A patriotic sectionalist: The political transformation of John C. Calhoun, 1816-1833
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2012
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History
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Abstract
John C. Calhoun is almost exclusively remembered
as the most ardent defender of the South and states' rights.
His name has become a byword for sectionalism.
Such associations only tell half of the story.
For the first decade of his political career,
Calhoun was the archetypal nationalist, promoting
tariffs, internal improvements, and a national bank.
He refused to abandon his nationalism in spite of a
surge in radicalism in his home state of South Carolina.
Ironically, it was a group of northem, not southern,
radicals who ultimately drove Calhoun to embrace
the doctrines of states' rights and sectionalism.
Abolitionism represented a grave threat to the Union
Calhoun loved so dearly by striking at the heart of the
one institution the South could not do without--slavery.
Thus, in the 1830s, the radical antislavery activists of
the North succeeded in driving Calhoun into the arms
of a group of southern radicals that had been
putting pressure on him all along.