| abstract | - John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 - March 31, 1850) was a leading United States Southern politician from South Carolina, famous for being a spokesman for slavery and nullification, and for being one of the creepiest-looking politicians ever. Quite appropriately for a man who looked like his father should have been a werewolf, he managed to orchestrate the Civil War from beyond the grave. Calhoun began his career as a nationalist, favouring war with Britain in 1812; however, he later changed direction to attack nationalism in favour of letting the individual states do whatever the hell they liked, on the basis that those idiots in Washington shouldn't be able to tell states like Alabama what it could or couldn't do. Despite having died before it formed, Calhoun served as a major icon to those in the Confederate States of America, inspiring a new generation of creepy looking Southern politicians. He was nicknamed the "cast-steel man", for his determination to defend the causes he was supporting at any given time. He was a proponent of the idea of nullification, which said that states could declare void any law they didn't much like the look of, and was also a supporter of slavery, calling it a positive good rather than a necessary evil. The fact that he owned quite a few of them was clearly not influential on his views in any way. Calhoun spent pretty much all of his career in a variety of high-up government jobs. He spent seven years in the House of Representatives and then, in order to satisfy his inhuman lust for blood, became James Monroe's Secretary of War, and spent several years managing the Indian situation. He then served as Vice-President under John Q. Adams and Andrew Jackson, as Senator for South Carolina and as Secretary of State under John Tyler.
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