History has dubbed Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John Calhoun “the great triumvirate” and “the immortal trio,” the congressional powerhouses of the era between the Founding and the Civil War. However, individual legacies were blurred at the expense of this clique. Calhoun was, after all, the vice president to both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, a feat shared only by George Clinton (who served under both Jefferson and Madison). Calhoun lived a political life all of his own, full (and constitutionally suspect) even without history's forging ties to Clay and Webster.
John Caldwell Calhoun was born on March 18, 1782, in South Carolina. The frontier community from which he hailed was largely one of Scotch-Irish settlers having emigrated from County Donegal. Calhoun was raised in a strictly Calvinist household, his family's Presbyterianism often pitted against the religious elite of Charleston. Though he once declared, “Life is a struggle against evil,” there is little reason to believe Calhoun was particularly religious in later life.
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