John C. Calhoun | Palmetto Heritage

It is the summer of 1829 and Vice-President Calhoun is spending the Congressional recess at his home near Pendleton, South Carolina. His youngest daughter, Cornelia is helping her father with his correspondence. Calhoun writes to a colleague in the Senate from South Carolina, Robert Y Hayne, expressing concern over the deteriorating relations between himself and President Jackson. Calhoun discusses his theory of nullification with his son Andrew, who is off to Yale, his father's alma mater, in the fall. Calhoun then goes to Washington for the Jefferson Day Dinner in April of 1830 where toasts from the President and Vice-President bring their seething rift out into the open.

Standards

• 3-4 The student will demonstrate an understanding of life in the antebellum period, the causes and effects of the Civil War, and the impact of Reconstruction in South Carolina.
  • South Carolina played a key role in events that occurred before, during, and after the Civil War; and those events, in turn, greatly affected the state. To understand South Carolina’s experiences during this tumultuous time, the student will uti...
    • 3-4.3 Explain the reasons for South Carolina’s secession from the Union, including the abolitionist movement and the concept of states’ rights.
• This indicator was developed to encourage inquiry into how land acquisition and the resulting border changes of the U.S. impacted the people of the western territories prior to Westward Expansion.
  • This indicator was developed to encourage inquiry into how the debate surrounding the expansion of enslaved labor versus free labor influenced the development of sectionalism. This indicator was also developed to foster inquiry into the growth of the
• 8-4 The student will demonstrate an understanding of the multiple events that led to the Civil War.
  • The outbreak of the Civil War was the culminating event in a decades-long series of regional issues that threatened American unity and South Carolina’s identity as one of the United States. To understand how South Carolina came to be at the cent...
    • 8-4.3 Analyze key issues that led to South Carolina’s secession from the Union, including the nullification controversy and John C. Calhoun, the extension of slavery and the compromises over westward expansion, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred S...
• This indicator was designed to encourage inquiry into the continuities and changes of the experiences of marginalized groups such as African Americans, Native Americans and women, as the U.S. expanded westward and grappled with the development of new states.
  • This indicator was developed to encourage inquiry into the debates, heightened by Westward Expansion, over federal and state power concerning slavery, and the government’s role in protecting and securing natural rights.