John C. Calhoun -- Marion Square Park Charleston (SC) 2012
Per Wikipedia:
John Caldwell Calhoun (1782 – 1850) was a leading politician and political theorist from South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century.
Calhoun spoke out on every issue of his day, but often changed positions. He began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs.
After 1830, Calhoun switched to states' rights, limited government, nullification and free trade. He is best known for his intense and original defense of slavery as something positive, his distrust of majoritarianism, and for pointing the South toward secession from the Union.
Calhoun died 11 years before the start of the American Civil War, but he was an inspiration to the secessionists of 1860–61. Nicknamed the "cast-iron man" for his ideological rigidity as well as for his determination to defend the causes he believed in, Calhoun supported states' rights and nullification, under which states could declare null and void federal laws which they viewed as unconstitutional. He was an outspoken proponent of the institution of slavery, which he defended as a "positive good" rather than as a "necessary evil". His rhetorical defense of slavery was partially responsible for escalating Southern threats of secession in the face of mounting abolitionist sentiment in the North.
Calhoun was one of the "Great Triumvirate" of Congressional leaders, along with his Congressional colleagues Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. In 1957, a Senate Committee selected Calhoun as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Robert La Follette, and Robert Taft.
Image by Ron Cogswell on July 9, 2012, using a Nikon D80 at 1/500 sec., f/6.3, ISO 200, and 200 mm. DSC_0025