John C. Calhoun

John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) was a Southern politician in the United States before the American Civil War. As a Senator from South Carolina and as Vice President of the United States, he fought fiercely for the extension of slavery into new territories and other issues of interest to the South such as tariff reform. A supporter of states' rights, he also championed an idea he called Nullification, by which a state government could refuse to comply with a duly passed Federal law it found distasteful, effectively subordinating the Federal government to the states.

John C. Calhoun in Southern Victory
Though John C. Calhoun died over a decade before the Confederate States was created by the secession of eleven US states in 1860-61, the secession of the CS's founding states is a direct descendant of his nullification doctrine, and Calhoun was therefore seen as a founding father of the Confederacy. His picture appeared on the Confederate dollar, for example. Naturally, the U.S. felt differently about Calhoun.

The towns of Calhoun, Kentucky and Calhoun, Georgia were named in Calhoun's honor.