John C. Calhoun

Abstract

The reputation of John C. Calhoun is not an enviable one. Some of his biographers have dealt harshly with him, viewing him with a mixture of awe and disgust. People who know little about him associate his name with the defense of slavery, the cry for nullification, and the movement toward secession—none of them honorable causes. The beginning of political science lies in a fundamental understanding of the matter of politics—human nature. The fundamental fact of human life is not distinctively human; the law upon which a science of politics will be erected points to man's subrational part, to the part that makes him brother to the beast. If man has foresight, its effect is to enable him to fear more and hence to be more, and more intelligently, concerned with self-preservation than any lower animal could be. Calhoun allowed that, given certain preconditions, men's social feelings might grow.