Download or read book John C Calhoun and the Price of Union written by John Niven and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1993-07-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) was one of the prominent figure of American politics in the first half of the nineteenth century. The son of a slaveholding South Carolina family, he served in the federal government in various capacities—as senator from his home state, as secretary of war and secretary of state, and as vice-president in the administrations of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Calhoun was a staunch supporter of the interests of his state and region. His battle from tariff reform, aimed at alleviating the economic problems of the southern states, eventually led him to formulate his famous nullification doctrine, which asserted the right of states to declare federal laws null and void within their own boundaries. In the first full-scale biography of Calhoun in almost half a century, John Niven skillfully presents a new interpretation of this preeminent spokesman of the Old South. Deftly blending Calhoun’s public career with important elements of his private life, Niven shows Calhoun to have been at once a more consistent politician and a far more complex human being than previous historians have thought. Rather than history’s image of an assured, self-confident Calhoun, Niven reveals a figure who was in many ways insecure and defensive. Niven maintains that the War of 1812, which Calhoun helped instigate and which nearly resulted in the nation’s ruin, made a lasting impression on Calhoun’s mind and personality. From that point until the end of his life, he sought security first from the western Indians and the British while he was secretary of war, then from northern exploitation of southern wealth through what he regarded as manipulation of public policy while he was vice-president and a senator. He worked tirelessly to further the South’s slave-plantation system of economic and social values. He sought protection for a region that he freely admitted was low in population and poor in material resources, and he defended a position that he knew was morally inferior. Niven portrays Calhoun as a driven, tragic figure whose ambitions and personal desires to achieve leadership and compensate for a lack of inner assurance were often thwarted. The life he made for himself, the peace he felt on his plantation with his dependent retainers, and the agricultural pursuits that represented to him and his neighbors stability in a rapidly changing environment were beyond price. Calhoun sought to resist any menace to this way of life with all the force of his character and intellect. Yet in the end Calhoun’s headstrong allegiance to his region helped to destroy the very culture he sought to preserve and disrupted the Union he had hoped to keep whole. Niven’s masterful retelling of Calhoun’s eventful life is a model biography.

Download or read book John C Calhoun written by John Caldwell Calhoun and published by Regnery Gateway. This book was released on 2003 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The conflict between power and liberty in a free government was the passionate concern of this most articulate, and often prophetic, orator and writer.

Download or read book Calhoun written by Robert Elder and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John C. Calhoun's ghost still haunts America today. First elected to congress in 1810, Calhoun served as secretary of war during the war of 1812, and then as vice-president under two very different presidents, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. It was during his time as Jackson's vice president that he crafted 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. Other accounts of Calhoun have portrayed him as a backward-looking traditionalist -- he was, after all, an outspoken apologist for slavery, which he defended as a "positive good." But he was also an extremely complex thinker, and thoroughly engaged in the modern world. He espoused many ideas that resonate strongly with popular currents today: an impatience for the spectacle and shallowness of politics, a concern about the alliance between wealth and power in government, and a skepticism about the United States' ability to spread its style of democracy throughout the world. Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years, as the tensions he navigated and inflamed in his own time have surfaced once again. In 2015, a monument to him in Charleston, South Carolina became a flashpoint after a white supremacist murdered nine African-Americans in a nearby church. And numerous commentators have since argued that Calhoun's retrograde ideas are at the root of the modern GOP's problems with race. Bringing together Calhoun's life, his intellectual contributions -- both good and bad -- and his legacy, Robert Elder's book is a revelatory reconsideration of the antebellum South we thought we knew.

Download or read book A Disquisition on Government and a Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States written by John Caldwell Calhoun and published by . This book was released on 1851 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book John C Calhoun written by Irving H. Bartlett and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 1994-03-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John C. Calhoun was a rare figure in American history: a lifelong politician who was also a profound political philosopher. Vice president under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, he was a dominant presence in the U.S. Senate. Now comes a major new biography from the author of Daniel Webster.

