Complete Works - 6 Volumes (Notable American Authors Series

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Complete Works - 6 Volumes (Notable American Authors Series - Part I)
John C. Calhoun , and John Caldwell Calhoun
Manufacturer: Reprint Services Corp
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Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0781222400

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An excellent compilation of Calhoun's constitutional and political writings...

John C. Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches (Conservative Leadership Series)
H. Lee Cheek , John C. Calhoun , Lee Cheek Jr. , and John C. Calhoun
Manufacturer: Gateway Editions
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Binding: Hardcover

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Calhoun And Popular Rule: The Political Theory Of The Disquisition And Discourse

Political Writings of James Monroe (Conservative Leadership Series)

The American Republic

The Anti-Federalists: Selected Writings and Speeches (Conservative Leadership Series)

The Best of Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Conservative Leadership Series)

ASIN: 0895261790

Book Description

The conflict between power and liberty in a free government was the passionate concern of this most articulate, and often prophetic, orator and writer.

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An excellent compilation of Calhoun's constitutional and political writings..........2006-06-06

~John C. Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches~ is an anthology of writings of the antebellum South Carolina statesmen. It's perhaps the definitive abridged compilation of Calhoun's writings. The alternative of course is the broad collection by historian Clyde Wilson, entitled The Papers of John C. Calhoun. However, as a practical matter, sorting through the cream of the crop is an exercise that takes a lot of work. Dr. Cheek, however, has sorted through Calhoun's writings, and put together a most remarkable collection of Calhoun's writings. Besides, the Disquisition and the Discourse, he features good pieces such as Calhoun's Exposition and Protest, his Speech on the Force Bill, and his letter to James Hamilton describing the nature of the Union, among several other selections.

Calhoun's Disquisition and Discourse are profoundly reflective political thought that typify what historians characterize as the South Atlantic Republicanism. Calhoun's concept of concurrent majorities and his understanding of the American federal system are deeply reflective. Undoubtedly, if we are to ever initiate a meaningful renaissance of federalism and implement needed constitutional reforms within the United States, such a move necessitates the revival of the statesmanship of John Calhoun. So, Dr. Cheek's books are a good place to start.

All things considered, if you're interested in antebellum politics, political science, or exploring the statesmanship of South Carolina statesmen John C. Cahoun, then Cheek's anthology is definitely worth your consideration. Please consider reading this book in tandem with his other book Calhoun and Popular Rule, which offers sound exegesis of the Disquisition and Discourse.

The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina

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An important contribution

The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina
Manisha Sinha
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807848840
Release Date: 2000-10-11

Book Description

In this comprehensive analysis of politics and ideology in antebellum South Carolina, Manisha Sinha offers a provocative new look at the roots of southern separatism and the causes of the Civil War. Challenging works that portray secession as a fight for white liberty, she argues instead that it was a conservative, antidemocratic movement to protect and perpetuate racial slavery.

Sinha discusses some of the major sectional crises of the antebellum era—including nullification, the conflict over the expansion of slavery into western territories, and secession—and offers an important reevaluation of the movement to reopen the African slave trade in the 1850s. In the process she reveals the central role played by South Carolina planter politicians in developing proslavery ideology and the use of states' rights and constitutional theory for the defense of slavery.

Sinha's work underscores the necessity of integrating the history of slavery with the traditional narrative of southern politics. Only by taking into account the political importance of slavery, she insists, can we arrive at a complete understanding of southern politics and the enormity of the issues confronting both northerners and southerners on the eve of the Civil War.

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An important contribution.......2000-12-30

The historiography of secession is a complex one. For much of the last century there had been a tendency for historians to underplay the importance of slavery as a cause of the American civil war. Certaintly neo-Confederate apologists have sought to euphemize the cause of the conflict to an issue over tariffs, to matters of states rights, or to the "extremism" of the abolitionists. It is quite clear that these excuses will not survive a reading of this book. Sinha clearly shows, in her examination of South Carolina secessionism from nullifaction to fort Sumter, that slavery was the essence of its concerns. To show this she looks at the nullification crisis, the Mexican war, the Compromise of 1850, the South Carolinian movement to reopen the slave trade, and the secession crisis, based on exhaustive research of no less than 137 sets of private papers and diaries.

