Calhoun: American Heretic

Calhoun: American Heretic by Robert Elder

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, as vice president under two very different presidents -- John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson -- and as secretary of state. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a "positive good" while serving as U.S. senator from South Carolina, 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 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.

Basic Books, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2021