John C. Calhoun

John C. Calhoun served as Secretary of State from 1844 to 1845 after a long career as a congressman, secretary of war, vice president, and senator. A South Carolina lawyer and leading defender of slavery, he had also argued that states could resist federal authority. John Tyler appointed him after the death of Abel P. Upshur, with the immediate task of completing a treaty to annex Texas. ¹

Calhoun openly connected annexation to the protection of slavery. His argument that British antislavery influence threatened Texas sharpened the sectional controversy surrounding the proposed treaty, which the Senate rejected in 1844. Tyler subsequently secured annexation through a joint resolution of Congress shortly before leaving office. Calhoun’s secretaryship thus placed the expansion of slaveholding territory at the center of diplomacy with Mexico and Britain. ¹

He also opened negotiations on the Oregon boundary, while Caleb Cushing concluded the Treaty of Wangxia with China during his tenure. That agreement expanded American commercial access and legal privileges in Chinese ports. James K. Polk did not retain Calhoun as secretary. Calhoun returned to the Senate and continued defending slavery and southern political power until his death in 1850, as the territorial gains and disputes of the 1840s intensified the struggle over slavery’s expansion. ^{1, 2}