But Sinha wishes not simply to refute the academically unimportant group of neo-Calhounites. She wishes to argue something broader. The South Carolinian defense of slavery was not, as many serious historians suggest today, simply the working out of the Southern American view of liberty. Increasingly, Sinha argues, South Carolina pro-slavery thought was not the expression of Southern Republicanism, but increasingly its very negation. It was not a coincidence that secessionism was strongest in South Carolina, the only state by 1832 where presidential electors and the governor were not popularly elected, where the legislature was crudely malapportioned, and where local offices were limited by the state government. It was also not a coincidence that slaves were a majority of South Carolinians, and slaveholders nearly a majority of South Carolinian whites. And it certainly was not a coincidence that non-slaveholders were noticeably less enthusiastic for nullification, secession in 1851 and secession in 1861.

But although Southern nationalist discourse was clearly elitist and pro-slavery, does Sinha show that it was counter-revolutionary? A certain opposition to democracy was evident after all in the many, perhaps most, of the founding fathers. But as Sinha points out leading Carolinians like Calhoun, Senator James Chesnut and the creepy, incestuous James Hammond all sneered at the Declaration of Independence. She quotes one bravado warping PatricK Henry to declare "Give me Slavery or give me death." Notwithstanding the views of some historians to the contrary the South Carolinians criticized the North less for its oppression of wage laborers than the possiblity that those laborers could vote themselves into power. They did not condemn Lincoln as an intolerant Protestant but as a dangerous socialist and feminist. Moreover, they were not slow to raise the Nativist card against the immigrants who were bolstering the North's population. Calhoun's idea of a concurrent majority was not a thoughtful protection of minority rights, but a way to prevent one minority, his own, from ever being outvoted. Once the Confederacy was set up the elite dispensed with political parties. Looking at South Carolina they also began to dispense with competitive elections, while its ruthless elite certainly did not act sentimentally (or even decently) towards opinions on slavery.

Book Description

Butterfly enthusiasts, nature lovers, and curious general readers will perhaps be surprised to learn that Florida's butterfly fauna is unique--and that, until the appearance of this volume, there has been no adequate field guide for the butterflies of this region. This guide simplifies identification by illustrating only species found in Florida--using superb photographs of live butterflies coupled with detailed range maps and identification data. It also offers, with unprecedented detail, much information on flight times and abundances for each of five Florida subregions, including reports on 70 localities in which to find butterflies. Lastly, discussions of the foodplants for each species along with suggestions for attracting these species to one's garden make this work invaluable for all Florida gardeners interested in butterflies.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent butterfly reference.......2007-07-30

Butterflies through Binoculars: A Field, Finding, and Gardening Guide to Butterflies in Florida (Butterflies and Others Through Binoculars Field Guide Series,) This is an excellent reference book for butterfly lovers in the State of Florida. I take it with me on my butterfly field trips and when I sit in my yard to observe them. The book has excellent photos, detailed information for each species, and the habitat locations. It's an easy book to carry and pack.

Simply Superb.......2000-09-08

This is one of the best presented field guides I have ever seen. Each and every species of Florida butterfly is pictured and described. Most butterfly guides I've seen use pictures of preserved specimens in a collection. This can be confusing because parts of the wings normally hidden are exposed when the collected specimen is mounted. This book avoids this problem by using only pictures taken in the wild (except for a few rare species). No more unnatural poses!

The text is easily readable without extensive knowledge of obscure scientific words and has enough humor to keep it from getting dry and technical, but not so much that it overpowers the book.

