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

In the first full-scale biography of Calhoun in almost fifty years, John Niven presents a new interpretation of this preeminent spokesman of the Old South. Skillfully 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 more complex human being than previous historians have portrayed. This masterly retelling of John C. Calhoun's eventful life is a model biography. more

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From: Amazon
Posted: Aug-30-2009

A Radical Sectionalist

John Calhoun was one of the most accomplished politicians of his time. For forty years he served the Nation 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...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Oct-19-2000

Scarlett O'Hara's Favorite Senator

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...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Oct-17-1999

A creative biography

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...

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From: Amazon
Posted: Jul-29-1999

Not well versed in matters Calhounian.

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...

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