John C. Calhoun

John C. Calhoun PDF Author: John Caldwell Calhoun
Publisher: Regnery Gateway
ISBN: 9780895261793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 766

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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.

John C. Calhoun

John C. Calhoun PDF Author: John Caldwell Calhoun
Publisher: Regnery Gateway
ISBN: 9780895261793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 766

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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.

Heirs of the Founders

Heirs of the Founders PDF Author: H. W. Brands
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385542542
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
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.

Calhoun

Calhoun PDF Author: Robert Elder
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780465096442
Category : Calhoun Family
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
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.

John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union

John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union PDF Author: John Niven
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807118580
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
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.

A Disquisition on Government

A Disquisition on Government PDF Author: John Caldwell Calhoun
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description


Speeches of John C. Calhoun

Speeches of John C. Calhoun PDF Author: John Caldwell Calhoun
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description


America's Great Debate

America's Great Debate PDF Author: Fergus M. Bordewich
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439124612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Chronicles the 1850s appeals of Western territories to join the Union as slave or free states, profiling period balances in the Senate, Henry Clay's attempts at compromise, and the border crisis between New Mexico and Texas.

Union and Liberty

Union and Liberty PDF Author: John Caldwell Calhoun
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 664

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Book Description
"A Liberty Classics edition"--T.p. verso.Selected speeches: p. [401]-601. Includes bibliographical references and index.

John C Calhoun

John C Calhoun PDF Author: Irving H. Bartlett
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393332865
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
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.

Calhoun and Popular Rule

Calhoun and Popular Rule PDF Author: H. Lee Cheek
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 9780826215482
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
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.