This book deserves a place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Florida butterflies.

Best field guide for butterflies of the northeast.......1997-02-12

If you are looking for a filed guide to the butterflies of the northeastern United States, this is THE book to get. Written for a relatively small geographical area, the book contains only those butterflies likely to be seen in the regioon...unlike other guidebooks which offer many photos of butterflies not native to the regioon you are in. Excellent photos and the reduced subject area result in quick identifications. Although written for the northeast, the book is useful over a wider range...I have even used it in Texas to great effect. Don't put too much stock in the information about flight period and abundance, though. And don't expect much info on larval hostplants, etc

Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun

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Calhoun -- last of the Founding Fathers

Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun
John C. Calhoun
Manufacturer: Liberty Fund
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 086597103X

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Calhoun -- last of the Founding Fathers.......2001-08-17

John Calhoun, the revered Son of South Carolina, was the South's pre-eminent advocate of ordered liberty in the nineteenth century. His two most important contributions, Disquisition on Government and Discourse on the Government and Constitution of the United States, are both included in this fine release by Liberty Fund. These two alone are worth the price of the book, and should be required reading for any student of American political philosophy. With the twelve speeches and papers included as well, they give a good overall picture of the man who spawned so much controversy by advocating nullification while sitting as Vice President of the U.S. Some have hailed his theory of the concurrent majority as the only truly original American contribution to political theory. This is surely one of my top ten books to go on the list of any thoughtful American reader.

The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun

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Calhoun, Clay and Webster: The Triumvirate Standing Athwart Jackson
Great Scholarship and a wonderful story
Masterful history through the lives of 3 great men
The big three in antebellum America
Great is Great

The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun
Merrill D. Peterson
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0195038770

Book Description

Enormously powerful, intensely ambitious, the very personifications of their respective regions--Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun were widely seen as the foremost statemen of their age. In the decades preceding the Civil War, they dominated American congressional politics as no other figures did, and there was scarcely a national issue or debate in which they took no part. 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. In 1832, when they came together in the Senate for the first time, united in their opposition of Andrew Jackson, the idea of the "Great Triumvirate" was born. The idea survived and entered the history books because these men divided so much of American politics for so long between them. Peterson brings to life the great events in which the Triumvirate figured so prominently: 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, the Compromise of 1850. At once a sweeping narrative and a penetrating study of non-presidential leadership, this book offers an indelible picture of the era--a conservative age in which statesmen saw their principal mission as preserving the legacy of free government received from the Founding Fathers. And, as Peterson shows us in fascinating detail, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun were the prime exemplars of three facets of this national mind.

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Calhoun, Clay and Webster: The Triumvirate Standing Athwart Jackson.......2007-08-21

~The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun~ is a powerful biography, of not one but three prominent U.S. Senators. Henry Clay (1777-1852) of Kentucky, John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) of South Carolina who was also the 7th Vice President, and Daniel Webster (1782-1852) of Massachusetts. As a result of their mutual antagonisms, they became known to historians as the Great Triumvirate. Clay, a consummate "warhawk," stood out for his achievements at spearheading legislation, assembling sponsors, and garnering compromises. Calhoun once a youthful nationalist, stood out for his steadfast stance in favor of states' rights and his acute logical sense. Webster was renowned as the vivacious orator who spoke stirring speeches of nationalist sentiment.

All of these men greatly influenced their era. The author Merill Peterson brings to life the great contests and debates of their time. The Triumvirate figured prominently in those debates whether it was the feud over the American system, the nature of the Union, or the Missouri Compromise dealing with slavery, their influence could be seen and heard. All of their tense contests in the U.S. Senate were in the backdrop of the Jacksonian era, which was a time of bombastic oratory in Congress and tense passion for democracy and the common man felt in the American heartland. All of these men in the Triumvirate fancied themselves as champions of the people no doubt.

