Protest,” which so eloquently defended the doctrine.
Perhaps it is because he, more than anyone, worked to convince outsiders of
nullification’s intellectual merit; as William Freehling put it, “after working with the
theory for a time, his commitment came closer to resembling an author’s pride in his own
artistic achievement.”1
Despite Calhoun’s close association with nullification, however, he should not be
credited with creating the doctrine. That distinction goes to Thomas Jefferson, who
wrote in 1798 in the Kentucky Resolutions that “whensoever the General government
assumes undelegated powers, it’s [sic] acts are unauthoritative, void, & of no force.” 2 He
outlined no procedure for declaring a law “unauthoritative, void, & of no force,” but he
established the concept that the state had the right to do so.
Calhoun should not be acknowledged, either, as the man who took Jefferson’s
ideas of nullification and applied them to his time, when the general government was
arguably assuming undelegated powers. Calhoun followed many South Carolina
1
William Freehling, Prelude to Civil War; The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 156.
2
Thomas Jefferson, “Kentucky Resolutions” in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 30: 1
January 1798 to 31 January 1799 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 543.
1
statesmen who embraced nullification publicly before he did. These firebrands were
influenced by lowcountry planter Robert James Turnbull’s 1827 work The Crisis, which
South Carolina governor James Hamilton, Jr., referred to as, “the first bugle-call to the
South to rally.” 3 Turnbull, not Calhoun, set the nullification movement in motion.
Nevertheless, the nullification movement owed much to Calhoun for his
intellectual contribution. His innovation was to introduce a conception of nullification
that clearly sought to preserve the union rather than to rend it apart. The radical diatribes
expressed by the first backers of nullification in South Carolina were but shrill calls for
resistance and had no political merit for the moderate South Carolinian who preferred
compromise over confrontation. Through his writings, Calhoun introduced a notion of
nullification more palatable to these moderates than any they had heard previously, one
that did not make them fear disunion and civil war. He systemized the doctrine so it
became a constitutional check rather than a battle cry; he grounded his theory in the
existing framework of American law, thereby implying his hope for its perpetuity.
Calhoun, unlike Turnbull before him, was wholly committed to union, and that sentiment
made nullification acceptable to the many in the state that were also committed. They
agreed with the novel interpretation of the Constitution that he alone had formulated.
A comparison of Turnbull’s The Crisis to Calhoun’s draft of the 1828 “South
Carolina Exposition” reveals the improvements that the latter made upon the former’s
original doctrine. In turn, an analysis of Calhoun’s writings in comparison to the political
thought of James Madison, the man widely regarded as the “Father of the Constitution,”
reveals the originality and importance of the constitutional framework that Calhoun had
devised. Though he had not devised the doctrine of nullification, his conception of the
3
Freehling, Prelude to Civil War, 128.
2
theory was a new creation. Within the nullification movement, Calhoun was the only one
to inject his own ideas into the dispute.
The Crisis received its title because it described what the author perceived as the
current state of affairs in South Carolina. Much of the book is dedicated to an outline of
the immediate crisis that the state faced—namely, a clash of interests with an apparently
hostile northern majority. “The more National, and the less federal, the Government
becomes,” Turnbull warned, “the more certainly will the interest of the great majority of
the States be promoted, but with the same certainty, will the interests of the South be
depressed and destroyed.” 4 Though the protective tariff boosted the success of the
manufacturing states, it functioned as little more than “an indirect tax upon the people of
the Southern States, amounting exactly to the difference between what they now pay, and
the cheaper price at which they might obtain the article.”5
Even more pernicious than the tariff, however, were the efforts of the American
Colonization Society to alter the southern institution of slavery. To Turnbull, the
society’s early movements were enough to conjure visions of slave revolts, congressional
interference, and ultimately, the ruin of the South. He firmly believed that the entire
region, and South Carolina in particular, could not function without its peculiar
institution. Slavery “is so intimately interwoven with our prosperity,” he claimed, “that
to talk of its abolition, is to speak of striking us out of our civil and political existence. It
is to remove from us the only labourers who can cultivate our soil. It is to cut oft’ all the
resources of our wealth.”6
4
Robert James Turnbull, The Crisis (1827, repr., Danvers: General Books LLC, 2009), 13.
Ibid., 125.
