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American statesman and political theorist John Calhoun is best known for his defense of a states' rights view of the U.S. Constitution. His theories of states' nullification of federal laws and the right of individual states to secede from the union greatly influenced the South in the U.S. Civil War. His argument for "concurrent (state) majorities" is seen as an attempt to preserve the institution of black slavery in the Southern states.

In Calhoun's theory, earlier associated with the Antifederalists, he conceived of the United States of America as a compact among sovereign independent states. In this view, the central, national government in Washington, D.C., was limited to foreign affairs, the states retaining control over internal domestic policy, so the majority in the federal government (Congress) had to have the concurrence of the majorities of state governments for a law to be truly national. If the federal government passed a law that was obnoxious to a state, that state could vote to nullify or invalidate it within its borders, and if the national government consistently opposed the interests of a state, that state or any group of states could withdraw from the union and establish its own nation, for instance, as the Confederate States of America did in the South prior to the Civil War.

Calhoun's ideas had an appeal in the slave-owning southern states in the early 1800s, when they felt threatened by encroachments of the federal government, but his theory of concurrent majorities was rejected by the leading founder of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, and in practice it made national law and coherent public policy inefficient and unworkable. They fueled the southern tendency toward states rights and secession, especially in South Carolina, Calhoun's home state.

John Calhoun was born in rural South Carolina. He graduated from Yale University in 1804. Before going into national politics, he served in the state legislature, later went on to represent South Carolina in Congress, and ultimately served as secretary of war under President James Monroe and as vice president under President John Quincy Adams. Calhoun's major political philosophy writings were not published until after his death, but his books, Disquisition on Government and Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, greatly influenced southern political thought prior to the Civil War. His large plantation became the foundation of Clemson University.

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