The great controversies of the time were animated by the respective positions of Calhoun, Clay and Webster. Issues over internal improvements, tariffs, slavery, and the destiny of the burgeoning American empire figured prominently in the political discourse of the triumvirate. All of these men saw themselves as great statesmen and men of principle. Both Clay and Webster were in the hip-pocket of the Second Bank of the United States, which was sorely detested by Andrew Jackson who decried it as a "monster." Clay was once a Jeffersonian states' rights champion, but frequently oscillated back and forth as a National Republican in favor of federally-sponsored internal improvements. Webster's hypocrisy is manifest in his days before the Hartford Convention and his 1850 Capon Springs speech, where he essentially affirmed that the adherents of the compact view of the Union were right.

Jackson stampeded Clay's legislative agenda. Subsequently, Clay's feuding with Jackson compelled him to advocate abolition of the Presidential veto power. Calhoun's solicitude for the Constitution compelled him to defend the veto power all the same. Both Clay and Calhoun were detested by Jackson, and the mutual antagonisms seethed beneath the surface amidst the battles over tariff policy and nullification.

Calhoun was said by Randolph to speak in "axioms" when the logic of his thought was much admired and praised. Calhoun spent his twilight years in the wake of the nullification controversy writing what he hoped would be his most enduring contribution to American political science, the Disquisition and the Discourse, which was the definitive defense of the Jeffersonian states' rights interpretation of the Constitution.

All things considered, this is a masterful look at antebellum America during the height of the Jacksonian era. Merrill Peterson has put together a wonderful book. Another great author on the antebellum era is a scholar from the University of Virginia Michael Holt. The Jacksonian era was a time of great controversy in America, and marked the rise of the machine-ridden politics following Van Buren's ascendancy. It was arguably more democratic, but prone to more demagoguery, so there were certainly trade-offs. In the good old days, prominent U.S. Senators keyed more prominently in the history of the Republic than did some Presidents. Of the Great Triumvirate -- Calhoun, Clay and Webster -- their names were heard on the lips of school teachers by children throughout the land.

Great Scholarship and a wonderful story.......2007-06-04

The Great Triumvirate paints a rich picture of the political life in the early 1800's. The lives of Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster would shape the course of politics during the first half of the 1800's. These men would pick up where the founding fathers left off and define what it would mean to be American. They represented their sections of the countries but each would bow to the political realties of the time. In the end they were so good at representing their sections that their efforts to achieve the presidency would be met with failure. Henry Clay "the great compromiser" was a tyrant of the Senate and his political domination was impressive in preventing an outbreak of the civil war. While from the South Calhoun was an astute political observer who worked to preserve the institution of slavery. Daniel Webster as the fiery orator from the North was the consummate constitutionalist who the abolitionists hoped to have on their side. These three would "rule" the United States through their congressional domination like the triumvirates of Rome. The interaction between the three was not as great as I expected and more often than not they were working at cross purposes. The political pandering that grows out of this time period (especially with regard to Calhoun) sets the stage for the political discourse that we see emerging in the United States today. The election of 1848 painted here bears remarkable parallels to the 2008 presidential election that is shaping up. For those who want an understanding of our political history this is an essential book to read. These three men defined the next evolution in American government and this is the best book to show how they worked against and with each other to achieve the union.

Masterful history through the lives of 3 great men.......2005-04-18

Peterson tells the history of early American politics through the intertwined lives of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun. He highlights several major trends in the country, illustrated by these politicians--the increasing opportunity for non-elites to rise to prominence in national politics, the change of the burning issue of the day from the tariff to slavery, and the increasing discipline and organization of political parties.

The story is compelling as he tells the lives of these men and their continued interactions in crisp prose that is guaranteed to improve your vocabulary. His descriptions of the personalities, portraiture, and oratorical styles of the men are fascinating.