6
Ibid., 137.
5
3
At root, though, the “crisis” of which Turnbull wrote at length went beyond
questions of economics, beyond the morality or even necessity of slavery. What truly
threatened South Carolina, the underlying cause of all of the state’s immediate
controversies, was a constitutional crisis. Members of the federal government, Turnbull
maintained, were misinterpreting the Constitution by tending toward national
consolidation. As such, he dedicated much of his writing to constitutional analysis in
order to explain the issue.
All of the problems, Turnbull declared, stemmed from a misinterpretation of
Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 18 of the Constitution, which states that Congress has the
right “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution
the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government
of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”7 The ambiguity of the
phrase “necessary and proper” had already led to the McCulloch v. Maryland Supreme
Court decision, which Turnbull believed faulty. In it, Chief Justice John Marshall
decided that the phrase was meant to enlarge the powers of Congress, so that it was able
to perform all the powers incidental to those specifically enumerated in the Constitution.8
Turnbull, however, buoyed by the records of the Constitutional Convention, stated that
the clause had been inserted for the opposite purpose: “to narrow the discretion of
Congress, as to the selection of its means in exercising its enumerated powers.”9
Congress had the ability to pass any law that was necessary and proper in regards to the
execution of the specifically enumerated powers of the government, not to pass any law
that it felt would improve the general welfare. Turnbull’s interpretation did not allow for
7
U.S. Constitution, art. 1, sec. 8.
Turnbull, The Crisis, 36-40.
9
Ibid., 38.
8
4
the implementation of national banks, protective tariffs, or national abolition; the
allegedly faulty interpretation of Congress allowed for pretty much anything.
According to Turnbull, the Constitution granted to Congress very specific
enumerated powers and reserved the rest for the states. Thus, Congress could not
perform any powers not specifically delegated to them without usurping the powers of
state governments; as a body, it was not free to pass any law for the sake of what it
considered the general welfare, though Turnbull believed it was doing exactly that.10
“Before Congress can exercise any great substantive powers,” he stated, “it must place its
finger upon that clause of the act of enumerated powers, which clearly confers the grant
of power contended for.”11 Therefore, since the Constitution allowed Congress “To lay
and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” a tariff was legal for the purposes of
revenue collection; it was not legal, however, for the protectionist purposes that it was
being used for, as the Constitution did not grant Congress the power to protect
industries.12 Those who pointed to the clause in the Constitution that gave Congress the
power to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” as evidence in favor of
protectionism were erroneous as well in Turnbull’s eyes, as that power was specifically
limited to “securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to
their respective Writings and Discoveries.”13
Additionally, Turnbull argued that a clause in the section of the Constitution
limiting state powers actually gave the power to promote industries to the states. Article
I, Section 10, Paragraph 2 states, “No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress,
10
Ibid., 40-46.
Ibid., 27.
12
U.S. Constitution, art. 1, sec. 8.
13
Ibid.; Turnbull, The Crisis, 63-66.
11
5
lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely
necessary for executing it's [sic] inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and
Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of
the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the
Congress.”14 Though the states had to gain permission from Congress, they still
possessed the right to impose duties; and since all revenue from such duties were
explicitly placed in the federal treasury, the only purpose for such duties would be to
encourage industries. Thus, not only was Congress using a power it did not have in
imposing the tariff—it was usurping a right of the states.15 As Turnbull concluded, “1st.That money cannot be appropriated but for national purposes; and 2ndly, That no
measure is national in its character, which refers to a subject over which the States, under
the Constitution, can lawfully exercise their sovereignty.”16
The solution to this constitutional crisis, Turnbull argued, could not be found
within the federal judiciary, the solution proposed by many moderates. The courts, as
part of the national government, were too attached to the interest of expanding federal
powers to be impartial arbiters.17 Furthermore, the tariff laws were, “in their form,”
absolutely constitutional; a court could not factor motive and interest into its decisions,
and as Congress was in fact given the power to impose duties, any case brought against it
in federal court would certainly be dismissed.18 The alleged fact that Congress passed
the tariff for the unconstitutional purpose of encouraging manufactures would be deemed
irrelevant.
14
U.S. Constitution, art. 1, sec. 10.
Turnbull, The Crisis, 66-69.
16
Ibid., 94.
