EASTON PRESS: JOHN C. CALHOUN: SOUTH CAROLINA SENATOR: VICE PRES for JACKSON

Description: Easton Press leather edition of Margaret L. Coit's "John C. Calhoun: American Portrait," a COLLECTOR'S edition, one of the LIBRARY OF AMERICAN HISTORY series, published in 1993. Bound in brown leather, the book has decorative paper end leaves, satin book marker, hubbed spine, gold gilt on three edges---in FINE condition. NOTES FROM HISTORY is included. John Caldwell Calhoun, who lived from 1782 – 1850, was an American statesman and political theorist from SOUTH CAROLINA who held many important positions including being the seventh vice president of the U.S. from 1825 to 1832. Born to the cotton rows of a South Carolina frontier farm, he became the greatest spokesman for the slave-owning aristocracy. Calhoun left the farm at age 20 and attended YALE University; seven years later he became a Congressman where he adamantly defended slavery and protecting the interests of the white South. He began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs. Calhoun began his political career with election to the House of Representatives in 1810. In 1811, Calhoun married Floride Calhoun, eleven years younger than her husband. She knew how to dance and how to flirt; her charm and beauty won his heart. Her mother had instructed her daughter that a wife had to listen when she was not interested in politics or farming and that a man was to be served and that a woman must submit and accept whatever he wanted. Floride was attracted to Calhoun's dark, handsome face, his thick hairy chest, and strong physique. She was also strongly influenced by her mother's encouragement that she should marry a strong man. Floride was from the "Charleston aristocracy" and hers was the world of town houses, of a pew at Saint Michael's; and of the legendary Saint Cecilia balls, and of rich clothes. Had she married into her own class---one of those lanquid, soft-spoken gallants of the low-country, she could have gone to Charleston in the proper season, danced at the Saint Cecilias, entertained and been entertained---but Calhoun did not like socializing. The couple took no wedding trip. However, "almost from her wedding night she was pregnant," eventually giving birth to ten children in 18 years. The marriage was strained, and she resented his being gone from home for long spells. The Calhoun children adored their father. To the boys, he was the 'dearest, best old man in the world.' The unpublished Calhoun letters show Floride continually at war with one of another of the children, and Calhoun futilely trying to make peace. There were 'rumors' of Floride "smashing silver pitchers and family china." As a prominent leader of the war hawk faction, Calhoun strongly supported the War of 1812, serving as President Monroe's Secretary of War. Calhoun was a candidate for the presidency in the 1824 election. After failing to gain support, he agreed to be a candidate for vice president. Calhoun had a difficult relationship with Jackson, primarily because of the Nullification Crisis and the Petticoat affair---when Calhoun's wife refused to "call on Peggy O'Neil Easton" the wife of a cabinet member who 'rumors' said that Mrs. Eaton has been a "saloon girl" before marrying Eaton. In the late 1820s, his views changed radically, and he became a leading proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification, and opposition to high tariffs. He saw Northern acceptance of those policies as a condition of the South remaining in the Union. His beliefs and warnings heavily influenced the South's secession from the Union in 1860-1861. Calhoun served as Secretary of State under President JOHN TYLER from 1844 to 1845, and in that role supported the annexation of Texas. In the Senate, he alone opposed war against Mexico, even as fellow Southerners were eyeing new territories as potential slave states. Later Calhoun returned to the Senate. Later in life, Calhoun became known as the "cast-iron man" for his rigid defense of white Southern beliefs and practices. He owned dozens of slaves in South Carolina and asserted that slavery, rather than being a "necessary evil," was a "positive good" that benefited both slaves and owners. Calhoun died at the age of 68 and was interred in Charleston. The Clemson University campus occupies the site of Calhoun's Fort Hill Plantation which he bequeathed to his wife and daughter. They sold it and 50 slaves to a relative. When that owner died, Thomas Green Clemson foreclosed the mortage. He later gave the property to the state for use as an agricultural college to be named for him. Calhoun's widow, Floride was buried in Pendleton, South Carolina, near her children, but apart from her husband. John C. Calhoun was one of the "Great Triumvirate" or the "Immortal Trio" of Congressional leaders, along with his colleagues DANIEL WEBSTER and HENRY CLAY. Margaret Coit wrote: "Although Calhoun loved the Union, his advocacy for states' rights helped pave the way to secession, Fort Sumter, and the Civil War." 593 pages, including an Index. I offer combined shipping.

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