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John C. Calhoun, an American statesman and political theorist, shaped the course of American history with his influential ideas on states' rights and nullification. His staunch defense of slavery and his advocacy for Southern interests deepened sectional tensions and ultimately contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War, leaving a complex and contested legacy in American politics.
"The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority."
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"A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks."
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"The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised."
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"The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism."