Few American statesmen traveled a more remarkable foreign policy journey than South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun (1782-1850). The young War Hawk who promised to conquer Canada in four weeks became the elder statesman warning that conquest would destroy the republic itself. Such a foreign policy transformation would seem foreign to present-day public officials, who are completely enthralled by the neoconservative/neoliberal interventionist vision of perpetual war. Though absent from today’s interventionist ruling class, Calhoun’s foreign policy wisdom endured in the realist and non-interventionist traditions that resurfaced across successive generations of American statesmen.
The Young Warrior
When Calhoun entered Congress in 1810, he arrived as part of a new generation hungry for conflict with Great Britain. These War Hawks believed American honor demanded a forceful response to British provocations. As chair of the House Committee on Foreign Relations, the young Calhoun drafted the report condemning Britain and presented the war bill that Congress passed 79 to 49.
On December 12, 1811 before the House Committee on Foreign Relations, Calhoun articulated his hawkish vision with passionate conviction. “War, in our country, ought never to be resorted to but when it is clearly justifiable and necessary,” he declared, before cataloging British offenses. “Why should I mention the impressment of our seamen; depredations on every branch of our commerce, including the direct export trade, continued for years, and made under laws which professedly undertake to regulate our trade with other nations; negotiation resorted to, again and again, till it is become hopeless; the restrictive system persisted in to avoid war, and in the vain expectation of returning justice? These rights are vitally attacked, and war is the only means of redress.”
He warned against hollow threats. “A bullying, menacing system, has everything to condemn and nothing to recommend it. In expense, it almost rivals war. It excites contempt abroad, and destroys confidence at home. Menaces are serious things; and ought to be resorted to with as much caution and seriousness as war itself; and should, if not successful, be invariably followed by it.”
With youthful confidence, Calhoun predicted swift victory. “I believe that in four weeks from the time a declaration of war is heard on our frontier, the whole of Upper Canada and a part of Lower Canada will be in our power.”
Yet he insisted his support sprang from honor rather than territorial hunger. “Protection and patriotism are reciprocal. This is the way which has led nations to greatness. Sir, I am not versed in this calculating policy; and will not, therefore, pretend to estimate in dollars and cents the value of national independence, or national affection.”
The Philosophy of Masterly Inactivity
Calhoun’s tenure as Secretary of War under President James Monroe from 1817 to 1825 began reshaping his worldview. By the 1830s, when President Jackson sent Congress a message bristling with threats against France over unpaid claims, Calhoun opposed this saber-rattling. “To threaten a major power was the surest possible way to guarantee non-compliance. And one day of war would cost more than the entire sum at issue.”
His most famous foreign policy formulation came in his 1842 speech supporting the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which peacefully resolved border disputes with British North America. He articulated what he called “a wise and masterly inactivity.”
“I am finally opposed to war, because peace is pre-eminently our policy,” he explained. “There may be nations, restricted to small territories, hemmed in on all sides, so situated that war may be necessary to their greatness. Such is not our case. Providence has given us an inheritance stretching across the entire continent, from East to West, from ocean to ocean, and from North to South, covering by far the greater and better part of its temperate zone. It comprises a region not only of vast extent, but abundant in all resources; excellent in climate; fertile and exuberant in soil, capable of sustaining, in the plentiful enjoyment of all the necessaries of life, a population of ten times our present number. Our great mission, as a people, is to occupy this vast domain; to replenish it with an intelligent, virtuous, and industrious population. War would but impede the fulfilment of this high mission, by absorbing the means and diverting the energies which would be devoted to the purpose. On the contrary, secure peace, and time, under the guidance of a sagacious and cautious policy, ‘a wise and masterly inactivity,’ will speedily accomplish the whole.”
Opposition to the Mexican-American War
Calhoun’s opposition to the Mexican-American War represents the culmination of his foreign policy evolution. When President James K. Polk sought a declaration of war in May 1846, Calhoun abstained from voting.
He warned that Polk’s actions established a dangerous precedent. “The President had in effect instigated armed conflict by his action. If this were allowed, then a precedent would be set by which any future executive could provoke an incident and commit the country to war by his own decision.”
Further, Calhoun vehemently opposed proposals to conquer all of Mexico. In his January 4, 1848 Senate speech, he introduced resolutions stating that “to conquer Mexico and to hold it, either as a province or to incorporate it into the Union, would be inconsistent with the avowed object for which the war has been prosecuted; a departure from the settled policy of the Government; in conflict with its character and genius; and in the end subversive of our free and popular institutions.”
Unlike contemporary proponents of nation-building crusades, Calhoun rejected the idea that America had a mission to spread democracy by force. “We make a great mistake in supposing all people are capable of self-government. Acting under that impression, many are anxious to force free governments on all the peoples of this continent, and over the world, if they had the power. It has been lately urged in a very respectable quarter, that it is the mission of our country to spread civil and religious liberty over all the globe, and especially over this continent—even by force, if necessary. It is a sad delusion.”
Calhoun warned about the effect of imperial ambitions on American liberty. “It is harder to preserve than obtain liberty. After years of prosperity, the tenure by which it is held is too often forgotten. I have often been struck with the fact, that in the discussions of the great questions in which we are now engaged, relating to the origin and conduct of this war, the effect on free institutions and the liberty of the people have scarce been alluded to, although their bearing in that respect is so direct and disastrous. But now, other topics occupy the attention of Congress and of the country—military glory, extension of the empire, and aggrandizement of the country.”
Instead of calling for a full-blown annexation of Mexico and a quixotic attempt to remake it in the United States’ image, Calhoun advocated for a magnanimous peace. “I hold, indeed, that we ought to be just and liberal to her [Mexico]. Not only because she is our neighbour; not only because she is a sister republic. I hold that there is a mysterious connection between the fate of this country and that of Mexico; so much so, that her independence and capability of sustaining herself are almost as essential to our prosperity, and the maintenance of our institutions, as they are to hers. Mexico is to us the forbidden fruit; the penalty of eating it would be to subject our institutions to political death.”
Calhoun’s warnings went largely unheeded. In the decades after his death, American statesmen consolidated power through the crucible of the Civil War, then carried the republic beyond its constitutional moorings through the Spanish American War and the 20th century’s world wars. Those conflicts completed the transformation of the United States from a continental republic into a global imperial power, precisely the outcome the Founding generation and Calhoun himself had labored to prevent. What followed was an era of permanent intervention, foreign entanglements, and nation building campaigns from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, the very type of imperial overreach Calhoun believed would corrode liberty at home while exhausting the nation abroad.
Yet Calhoun’s counsel did not vanish entirely. Figures such as George Kennan and John Mearsheimer in the realist tradition, and political leaders like Patrick J. Buchanan and Ron Paul, carried forward his late life insistence on restraint, limits, and humility in foreign affairs. Their influence shows that the noninterventionist tradition never disappeared, even as it was repeatedly marginalized and disrespected by leaders across the political spectrum.
If the United States is to recover the character of a republic rather than complete its inexorable drift toward imperial decline, it must relearn the lesson Calhoun arrived at through hard experience. Power unchecked abroad inevitably reshapes power at home. A nation that seeks greatness through conquest will sooner or later lose both its liberty and its soul.
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Excellent, excellent essay! In every syllable.
An interesting tangent re Calhoun: As Sec. of War [1817-1824], he funded 32 schools for Indians in hopes of assimilating them to US culture so they might be normal citizens. He was open to that experiment and willing to devote the money to it. Clearly a different attitude than the one generally operating a decade later that led to the removal of the Cherokee and Creeks to beyond the Mississippi.