We are not yet done with John C. Calhoun. Nullification is receiving serious consideration from several state legislatures hoping to escape the burdens of the new federal health care system. Recently Governor Rick Perry of Texas uttered the taboo word “secession.” States rights seems to be making something of a comeback as the sinking feeling that the federal money train may have reached its end begins to penetrate into the consciousness of more and more people. Indeed, a number of state legislatures are even discussing the restoration of gold and silver as legal tender; the hope being to separate and insulate themselves from the monetary policies and actions of the Federal Reserve Bank. Voices among us might warn that Calhoun, the arch defender of slavery, is the father of such things as nullification and secession, thus such policies must remain taboo in American political discourse. Calhoun’s legacy, Walt Whitman wrote, “is the desolated, ruined south; nearly the whole generation of young men between seventeen and thirty destroyed or maim’d; all the old families used up—the rich impoverish’d, the plantations cover’d with weeds, the slaves unloos’d and become the masters, and the name of southerner blacken’d with every shame—all that is Calhoun’s real monument.” Surely we do not wish for this again.

Of course this is caricature and sleight of hand. Whitman did not wish to admit that perhaps northerners may have played a part in the “desolated, ruined south,” and like many folks today he had no appreciation for Calhoun’s deep devotion to the Union. True, there are those in America today who want Calhoun to stay dead, yet the ideas will not stay down. Here is the secret why. Many of the ideas of Calhoun are not uniquely his nor are they even uniquely southern. Nullification, the rights of states, opposition to the union of bank and government, these are American ideas and Calhoun was their champion in the antebellum era. Nullification is an outstanding example. Movements to nullify federal law or court decisions were not limited to the Kentucky Resolution or South Carolina’s protest against the Tariff of Abominations.  Northern states moved to nullify the Embargo Act, federalization of their militias during the War of 1812, and the Fugitive Slave laws before the Civil War. Tom Woods’s recent book, Nullification, catalogs many of these efforts before and after the time of Calhoun to nullify legislation and acts of the federal government. Calhoun’s speeches and writings on politics and economy are even more dangerous. A true son of Thomas Jefferson, Calhoun came to see a grave danger in too close a relationship between bank and state.  Indeed, the vast corpus of Calhoun’s speeches and writings addressed issues of foreign policy and political economy, relatively little touched directly upon the issue of slavery. And still there is more: Calhoun was an original political thinker of the first rank, an entrepreneur, successful planter, and agricultural reformer. Yet he remains in the American academic’s mind as the sable genius who defended slavery.

The scholars who have contributed to this issue of Arator go far in restoring to us the Calhoun of history. Professor Marco Bassaini provides us with a fresh look at Calhoun’s political theory and its origins. One of the lesser known events of Calhoun’s life was his participation in the famous Patrick Henry/Onslow Debate of the 1820s.  Professors Lee Cheek, Sean Busick and Carey Roberts provide a penetrating analysis into the early development of Calhoun’s thought in an exchange they describe as “a battle for the soul of American republicanism.” The last word, of course, must go to Professor Clyde N. Wilson, the dean of Calhoun scholars. Professor Wilson reminds us that Calhoun occupied a central place in the great foreign policy debates of the antebellum period; to ignore this is to engage in the crude sorts of reductionism which has so often obscured our vision of Calhoun’s statesmanship.

On a final note, we have included a review by Professor Jeff Roger’s, our book review editor, on Emory Foster’s The Dogs of War, and a poem by Mr. Allen Mendenhall on hunting. This blood sport has always enjoyed a passionate following in the South, and Mr. Mendnehall contribution allows us to still claim that we are an interdisciplinary journal, for which we thank him.

Editor

Copyright @ 2011 Arator: A Journal of Southern History, Thought, and Culture. All rights reserved.