One question looms over the tale--if these were the three of the four most powerful politicians between Jefferson and Lincoln (Jackson would be the fourth), why did none of them get elected president? Peterson answers the question by referring to their individual characters and to their public perceptions. His last chapter and epilogue also contain an insightful discussion of the impact of each of the men on the looming Civil War and history's vindication or indictment of each for their roles (or lack thereof) in contributing to it.

This book is not an easy read, which is why I would have given this book a 4 1/2, if possible (yes, I'm stingy with 5's). Another possible drawback is the limited discussion of the formation of the Whig party, in which all three played at least something of a role.

The big three in antebellum America.......2004-09-29

In the first half of the 19th century, American politics was dominated by the Congress, with only one really strong president (Andrew Jackson) in the era between Jefferson and Lincoln. Perhaps the largest figures in this period were the so-called "Great Triumvirate" of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John Calhoun. Serving in both houses of Congress, various presidential cabinets and (in Calhoun's case), the Vice Presidency, these three were the architects of the era. Only the Presidency itself would elude their ambitions.

All three were born at roughly the same time, entered Congress around the same time and died within a couple years of each other. They represented the three regions of antebellum America: Webster was in the North, Clay the West and Calhoun the South. They were often at odds with each other, even when they were in agreement on a subject.

Webster was probably the least significant of the three. Known for his oratory and intellect, he led primarily by example. His constant financial problems put him in some ethically dubious situations. Calhoun was renowned for his integrity but - although he never lived to see it - provided a lot of the theoretical basis for the secession movement that eventually resulted in the Civil War. Clay was probably the most blatantly ambitious of the three, but also the best deal-maker. Among his many accomplishments (often shared with others) were the Treaty of Ghent, the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. Some of these may have be problematic to modern eyes, but these Compromises helped delay the Civil War. Although this may have not been Clay's design, the delay allowed the North to develop enough resources to win the war, which may have not been possible a decade earlier.

This book actually serves as three parallel biographies that occasionally intertwine. While generally interesting and informative, it is also a somewhat ponderous read. In addition, while the book does a good job at looking at the three as individuals, it is sometimes lacking in describing them as a trio. For better works about this era and its participants, I recommend Robert Remini, who has written biographies of Clay and Webster along with Andrew Jackson. Despite the flaws in this work, it is still at least a solid four stars for the information it does present, so you can't go too wrong reading it if the subject matter interests you.

Great is Great.......2004-03-29

Peterson has to be the top historian in Early American Republic history and this book proves it. You would not think that one book on these three giants could do them justice, but this one does it magnificently. Peterson incorporates the lives and careers of these three men to illustrate the plights and problems of Early America, issues that were facing the nation, the factionalism which shaped the way the issues were tackle, and the manner in which disputes in policy matters had to be resolved. During this time span in American history, you could read the biographies of four individuals and have a good understanding of what happened during that time span and these are three of them, with John Quincy Adams being the 4th.

John C. Calhoun: American Portrait (Southern Classics Series)

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John C. Calhoun: American Portrait (Southern Classics Series)
Margaret L. Coit
Manufacturer: University of South Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0872497755

John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography (Southern Biography)

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Scarlett O'Hara's Favorite Senator
A creative biography
Not well versed in matters Calhounian.

John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography (Southern Biography)
John Niven
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807118583

Book Description

In the first full-scale biography of Calhoun in almost fifty years, John Niven presents a new interpretation of this preeminent spokesman of the Old South. Skillfully 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 more complex human being than previous historians have portrayed. This masterly retelling of John C. Calhoun's eventful life is a model biography.

Customer Reviews:

Scarlett O'Hara's Favorite Senator.......2000-10-19

In his opening remarks John Niven makes the promise that he would not undertake psychoanalysis of John C.Calhoun, Much to his credit, he is true to his word. What Niven has delivered is an eminently readable and straightforward account of South Carolina's greatest political figure. We forget all that he did: senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, and vice president, in a distinguished career that began in the early days of Madison's presidency and concluded during the Taylor-Fillmore administration, a span of nearly four decades.

