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John C. Calhoun: American Union
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John C. Calhoun, one of the South's greatest political thinkers, understood the fallacy of the "one size fits all" mentality in government. In A Disquisition On Government, published in 1853, he analyzed the vitality and durability of the Union as compared to the corruption and waste of an overgrown autocracy:
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A representative collection of essays by Calhoun scholars is John L. Thomas, ed., John C. Calhoun: A Profile (1968). It provides an excellent introduction to the literature on Calhoun. The comprehensive biography is Charles M. Wiltse, John C. Calhoun (3 vols., 1944-1951); ... it denigrates his rivals and justifies Calhoun's actions throughout his career. The best one-volume biography, with a better interpretive balance, is Margaret L. Coit, John C. Calhoun: American Portrait (1950). For a more critical account see Gerald M. Capers, John C. Calhoun, Opportunist: A Reappraisal (1960). Richard N. Current, John C. Calhoun (1963), provides a good analysis of Calhoun's political theory.
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Although he was one of the intellectual progenitors of the Southern Confederacy, Calhoun never sought that solution. His tragedy was that his defense of an indefensible institution led him to reject democracy itself. His doctrine of representation by major interest groups influenced the functional federalism of a later day but in his own time only prepared the way for the destruction of the Union he loved.
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One can speculate that nothing would have exceeded for Calhoun the pain of actually seeing the ruin of the South than that of being called the architect of that ruin. For while he was widely seen and reviled as the disciple of disunion, Calhoun believed himself to be--and a later generation of historians seems to accept him as--a union man. His expression of those pro-union sentiments was quite different from that of others of his day--his fellow triumvirs, for example. But his entire life, Calhoun saw himself as an advocate of the Constitution and a proud heir to the mantle of Thomas Jefferson.
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Jameson beheld the two volumes of Calhoun letters that he had prepared for publication, and was pleased. He wrote in his introduction that he felt he had provided "materials with which others may elaborate the fabric of American political history." He was ... pleased that in his time a renewal of "fraternal feelings" between the sections had created a "historic breadth of view, which enables all alike to do justice to the memory of a great and noble statesman who, whether his opinions be ours or not, is seen to have spent a long and laborious life in the conscientious service of our common country."
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