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Underlying Calhoun’s political thought was his conviction — derived in part from the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions written by Jefferson and Madison — that the states were not subsidiary parts of a permanent union but sovereign members of a compact subject to continual revision.

The last of the founding fathers beseeched Americans to cherish and perpetuate their union, but the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions along with Madison’s unwillingness to call for the abolition of slavery would continue to imperil the republic he so treasured.

In the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, they called on states to refuse to participate in the prosecution of dissidents called for by these laws.

In response, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, whose Democratic-Republican Party was favored by immigrants, wrote the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, which held that individual states had the right to nullify unconstitutional laws within their borders.

In that role, he worked to undermine Adams’ controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, designed to halt immigration and suppress “harmful speech,” by drafting the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions with James Madison.