Niven's disclaimer, however, is telling. There is a tendency to use Calhoun's career as a sort of national inkblot. For constitutional scholars and ideologues of many stripes Calhoun's writings survive as either the last great stand of states rights or as a subversive manifesto for the tragic secession that would follow. For politicians and observers of human behavior, Calhoun is either the consummate patriot or his own worst enemy.

From the data Niven provides, it can be said that while Calhoun may have been eccentric, he was not crazy. Everyone born in primitive eighteenth century America survived with a history, and Calhoun, born in 1782, was no exception. His family and his colony shared a history of terrible suffering at the hands of the British [those were Calhoun's people slaughtered in Mel Gibson's "The Patriot."] Calhoun himself was orphaned as a young teen and appears to have spent a studious but lonely existence until he studied law at Yale under the famous Timothy Dwight.

Calhoun arrived home with his diploma just in time to ride a wave of strong Carolina resistance against the Virginia-New York axis that seemed to control presidential elections. This handsome, passionate, articulate favorite son soon found himself elected to Congress where he naturally became a leading advocate of war against the hated British. On June 18, 1812, Calhoun and other hawks got their war, but the thoughtful Calhoun quickly ascertained that the United States was woefully unprepared. Calhoun regretted his impetuousness, and nothing would absolve his guilt for this nasty war.

Calhoun would do penance for his sins by serving as Secretary of War under Monroe. Niven commends him for an outstanding tenure during which Calhoun reformed the army's purchasing policies, developed stronger defense outposts in the west, and crafted an almost enlightened Indian policy. An ambitious man, Calhoun not unreasonably expected his War Department success to catapult him toward bigger and better things.

But here one of the major themes of the book emerges: Calhoun was an unlucky politician. It was his bad fortune to reach his prime concurrently with an unusually large class of outstanding statesmen: Henry Clay, William Crawford, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren, to name a few. While he could console himself with the role of "everybody's favorite second" in the 1824 election, that convoluted contest left him tainted goods in the eyes of many, and an outsider in the Adams cabinet to boot.

Calhoun reluctantly threw his lot with Jackson in 1828, but by this date the South Carolinian was having long thoughts about his home region. Cotton prices were low, and protective tariffs seemed to him to exact a crushingly heavy toll from southern growers like himself. And although he shared some of Clay's enthusiasms for internal improvements, most notably transportation systems for the inner reaches of the Carolinas, Calhoun became increasingly suspicious and hostile of the federal government, dubious about its ability and will to protect slavery and Calhoun's idyllic picture of the agricultural southern life. A highly sensitive man, he internalized what he saw as the political treachery of Clay, Van Buren, and especially Crawford, who raised Calhoun-baiting to an art form, for reasons never precisely spelled out.

Calhoun began to write prodigiously on the subject of states rights and federal encroachments. As Niven observes, his writings were alternately brilliant and contradictory. Potboiler states rights speeches and pamphlets were common in America as the young nation sorted itself out. But how far could a politician really go on the matter of a state's autonomy? Until the Jackson era there seemed to have been a gentleman's agreement that the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions represented the boundary of political good taste. Calhoun crossed that line in his defense of nullification, increasingly preoccupied by perceived threats to his beloved South Carolina, In doing so Calhoun lost his national political base and a sense of the national pulse. No longer viable as even a regional candidate for the presidency, he assisted President Tyler by his skillful negotiating with Great Britain on the Oregon border question. But he objected to the Mexican War, not on humanitarian grounds but because he feared the socioeconomic consequences of the acquisition of Mexican territory, i.e., new free soil states. He was correct in his assessment that the consequences of the Mexican War would bring political turmoil to the United States. He had few horses to trade on the floor of congress as the Wilmot Proviso was debated, but his style till the end was magnificent.

