Calhoun
Subtitle: American heretic
By: Robert Elder
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2021
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780465096459; 9781541674592
Subjects: Legislators; Biography; Vice-presidents; Politics and government; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY; Historical
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 the strain of radical politics he developed has found expression once again in the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. By excising him from the mainstream of American history, we have been left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The people with no name; title: Educations; title: The science of law; title: "I am your true lover, John C. Calhoun"; title: "The road that all great nations have trod"; title: "The great gun of the party"; title: "Let us conquer space"; title: Secretary of improvement and empire; title: "To the western confines of the continent"; title: "I am with the people, and shall remain so"; title: "The impression, that I acted under the force of destiny"; title: "The shall be at least one free state"; title: "I think, I see my way clearly on the slave question"; title: "It is our Thermopylae"; title: "Dangerous and despotic doctrines"; title: "The true and perfect voice of the people"; title: "Thou art the man"; title: "Ours is the government of the white man"; title: The pillar of fire; title: Epilogue.