Download or read book The Great Triumvirate written by Merrill D. Peterson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1988-12-08 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enormously powerful, intensely ambitious, the very personifications of their respective regions--Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun represented the foremost statemen of their age. In the decades preceding the Civil War, they dominated American congressional politics as no other figures have. Now Merrill D. Peterson, one of our most gifted historians, brilliantly re-creates the lives and times of these great men in this monumental collective biography. Arriving on the national scene at the onset of the War of 1812 and departing political life during the ordeal of the Union in 1850-52, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun opened--and closed--a new era in American politics. In outlook and style, they represented startling contrasts: Webster, the Federalist and staunch New England defender of the Union; Clay, the "war hawk" and National Rebublican leader from the West; Calhoun, the youthful nationalist who became the foremost spokesman of the South and slavery. They came together in the Senate for the first time in 1832, united in their opposition of Andrew Jackson, and thus gave birth to the idea of the "Great Triumvirate." Entering the history books, this idea survived the test of time because these men divided so much of American politics between them for so long. Peterson brings to life the great events in which the Triumvirate figured so prominently, including the debates on Clay's American System, the Missouri Compromise, the Webster-Hayne debate, the Bank War, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, the annexation of Texas, and the Compromise of 1850. At once a sweeping narrative and a penetrating study of non-presidential leadership, this book offers an indelible picture of this conservative era in which statesmen viewed the preservation of the legacy of free government inherited from the Founding Fathers as their principal mission. In fascinating detail, Peterson demonstrates how precisely Webster, Clay, and Calhoun exemplify three facets of this national mind.

Download or read book Heirs of the Founders written by H. W. Brands and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how, in nineteenth-century America, a new set of political giants battled to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery. Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery. They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, "the immortal trio" had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart. Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.

Download or read book The Essential Calhoun written by John Caldwell Calhoun and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1999-12-31 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John C. Calhoun was a major actor in the political history of nineteenth-century America. His dramatic career will always be of interest. However, Calhoun is equally important as a political thinker who continues to elicit widespread interest from the most diverse points of the ideological spectrum. The Essential Calhoun presents a full-fledged selection of speeches and writings taken from the entire forty-year span of Calhoun's public career and from many varieties of occasions, public and private. For the first time, it is possible to appreciate Calhoun fully and to consider his thought within the compass of a single volume. Calhoun is known to posterity as the premier defender of the Old South and slavery and as the theorist of the concurrent majority. His contemporaries knew him as much else, including a political economist and foreign policy authority. As the range of writings shows, he was a valuable and often prophetic commentator. Calhoun's thought testifies to a deep and abiding concern with moral and ethical issues that confront a government resting on the consent of the people. The fundamental question with which he wrestles in all his works is how to achieve and maintain a proper balance between power and liberty in a democratic society. By providing the most representative compendium of his thought, The Essential Calhoun invites the reader to engage in this exercise of applying the moral imagination realistically to the public business of America. Historians, American studies specialists, economists, and political scientists will find this volume indispensible.

Download or read book The Black Calhouns written by Gail Lumet Buckley and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A history cum memoir by Lena Horne’s daughter tells the story of her forebears . . . eloquently conveys . . . how politics and prejudice can shape a family.” —The New Yorker In The Black Calhouns, Gail Lumet Buckley—daughter of actress Lena Horne—delves deep into her family history, detailing the experiences of an extraordinary African American family from Civil War to Civil Rights. Beginning with her great-great grandfather Moses Calhoun, a house slave who used the rare advantage of his education to become a successful businessman in post-war Atlanta, Buckley follows her family’s two branches: one that stayed in the South, and the other that settled in Brooklyn. Through the lens of her relatives’ momentous lives, Buckley examines major events throughout American history. From Atlanta during Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, and then from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement, this ambitious, brilliant family witnessed and participated in the most crucial events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Combining personal and national history, The Black Calhouns is a unique and vibrant portrait of six generations during dynamic times of struggle and triumph. “The challenge of reviewing extraordinary books is that they leave one grasping for words . . . The book’s ultimate magic derives from the way the history of black America can be viewed through their story.” —The Boston Globe

Download or read book Calhoun and Popular Rule written by H. Lee Cheek and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) remains one of the major figures in American political thought, many of his critics have tried to discredit him as merely a Southern partisan whose ideas were obsolete even during his lifetime. In Calhoun and Popular Rule, H. Lee Cheek, Jr., attempts to correct such misconceptions by presenting Calhoun as an original political thinker who devoted his life to the recovery of a "proper mode of popular rule." As the first combined evaluation of Calhoun's most important treatises, The Disquisition and The Discourse, this work merges Calhoun's theoretical position with his endeavors to restore the need for popular rule. It also compares Calhoun's ideas with those of other great political thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison--while explaining what is truly unique about Calhoun's political thought.

