Background
John Calhoun was born on October 14, 1806 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States; the son of Andrew and Martha (Chamberlin) Calhoun.
John Calhoun was born on October 14, 1806 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States; the son of Andrew and Martha (Chamberlin) Calhoun.
He studied law in New York state and then moved in 1830 to Springfield, Illinois.
Calhoun served in the Black Hawk war and became surveyor of Sangamon County. Being attracted to Lincoln, he assisted him in the study of surveying and made him his deputy, thus forming a friendship which, in spite of Calhoun's prominence as a Douglas Democrat, persisted through life. He was elected to the Illinois legislature in 1838; was made clerk of the Illinois House of Representatives (1839-40 and 1840 - 41); engaged in the business of constructing a railroad from Jacksonville to Springfield; served as clerk of the circuit court of Sangamon County; and was thrice chosen mayor of Springfield. In contests for Congress, for the state Senate, and for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, he was unsuccessful. At a state fair at Springfield in October 1854 he joined in a debate in which Lincoln and Douglas were also participants; and Lincoln always had a high regard for his ability as a stump speaker. Through the influence of Douglas, Calhoun was appointed in 1854 by President Pierce as surveyor general of Kansas and Nebraska. He attended the constitutional convention of 1857 at Lecompton as delegate, and was made president of that body. At first he led the fight to have the Lecompton Constitution submitted to the people; but, failing in this, he acquiesced in the program by which the vote of December 21, 1857, was so taken as virtually to deny the ballot to free-state men, and his report of this vote, transmitted to Buchanan, produced a crisis in the Kansas situation. When in 1858 the legislature, then in free-state hands, ordered an investigation concerning alleged frauds in the December election, Calhoun left for Missouri, and his clerk, L. A. McLean, asserted that he had taken the election returns with him. A melodramatic scene followed when a sheriff found the coveted papers where McLean had concealed them, in a candle box buried under a woodpile near the surveyor's office in Lecompton. So intense was the popular indignation that McLean fled, and President Buchanan accommodated Calhoun by removing his office to Nebraska City, as he could not have returned to Kansas. Much of the odium for the Lecompton Constitution was visited upon Calhoun; and he was censured by Gov. Walker when testifying before a committee of Congress. In a vindication by his brother, A. H. Calhoun the blame for the candle-box episode is placed upon McLean; and Calhoun is represented as a conservative who opposed the design of the Southern element to fasten slavery upon Kansas in the face of a preponderant free-state sentiment. Calhoun died at St. Joseph, Missouri, October 13, 1859, much broken in spirit.
On December 29, 1831, he was married to Sarah Cutter of Sangamon County, by whom he had nine children.