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

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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.

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.

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.

John Calhoun was one of the most accomplished politicians of his time. For forty years he served the United States as Senator, Secretary of War, Secretary of State and twice as Vice President. He entered Congress an ardent nationalist, one of the War Hawks that led the United States into the War of 1812. As Secretary of War in the Monroe Administration, he was a strong supporter of public works, primarily those designed to promote the safety, security and defense of the United States. He would, however, over time, turn away from a nation first attitude as his perceptions of the politics of his time led him to the conclusion that his cherished way of life, the agrarianism of the Southern States in general and his native State of South Carolina in particular, was threatened by the growing populations and prosperity in the Northern and Western sections of the country.

The Era of Good Feelings, that period of substantive economic growth that occurred in the United States after the War of 1812, was not equally shared throughout the country. Unlike the North and the West, the South, whose capital turnover was slow even in the best of times, experienced recession as global commodity prices for cotton and cereal grains stagnated and declined. Unlike the North and West whose sectors were economically diverse, the South's capital was tied up in two interdependent asset classes, land and slaves. Thus, when Congress naturally sought to protect the faster growing, emergent portions of the US economy through protective tariffs, the South reacted negatively, even harshly.

On a parallel course was a fundamental difference in the labor practices of the sections. The North and West employed wage or free labor; the South employed slave labor. John Calhoun realized these two labor systems were on a collision course. Neither he nor any of the then Southern leadership could understand how a slower growing, agrarian society, one that stretched back over 200 years, could survive without owning the labor assets necessary to cultivate the land.

Between them, these parallels of stronger growth North and West combined with Southerners perception that their entire way of life was under assault, led to increasingly isolationist, combative Southern policies that would lead to America's Civil War. John Calhoun more than anyone else would come to define and lay the ground work for the South's defense of slavery. He would define slavery as an inalienable right beneficial to Blacks, a natural state that had always existed between labor and management, a morally superior position that was condoned by God and the Constitution. Over time, this Southern radicalism which dominated South Carolina and led to the Nullification Crisis of 1832, would spread throughout the South to the point where the very words liberty and slavery became so intertwined, that in the South liberty literally meant the right of white men to own black men.

From the Nullification Crisis to the gag rule in Congress, the Texas annexation battle and the extension of slavery into the newly acquired territory from Mexico, John Calhoun's life was spent defending a way of life the rest of the world had passed by. The pretzel logic that defended slavery had become so chauvinistic, so narrowly self centered and impassioned, that it blocked the nation's growth. William Marcy, then Governor of New York, looking to accommodate and appease, summed it up best when he said to Calhoun, "I can fight your battles so long as you make the Constitution your fortress. But when you go to the Bible or make it a question of ethics, you must not expect me or any respectable member of the Free states to be with you." Calhoun's positions were so polarizing, so extreme and so confrontational, they would lose him his chance to become President of the United States, a position he ardently desired.

This book by John Niven is a book about politics, the political theory of the times and the decidedly strong drift of the States toward separation. It is not a page turner but it is a thoughtful reflection on its times. If you are looking for a detailed work that lays out America's road to disunion and are interested in the antebellum logic that mapped that passionate path, no better place to start than the life of John Calhoun, for he, more than any other person, defined Southern Nationalism.

Calhoun was one of the more intriguing and complicated figures in American history. It is fascinating to watch him transform from ardent nationalist to vehement sectionalist during the course of this well written biography.

Having grown up within a few blocks of Calhoun's Fort Hill estate in Clemson, SC, I had still sadly never read the story of his life and this book straightened out many misconceptions I had developed over the years, giving clearer perspective to both his good and bad points.

I liked the fact that the book was written by a "Yankee" rather than someone with a Southern heritage and possible bias. John Niven is extremely even-handed in his approach and in the end paints a vivid picture of a man whose potential greatness was undermined by his growing paranoia and his unwillingness to see the flaws in his arguements defending Southern institutions that have long since proven totally indefensible.

Also highly recommended is William Freehling's "Prelude to the Civil War" which offers another fine perspective on this important era and this work is frequently cited by Niven in the Calhoun biography.

John Niven presents a straightforward and well researched book on the life of John C. Calhoun who was one of the most influential people in the antebellum period. Calhoun represented the last of the Jeffersonian states rights politicians who clung to the virtues of small government in a chaning time. While that is often lost in his views on slavery it is important to remember as Niven points out that his arguments were not rooted in race but in keeping government small and protecting the farmer. He was against many internal improvements, against the tariff, against the national bank, against many of the things that expanded government power vis a vis the state. He was considered a member of the great triumvirate who with Henry Clay and Daniel Webster debated the great issues of the day and worked out the compromises that prevented Civil War from happening sooner. (See Merrill Peterson's book the Great Triumvirate). I think Nevin has it correct that despite this image of three great men representing sections of the country it was far from true particularly for Calhoun who was never the dominant statesman of the South (although he was the dominant representative for South Carolina).
Calhoun would serve as a vice president, secretary of state, senate, house, and secretary of war during his tenure in politics. While always trying he was never able to achieve the presidency due his fractious support. He was easily a national name but his scattered support across many states was never the majority in those states. In many cases he was defeated by the patronage machines that were coming into existence and would be the norm following the Civil War. He had as many enemies as he did allies and his hatred of the Jackson/Van Buren group isolated him within that party. Many other books on the subject have asserted Calhoun to be a radical and I think Niven has it right that in the context of his time he was not a radical but was expressing the dying viewpoint as new political parties were forming in the early years of the Civil War leaving Calhoun on the outside. He was always remembered for the modernization of the War department and many of the things he created from inspector general to a modern supply system and health system would be utilized by both sides in the civil war and are still in use today in much the same form.
Overall this is well written, straight to the point and while it can be dry it is well worth the read. Although I did not spend much time on it I should mention that Niven spends a lot of time on Calhouns family, financial and personal problems and how he separates them from his time in office.