Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson didn’t want any birthday parties. During his life he always kept his date of birth private, in part to avoid any public celebrations of the occasion. But in 1830 he had been in his final resting place at Monticello for almost four years. The date of his birth was public knowledge and for Vice President John C. Calhoun it was an opportunity for a party with a purpose.

Calhoun and Thomas Hart Benton organized a dinner party in Washington D.C., in honor of Mr. Jefferson’s birthday, inviting leading members of Congress, Washington society, and the press. Also invited, of course, was President Andrew Jackson.

It soon became evident that Calhoun intended to use the event to link Jefferson and his legacy to Calhoun’s nullification doctrine (the notion that states had the power to “nullify” any federal laws they believed to be unconstitutional). The dignitaries at the affair were to offer toasts to Jefferson, and Calhoun himself authored most of them—making them thinly disguised, or obvious, purported Jeffersonian endorsements of nullification. When the congressional delegations from Pennsylvania and Ohio realized what Calhoun was doing (the toasts had been pre-printed and were circulating among the guests), they walked out of the dinner. But Jackson stayed, refusing to be intimidated. As President, he was given the honor of making the first toast.

When the time came, Jackson stood up, lifted his glass, looked directly at Calhoun and said, “Our Federal Union! It must be preserved!”

Calhoun offered the next toast. “The Union,” he said, “Next to our liberty, the most dear; may we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the states and distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union.”

Calhoun had handled the situation adeptly, but Jackson had stolen his thunder. The competing toasts foreshadowed not just the impending Nullification Crisis, but the Civil War itself.

Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun’s famous competing toasts occurred on April 13, 1830, one hundred ninety-three years ago today, on the seventy-seventh anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson. Jackson’s words are now inscribed on the base of the equestrian monument of him that stands in Lafayette Square directly across from the White House.

At the end of his second term, Jackson was asked if he had any regrets about his time as president. He replied that he had only two: “that I didn’t shoot Henry Clay and that I didn’t hang John C. Calhoun.”

The portraits are Jackson (left) and Calhoun (right).