Calhoun
American Heretic
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4.3 • 15 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A new biography of the intellectual father of Southern secession—the man who set the scene for the Civil War, and whose political legacy still shapes America today.
John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a "positive good" and for his famous doctrine of "state interposition," which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union—and arguably set the nation on course for civil war.
Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years, as some observers connected the strain of radical politics he developed to the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right, and as protests over racial injustice have focused on his legacy. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is even more broadly significant than these events suggest, and that his story is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. By excising Calhoun from the mainstream of American history, he argues, we have been left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Elder (The Sacred Mirror) reassesses the life and legacy of U.S. vice president and South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) in this comprehensive biography. Elder skillfully tracks Calhoun's unusual political career trajectory, from his advocacy for war with England as a freshman congressman in 1811, to his modernization of the U.S. Army as secretary of war, resignation as Andrew Jackson's vice president and return to Congress in 1832 as a strident advocate for states' rights, and calls for a constitutional amendment protecting slavery in the weeks before his death in 1850. Elder scrutinizes Calhoun's creative interpretations of the U.S. Constitution and forthrightly documents his deep-rooted belief in white supremacy, but understates his political failings, including his knack for turning allies into enemies and the single-mindedness that doomed his presidential ambitions and contributed to his brief and ineffectual tenure as secretary of state in 1844–1845. Still, Elder is a graceful writer who persuasively argues that the beliefs and policies Calhoun amplified continue to shape American politics. Readers with a keen interest in the pre–Civil War era and a strong stomach for objectionable viewpoints will gain insight from this expert account.