17
Ibid., 101, 116-117.
18
Ibid., 177.
15
6
The representatives of the states in Congress were not to be relied upon either,
though some of them could be expected to sympathize a bit more with the plight of the
state. “There is a responsibility, it is true, of our own members of Congress to the people
of South Carolina. But these men can do no more than their duty,” Turnbull argued.
“When once the people of the Northern and Western States, who constitute the majority,
shall decide, that we shall pay tribute to them, what becomes of that safeguard called
‘political responsibility?’”19
Neither the courts nor Congress would save South Carolina. Turnbull’s answer to
the crisis was simple, if inelegant: “To our State Legislature alone we must look.”20
Without laying out any particular protocol or system, he insisted throughout The Crisis
that the South Carolina legislature “shall raise its voice against any usurped act of the
Government” and had “the undoubted right, to call the General Government to account
for an abuse of its delegated powers.”21 Simple resistance was Turnbull’s answer—and
though he never referred to it as such, this answer was a primitive form of nullification.
The state legislature was to refuse obedience to any law that usurped its own rights.
Calhoun, in his draft of the South Carolina “Exposition,” performed a similar
constitutional analysis. He agreed that Congress’s only power to encourage manufactures
was its ability to grant patents.22 He agreed that the judiciary could not be the sole
interpreter of the Constitution, as it could not possibly remain neutral and could not
adjudicate based on the motivation of a law.23 Even their language was somewhat
19
Ibid., 102.
Ibid.
21
Ibid., 103, 121.
22
John C. Calhoun, “South Carolina Exposition” in The Papers of John C. Calhoun, November
25, 1828, Volume X: 1825-1829 (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1977), 446.
23
Ibid., 446, 500, 502, 506.
20
7
similar: where Turnbull stated that “the best rule of interpretation is the plain letter of the
Constitution,” Calhoun asserted that the “only safe rule is the Constitution itself.” 24 On
the fundamentals of the document, the two seem in complete accord. Calhoun writes at
length about the nature of congressional powers, and echoes Turnbull’s interpretation:
“The powers of the General Government are particularly ennumerated and specifickly
delegated; and all powers, not expressly delegated, or which are not necessary and proper
to execute those that are granted, are expressly reserved to the States and the people.”25
Calhoun, like Turnbull, believed in the ultimate sovereignty of the states as the
bodies that had originally created the Constitution. Since they were the ones to initially
consent to the document, it was up to them, and them alone, “to decide in the last resort
whether the compact made by them be violated.”26 When a state felt that its powers were
being usurped, it had a “Constitutional right… to interpose in order to protect” those
powers. Of states that post-dated the Constitution, he said nothing; he likely believed that
since these states consented to the document’s rule when joining the union, they, too, had
the power to interpose. Like Turnbull, Calhoun advocated a solution based on
nullification.27
Despite such agreement, however, the remedies prescribed by Turnbull and
Calhoun bore significant differences—differences crystallized by “a striking distinction
between government and sovereignty” that Calhoun acknowledged and Turnbull
denied.28 Calhoun disagreed with Turnbull’s assertion that the state legislatures were
sufficient to fulfill the role of original sovereignty. A state’s government, he argued,
24
Ibid., 446; Turnbull, The Crisis, 53.
Calhoun, “South Carolina Exposition,” 496.
26
Ibid., 508.
27
Ibid., 512.
28
Ibid., 496.
25
8
passed and carried out the laws within its domain, but that did not make it sovereign. The
people of any respective state were the sovereigns. It was they who had ratified the
Constitution, not the legislature. Thus, only a state convention, democratically elected
for the specific occasion, could accurately represent that sovereign power. A convention,
once convened, would be able to determine whether or not a particular law was
unconstitutional and therefore null and void.29
This differed markedly from Turnbull, who, in The Crisis, argued specifically
against the need for a state convention to act as the sovereign. Aware of the legal
principles that Calhoun relied upon to declare the people of a state the supreme
authority—that the Constitution had been ratified by conventions, not legislatures—
Turnbull nevertheless characteristically stuck to a strict, unimaginative interpretation of
constitutionalism.30 “Under the State constitution,” he asserted, “all power, which is not
reserved to the people in a bill of rights… is invested in the State Legislature.” 31 Since
the people had no right to a nullifying convention explicit in the Constitution, that power
was reserved to the legislature, regardless of original sovereignty.