Download or read book John C Calhoun s Theory of Republicanism written by John G. Grove and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2016-12-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John C. Calhoun (1782–1850), the South Carolinian who served as a congressman, a senator, and the seventh vice president of the United States, is best known for his role in southern resistance to abolition and his doctrine of state nullification. But he was also an accomplished political thinker, articulating the theory of the “concurrent majority.” This theory, John G. Grove contends, is a rare example of American political thought resting on classical assumptions about human nature and political life. By tracing Calhoun's ideas over the course of his political career, Grove unravels the relationship between the theory of the concurrent majority and civic harmony, constitutional reform, and American slavery. In doing so, Grove distinguishes Calhoun's political philosophy from his practical, political commitment to states' rights and slavery, and identifies his ideas as a genuinely classical form of republicanism that focuses on the political nature of mankind, public virtue, and civic harmony. Man was a social creature, Calhoun argued, and the role of government was to maximize society's ability to thrive. The requirements of social harmony, not abstract individual rights, were therefore the foundation of political order. Hence the concurrent majority permitted the unique elements in any given society to pursue their interests as long as these did not damage the whole society; it forced rulers to act in the interest of the whole. John C. Calhoun's Theory of Republicanism offers a close analysis of the historical development of this idea from a basic, inherited republican ideology into a well-defined political theory. In the process, this book demonstrates that Calhoun's infamous defense of American slavery, while unwavering, was intellectually shallow and, in some ways, contradicted his highly developed political theory.

Download or read book Union and Liberty written by John Caldwell Calhoun and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Liberty Classics edition"--T.p. verso.Selected speeches: p. [401]-601. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Download or read book Olive Branch and Sword written by Merrill D. Peterson and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1999-03-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dominated by the personalities of three towering figures of the nation's middle period -- Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and President Andrew Jackson -- Olive Branch and Sword: The Compromise of 1833 tells of the political and rhetorical dueling that brought about the Compromise of 1833, resolving the crisis of the Union caused by South Carolina's nullification of the protective tariff.In 1832 South Carolina's John C. Calhoun denounced the entire protectionist system as unconstitutional, unequal, and founded on selfish sectional interests. Opposing him was Henry Clay, the Kentucky senator and champion of the protectionists. Both Calhoun and Clay had presidential ambitions, and neither could agree on any issue save their common opposition to President Jackson, who seemed to favor a military solution to the South Carolina problem. It was only when Clay, after the most complicated maneuverings, produced the Compromise of 1833 that he, Calhoun, and Jackson could agree to coexist peaceably within the Union.The compromise consisted of two key parts. The Compromise Tariff, written by Clay and approved by Calhoun, provided for the gradual reduction of duties to the revenue level of 20 percent. The Force Bill, enacted at the request of President Jackson, authorized the use of military force, if necessary, to put down nullification in South Carolina. The two acts became, respectively, the olive branch and the sword of the compromise that preserved the peace, the Union, and the Constitution in 1833.A careful study of what has become a neglected event in American political history, Merrill D. Peterson's work spans a period of over thirty years -- sketching the background of national policy out of which nullification arose, detailing the explosive events of 1832 and 1833, and then tracing the consequences of the compromise through the dozen or so years that it remained in public controversy. Considering as well the larger question of decision making and policy making in the Jacksonian republic, Peterson nonetheless never loses sight of the crucial role played by the ambitions, whims, and passions of such men as Calhoun, Clay, and Jackson in determining the course of history.

Download or read book The Fallacies of States Rights written by Sotirios A. Barber and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barber shows how arguments for states’ rights from John C. Calhoun to the present offend common sense, logic, and bedrock constitutional principles. The Constitution is a charter of positive benefits, not a contract among separate sovereigns whose function is to protect people from the central government, when there are greater dangers to confront.

Download or read book Longfellow written by Charles C. Calhoun and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2005-06-15 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first biography of Longfellow in almost fifty years, Charles C. Calhoun seeks to solve a mystery: Why has one of America's most famous writers fallen into oblivion? His answer to this question takes us through a life story that reads like a Victorian family saga and reveals the man who introduced Americans to the literatures of other countries while creating a gallery of American icons - among them Paul Revere, John and Priscilla Alden, Miles Standish, the Village Blacksmith, Hiawatha, and Evangeline.

Download or read book The Works of John C Calhoun Volume 2 written by John C. Calhoun and published by Jazzybee Verlag. This book was released on with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John C. Calhoun was the seventh Vice President of the United States from 1825 to 1832. He was a strong defendant of slavery and of Southern values versus Northern threats. His beliefs and warnings heavily influenced the South's secession from the Union in 1860–1861. This is volume two out of six of his works, this one containing a part of his speeches delivered in Congress (1811-1837).

Download or read book The Works of John C Calhoun written by John Caldwell Calhoun and published by . This book was released on 1888 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: