JOHN C. CALHOUN
The territory which we obtained from Mexico added much to the vastness of our country. But it led to a bitter dispute between the North and the South over slavery. For the North said: “All this territory shall be free.” The South said: “It must all be open to slavery.”
John C. Calhoun.
The trouble over slavery was no new thing. It had begun to be really serious and dangerous many years before the Mexican War. To understand why, a year or two after the close of this war, there should be such deep and violent feeling over the question of making the territory free or opening it to slavery, we must go back to some earlier events in the history of the Union.
In doing so, we shall find it simpler to follow the careers of three great statesmen, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, who took each a prominent part in the events.
John C. Calhoun, born in South Carolina in 1782, was the youngest but one of a family of five children. His father died when he was only thirteen, and until he was eighteen he remained on the farm, living a quiet, simple out-of-door life, ploughing, hunting, riding, and fishing.
Then his brother, who had observed John’s quickness of mind, persuaded him to get an education. After studying two years and a quarter in an academy, he entered the junior class at Yale College. Graduating in 1804, he at once took a course in the law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, and then returned home to complete his studies for the bar.
