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Loading... Calhoun: American Hereticby Robert Elder
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Describes the life of the American statesman and political theorist who served as Vice President under John Quincy Adams and argued in favor of slavery and laid the groundwork for the South to secede the Union.
"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"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)973.5092History and Geography North America United States 1809-1845LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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I am a graduate of Clemson University, so I spent four years on Calhoun's old Fort Hill but don't recall much about his legacy from then (admittedly, student lore says either going inside the house or reading the text on the statue of Thomas Green Clemson before graduating will doom you to never matriculate). It was fascinating to read this while recalling the very grounds described and trying to envision where the old slave quarters were, for example. I also hadn't realized Thomas Green Clemson was a northerner who married in, so that was new for me. The university has done a better job in recent years about acknowledging the history they sit on, but it wasn't until (frankly, close to or after publication time I would assume) recently that they stripped Calhoun's name from the Honor College. The final chapters grapple with this, Calhoun's ongoing legacy into the 21st century. The concurrent majority is a useful idea for protecting the interests of a minority, but he used it to argue for protecting the southern interest in what he perceived to be the "benevolence" of a slave society. ( )