William Freehling embraced Calhoun’s conception of nullification as
advantageous to the nullification movement because, unlike Turnbull’s, his defined an
ultimate and final authority on the Constitution: the people of the state. Turnbull, who
maintained that the state government was able to check usurpation by the latter, never
established one branch of government as sovereign over the other. Thus, no “final”
interpretation of the Constitution could exist in a dispute; a nullifying state government
would simply resist its national government, thus making the use of force almost
29
Ibid., 510, 512.
Ibid., 110-112, 121.
31
Ibid., 121.
30
9
inevitable. Furthermore, Calhoun’s theory of nullification did not blur the line between
lawmaking and constitution-making, as Turnbull’s did. The very heart of the
constitutional crisis that the two acknowledged was that Congress, in its willful ignorance
of the checks upon its power, was to their mind interpreting the nation’s Constitution as it
went along. Though Congress had no constitutional power to create a bank, internal
improvements, or a protective tariff, it went ahead and did so anyway. Under Turnbull’s
plan, state governments could just as easily take hold of Constitution for their own
purposes, and shut down even legitimate exercises of federal power that did not suit the
state simply by refusing to follow a law. It could do that despite the fact that the state
legislature was not a party to the creation of the Constitution, and therefore had no
legitimate right to make any sort of alteration to it. The legislature’s role was limited to
mundane legislative powers. Calhoun’s plan, on the other hand, separated constitutional
authority from governmental power, and thus prevented those in office from exerting
undue influence on the highest law of the land.32 No government, be it Congress or a
state legislature, would have the unlimited ability to interpret the Constitution to its own
benefit.
As much as Calhoun’s conception improved upon Turnbull’s in a legal and
theoretical sense, it is difficult to assess that improvement’s tangible contribution to the
nullification movement. Freehling argues that Calhoun’s breakthrough gave other
defenders of nullification “the immense intellectual security of being able to answer their
critics with arguments based squarely on cherished American principles.”33 This
argument certainly has merit. James Hammond, a prolific contributor of nullification
32
33
Freehling, Prelude to Civil War, 159-165.
Ibid., 166.
10
editorials in South Carolina, praised an essay of Calhoun’s for making “everything as
clear as a sun beam” and was probably buoyed by the soundness of reason that Calhoun
contributed to nullification.34
However, on a grander scale, it is unlikely that Calhoun’s force of logic held
much influence over the people of South Carolina who would in 1832 sweep nullifiers
into a majority of the state government. Throughout the nullification campaign, people
were swayed by appeals to emotion, not reason. George McDuffie, one of the nullifiers’
most successful orators, gained traction with the masses with his forty-bale theory—that
claimed that southern cotton producers lost forty bales to the tariff for every hundred
produced. The theory, though based on an absurdly inaccurate understanding of
economics, nevertheless managed to stir up enough outrage among the masses that it was
in time accepted as fact among most South Carolinians. In fact, the theory succeeded so
wildly precisely because it so studiously avoided anything resembling nuance.
According to McDuffie, raw cotton was shipped to England in exchange for
manufactured cloth—always. Since the tariff greatly increased the price of this cloth, it
in effect greatly decreased the value of the raw cotton.35 Of course, the merchants who
acquired capital from the cotton market did not spend it exclusively on manufactured
cloth, and thus avoided McDuffie’s dreaded 40 percent markdown.36 Thus, the forty-bale
theory simplified economics to the point of inaccuracy; however, since it also made
intuitive sense to most free-trade South Carolinians, it shifted the debate greatly in favor
of the nullifiers.37
34
Ibid.
Ibid., 194.
36
Ibid., 195.
37
Ibid.
35
11
Thus, though Calhoun’s work was actually intellectually coherent, its greatest
political value was in its sentiment. The fact that he had bothered to treat his doctrine as a
part of a constitutional whole was a sign of commitment to the union that firebrands such
as Turnbull and McDuffie had not exhibited. In The Crisis, Turnbull admitted up front
that his “feelings… are more sectional than they are national.”38 Though he certainly
held some affinity for the national union, he took a largely devil-may-care approach to
the prospect of future disunion. “We are amply furnished with the means of protecting
ourselves, and of perpetuating our policy under any emergency, and without needing any
assistance from them,” he boldly proclaimed.39 “Disunion did I say? Whether disunion
shall approach us, rests not with ourselves, but with our Northern brethren.” 40 From his
vantage point, South Carolina needed to resist federal usurpation more than it needed to
preserve its place in the union.
