Show Me Where the Statue Hurt You
I attended a protest to tear down the John C. Calhoun monument in Charleston on May 16, 2019. This event was being hosted by “The Independent Media Institute,” and consisted of “artists” explaining how the… »
John C. Calhoun: American
Of all the American vice-presidents, none is more vilified than John C. Calhoun. Calhoun is known as the “defender of slavery,” the “cast iron man,” the “man who started the civil war.” His monument in… »
When Real Historians Understood Calhoun
A review of Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, Vol II. (Washington, 1900) edited by J. Franklin Jameson. It is a fitting crown to Professor Jameson’s efforts in promoting the establishment and successful career of the… »
Lord Acton: Confederate Sympathizer
“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Among Catholic students of political thought, few figures are more liable to provoke vigorous debate than does that famous dictum’s author, Cambridge history lecturer John Emerich Edward… »
John C. Calhoun’s Foreign Policy: “A Wise and Masterly Inactivity”
The dominant powers in American discourse today have succeeded in confining the South to a dark little corner of history labeled “Slavery and Treason.” This is already governing the public sphere of the Civil War… »
Social Justice and Clemson University
In November 2018 Will Hiott, Director and Curator of Historic Properties at Clemson University, included a thinly disguised political paper from Clemson University History Professor Rhondda Robinson Thomas as part a packet distributed to Historic… »
Charleston’s Faulty “Contextualization”
I grew up in Summerville, South Carolina, just a few miles from historic Charleston. This quiet little town is separated from the Holy City by some plantations, swamps, and marsh but shares the same fascination… »
Calhoun, Not Webster, Was Right
Writing about the “Great Triumvirate” of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun during the third Nullification controversy in America of 1828-1832, and in particular about the Webster-Hayne debate of 1830, the late Prof. Merrill D. Peterson made… »
Rhetoric, Reality, and the Late Unpleasantness
The 1850s is viewed by most scholars as the crucial decade of the sectional crisis that resulted in the War Between the States. The Great Triumvirate of John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster… »
Calhoun and Modern Economics
Much of John C. Calhoun’s criticism stems from his 1837 speech in the Senate where he stated slavery was “a positive good.” This quote is often paraded as evidence of Southern racism and is used… »