From Niven's account it is fair to say that Calhoun was never a universally recognized spokesman for the South during his own lifetime. The Richmond Junto despised him. Unionists were still a majority in the South at the time of his death in 1850. Moderate southern businessmen even in his home state found his philosophy antiquated and at times deleterious to their state's economy. Many found him unbearably pedantic. Only later, as the nation polarized, would his political philosophy become a revered creed for those who dared to think the unthinkable.

Niven's work is a fine presentation for the casual reader and a more than adequate primer for those eager to delve into the mind and works of the consummate antebellum apostle of states' rights.

A creative biography.......1999-10-17

John Niven, professor emeritus of American History at the Claremont Graduate School, has shed new light on a statesman that history has long viewed as just another inconsistent headstrong Southerner, John C. Calhoun. Niven convinces the reader that this prominent politician of the antebellum south was much more consistent and levelheaded in both his public and private lives than his typical portrayal as a protean, stubborn hot-head from South Carolina would suggest. A lifelong advocate of the South, John C. Calhoun served as a member of Congress at the time of the War of 1812, secretary of war under James Monroe, vice president with John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, secretary of state under John Tyler, and then as a senator from South Carolina until he died in 1850. The key to Niven's success in bringing to life to this "cast iron man" is drawing on Calhoun's personal life and experiences in order to gain persuasive insight into the motives and stances of his political career. (back cover) Instead of telling the classic tale of Calhoun's shift from nationalism, during the War of 1812 and the tariff of 1816, to sectionalism and states' rights in later years, on the issues of the protective tariff and slavery, Niven convincingly exerts the original contention that Calhoun had always stood behind individual liberty and states rights. In Calhoun's view, as supported by his own papers, his apparent nationalistic support of the war and the tariff of 1816 was actually an effort to "provide for the common defense and to utilize the resources of all to strengthen the states as individual entities." (p. 127) When national policies began to benefit northern states at the expense of his home, the South, is when his states' rights sentiment began to manifest itself as sectionalism. The weakness of Niven's otherwise masterful biography is that "as a northerner, born and bred in New York and Connecticut," Niven is never able to completely shake his own predisposition against slavery and present Calhoun's feelings on the issue as being valid views with their own arsenal of support. (p. xv) Although he obviously attempts to be completely objective, Niven's own views show through in his portrayal of the slavery problem as Calhoun's resistance against the antislavery movement as opposed to the antislavery movement threatening Calhoun's southern way of life and ingrained teachings. John Niven's somewhat unconventional view of the career and motives of one of the leading spokesmen for the Old South, John C. Calhoun, is convincingly and understandably expressed in this original biography. He succeeds in depicting Calhoun as a very consistent man with a humanity and complexity entirely devoted to the preservation of the South.

Not well versed in matters Calhounian........1999-07-29

Prof. Niven's book fails on a number of counts, but mainly on that of familiarity with the sources of Calhoun's political thought. For example, in describing Calhoun's indebtedness to the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Niven says that neither document contemplated action by an individual state. To correct this impression, one need only consult Jefferson's draft of the Kentucky Resolutions; how anyone who had even read this five-page document could see it as anything other than a threat to interfere with enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts within the boundaries of Kentucky is beyond me. The book is full of similiar evidence of Niven's failure to acquaint himself with even the most basic sources. Try Bartlett's Calhoun biography, instead.

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John C.Calhoun (Great Lives Observed)
Margaret L. Coit
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

John C. Calhoun: American Portrait

ASIN: 0131124099

Speeches of Hon. John C. Calhoun, and Hon. Daniel Webster, on the subject of slavery: delivered in the Senate of the United States, March, 1850.

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Speeches of Hon. John C. Calhoun, and Hon. Daniel Webster, on the subject of slavery: delivered in the Senate of the United States, March, 1850.
John C. (John Caldwell) Calhoun
Manufacturer: Cornell University Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Product Description

This volume is produced from digital images from the Cornell University Library Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection

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