Calhoun, on the other hand, was equally concerned with defending the interests of
South Carolina and preserving the Union and the integrity of the Constitution. His
nullification was not merely a convenient resistance, but a constitutional check—even a
safeguard against disunion. Unlike Turnbull, he appeared willing to accept an override of
nullification as long as that override was constitutional. For that, he pointed to the
Article 5 of the Constitution, which stated that “when ratified by the Legislatures of three
fourths of the several States,” a proposed amendment would be added onto the
document.41 Thus, if three-fourths of the states objected to a state’s use of nullification,
38
Turnbull, The Crisis, 11.
Ibid., 23.
40
Ibid., 128.
41
U.S. Constitution, art. 5.
39
12
they could amend the Constitution to explicitly reserve for Congress the right to pass the
law that was being nullified.42
Calhoun, then, saw his doctrine not solely as a means to protect South Carolina’s
interests, but as a way to preserve the union. He penned the “South Carolina Protest” as a
man “anxiously desiring to live in peace with their fellow citizens, and to do all that in
them lies to preserve and perpetuate the union of the States and the liberties of which it is
the surest pledge—but feeling it to be their bounden duty to expose and to resist all
encroachments upon the true spirit of the Constitution.”43 An instance of nullification illreceived by the vast majority of states, he believed, need not result in civil war. Instead,
that majority could, in accordance with the guidelines of the Constitution, peacefully
strike down the act of nullification; and if no such majority existed, so much the better,
for the rights of the minority would be preserved through legal means. Either way, each
side was granted a legitimate power to defend its own interests without turning to the
sword.
Before this point, nullification in South Carolina had been more of a fringe
movement, led by radicals such as Turnbull. The South Carolina moderate, a man
resentful of federal encroachments but apprehensive about the prospect of disunion, did
not see their nullification as an acceptable solution to his state’s problems. He held out
hope that the Jackson administration would be more kind to the South than the Adams
administration had been, and that the tariff would be reduced soon after the payment of
the national debt.44 South Carolina politicians responded to this popular sentiment by
tempering their rhetoric; even George McDuffie, the most passionate of nullifiers,
42
Calhoun, “South Carolina Exposition,” 520.
John C. Calhoun, “South Carolina Protest” in The Papers of John C. Calhoun, 539.
44
Freehling, Prelude to Civil War, 142.
43
13
concealed his militancy for some time, afraid that he would offend constituents and derail
Jackson’s candidacy.45 The nullifiers’ faith in Jackson ultimately turned out to be
displaced, however. By 1832, he had not delivered on tariff reform, and his infamous
Nullification Proclamation—which denounced the doctrine as “incompatible with the
existence of the Union”—led many to believe that he would not advocate for South
Carolina’s rights. The South Carolina moderate who had earlier placed his faith in
Jackson was welcomed to the cause of nullification through Calhoun’s doctrine, which
artfully asserted that nullification was, in fact, compatible with the Union. In 1832, the
support of moderates would pay dividends at the polls, and Calhoun’s intellectual
contribution would prove invaluable to movement.
The appeal of his work was that it went beyond the particular moment in South
Carolina politics. It was not just about the tariff or slavery, but about the general
workings of the United States government. The people of South Carolina who supported
it, did so with the hope that it would become the ruling logic of the land. Outside of the
state, however, it gained little traction. When South Carolina finally did take the plunge
and nullified the tariff in 1832, its actions were widely denounced by other southern
legislatures.
The Alabama legislature pronounced the “alarming scheme “unsound in theory and
dangerous in practice”; the Georgia lawmakers believed that the “mischievous
policy” was “rash and revolutionary”; the Mississippi representatives denounced
South Carolina for acting with “reckless precipitancy.”46
Despite the harsh language, most southern states remained sympathetic to South
Carolina, for they, too, felt the same anxieties over the tariff and slavery. However, they
45
46
Ibid., 143-144.
Ibid., 265; State Papers on Nullification (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1834), 219-223, 230,
274.
14
opposed nullification for a variety of reasons: Georgia and the southwestern states
depended on Jackson to help them seize Indian lands (Jackson, ironically, had nullified a
Supreme Court decision declaring states had no right to do so); North Carolina and
Tennessee also followed the president’s lead; Kentucky remained aligned with Clay and
his nationalist policies; and Virginia simply opposed South Carolina’s methods on
constitutional grounds. Though Calhoun’s meticulously thought out nullification to be
consistent with both the spirit and letter of the Constitution, the only state to see it as such
was South Carolina. The doctrine drew the ire of many who held a fundamentally
different vision of America. In Virginia and in much of the South, that vision was forged
primarily by James Madison, the man at the center of any constitutional discussion.
Ironically, though many of Madison’s doctrines diametrically opposed Calhoun’s,
a few of his writings actually influenced the South Carolina statesman’s work on
nullification. In the “Exposition,” Calhoun drew support from Madison’s Report of
1800, which defended the rights of states against federal overreach.47 In the report,
Madison asserted, “that in cases of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other
powers, not granted by the said compact, the State[s], who are parties thereto have the
right and are in duty bound to interpose to arrest the act and for maintaining within their
respective limits, the authorities[,] rights and liberties appertaining to them.”48
The interposition of which Madison spoke in 1800 sounded to Calhoun and his
fellow nullifiers exactly like the nullification they were advocating for thirty years later.
In 1830, prominent nullifier and U.S. Senator Robert Hayne sent Madison copies of his
47
Calhoun, “South Carolina Exposition,” 508.
James Madison, “Report on the Virginia Resolutions” in Jonathan Eliot, ed., The Debates in the
Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution as Recommended by the General
Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, Volume 4, (New York: Burt Franklin, 1888), 547.
48
15
speeches, hoping that the doctrine would win an endorsement from the American with the
strongest constitutional credentials.49 Much to his chagrin, however, the response he
received was not a vote of encouragement, but a lengthy rebuttal that denounced
nullification as “pregnant with consequences subversive of the Constitution.” 50 Madison
made clear that the interpositions that he had advocated for in 1800 were meant to be
undertaken cooperatively by several states acting through specific constitutional
procedure, not by a lone state that insisted on utilizing its original sovereignty.51
Though Madison did support the right of the states to seek redress from federal
usurpations, nullifiers were incorrect in assuming that he would leap to embrace
nullification. In truth, though he favored a balanced government in which states checked
federal action, his ideal form of government was decidedly nationalistic. The failure of
the Articles of Confederation had convinced him prior to his writing of the Constitution
that “every concession in favor of stable Government not infringing fundamental
principles” should be made.52 The Constitution that he envisioned would create a “due
supremacy of the national authority” while leaving the states in a “subordinately useful
position.”53
Madison, though supportive of local governments, feared the power of runaway
state majorities to oppress the rights of the minority. While serving in the Virginia House
of Delegates from 1784 to 1786, he saw such majorities essentially hijack state level
49
Ford, Lacy K. “Inventing the Concurrent Majority: Madison, Calhoun, and the Problem of
Majoritarianism in American Thought.” The Journal of Southern History 60 (1994), 53.
50
James Madison to Robert Y. Hayne, April 3 or 4, in Hunt, ed., Writings of James Madison, IX,
388.
51
Ibid.
52
Ford, “Inventing the Concurrent Majority,” 24-25; James Madison to Edmund Randolph, April
8, 1787, in Papers of James Madison, Volume IX, ed. by Hutchinson (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1962), 318.
53
James Madison to George Washington, April 16, 1787, in Papers of James Madison, Volume
IX, 369.
16
government in pursuit of the interests of those that comprised them.54 This often led to
legislation that Madison considered dangerous. He thus believed that these state-level
majorities, unless checked, posed the greatest threat to the well-being and stability of the
nation—for “the majority who alone have the right of decision, have frequently an
interest real or supposed in abusing it.”55
On the other hand, he saw no parallel issue extended over the entirety of the
United States. He believed that in a large republic, “you take in a greater variety of
parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a
common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists,
it will be more difficult for all who fell it to discover their own strength, and to act in
unison with each other.”56 The numerous factions throughout the vast extent of the
nation’s territory—far more numerous than those found within a single state—would
work against each other, and were thus more likely to frustrate each other’s selfish
ambitions that to impose their own on a helpless minority.57
As the primary writer of the Constitution, Madison’s beliefs tended to inform his
contribution to what would become the highest law of the land, which in turn informed
the national consciousness regarding the nature of American government. Calhoun,
however, no longer bought into this conception by the time he adopted nullification. In
the “Exposition,” he wrote, “That our industry is controlled by many, instead of one…
forms not the slightest mitigation of the evil. In fact instead of mitigating it aggravates.
In our case one branch of industry cannot prevail, without associating others; and thus
54
55
Ford, “Inventing the Concurrent Majority,” 25-26.
James Madison to George Washington, April 16, 1787, in Papers of James Madison, Volume
IX, 384.
56
57
Jacob E. Cook, ed., The Federalist (Middletown: Wesleyan), 63-65.
Ibid., 56-65; Ford, “Inventing the Concurrent Majority,” 27-31.
17
instead of a single act of oppression we bear many.” 58 To him as well as other South
Carolinians, it had become clear that the nation’s varied interests were not checking each
other, but were joining forces. What Madison believed impossible—the formation of a
permanent national majority—seemed, to Calhoun, a reality.59
Calhoun, as Madison did, used his experience to formulate a solution to a
constitutional crisis. Madison sought to divide sovereignty between state and federal
governments, ultimately relying on the will of the national majority; Calhoun placed
sovereignty into the hands of the states and their respective inhabitants, and left federal
policy up to a different kind of majority: what he called the “concurring majority.” This
majority, in Calhoun’s words, “is estimated, not in reference to the whole, but to each
class or community of which it is composed” with “the assent of each taken separately,
and the concurrence of all constituting the majority.”60 The United States was not made
up of a single national people, Calhoun maintained, but of several communities, the
states. For any national law to achieve legitimacy, he argued, it must have the consent of
a large majority of those communities. 61 He reasoned that no law could be valid, even
with the support of an absolute majority, if it undermined entire communities vital to the
survival of the nation. Thus, under a system ruled by the concurrent majority, a national
law must not stand that did not have the consent of several states, regardless of how the
absolute national majority voted on it. The state, he insisted, could call a convention of
the people that could nullify that law. A convention would then be called among the
several states of the nation, who would determine whether to uphold the nullification or
58
Calhoun, “South Carolina Exposition,” 490.
Ford, “Inventing the Concurrent Majority,” 33-34, 44.
60
John C. Calhoun, Calhoun to Hamilton in The Papers of John C. Calhoun, XI, 640.
61
Ibid., 613-649; Ford, “Inventing the Concurrent Majority”, 47.
59
18
to prevent it by was of constitutional amendment. Though the concept was new, it was
not incompatible with the existing foundation of the American constitution—in fact,
Calhoun drew directly from the amending power of the constitution. He did not suggest
anything radical, simply that an additional safeguard be permitted in order to protect the
rights of certain classes.
John C. Calhoun most certainly deserves his reputation as an ardent supporter of
state autonomy. He did not consider the American people as a truly national people, but
as an association of different communities. These communities were ontologically prior
to the nation as a whole, and thus state identity was bound to triumph over any attempt at
national coherence. However unconvinced Calhoun remained of the strength of the bonds
between the several states, though, he most certainly valued those bonds. Though his
reformulation of American constitutionalism emphasized the single state over the whole
nation, his purpose was to preserve the nation. He embraced nullification as more than
the solution to South Carolina’s problems, but as the solution to the American
constitutional problem that seemed sure to destroy the union.
The works Calhoun created in favor of nullification and the concurrent majority
were, to some extent, built upon the backs of others. He refashioned Turnbull’s
nullification in order to create a permanent constitutional check rather than a momentary
protest. He reformulated Madison’s constitutionalism in order to make the nation safe for
a future with permanent political coalitions. In his derivations, however, he created
something entirely new: a constitutional framework which the majority of South Carolina
came to believe would not only protect their rights, but would perpetually preserve their
place within the union. Though this framework failed to take root on a national level, its
19
acceptance within South Carolina played a big part in transforming the nullification
movement from a fringe revolt into a political force.
20