presidential historian as often talked with our c-span viewers and listeners for the past 30 years. professor brinkley was educated at ohio state and georgetown and is taught at tulane, and university of new orleans in addition to that he has spent his past 17 years at rice university in houston rated author of some 20 books, focusing on subjects from secretary of state to jimmy carter and theater roosevelt gerald ford and fdr. and recently, we invite him to talk with us for a long time, six hours . to. >> on this episode, here are some of the conversations with douglas brinkley, subscriber you get your podcast. up next, baylor university history professor robert elder confederacy advocate, john

calhoun from blue bicycle books in charleston, south carolina, this is aboutut an hour. john: i am jonathan and i am with blue bicycle books and really excited about this book. came out about a year ago and reach out too the publisher and so were going to do an event on this. i am john calhoun.. only up a of blocks away from calhoun street. and we put in for this book, there was a lot of statutes governing over that street and there is no longer anything there so it's definitely be a man is been in the news. he's coming writing for over hundred 50 years . the focus of his foresail and i number of you have already purchased and thank you so much for imparted and think of her holding up bob. it's a fantastic and it's coming to us from baylor university today in the midst of a very

intense storm and record-settin winter storm. any and be good people of the postal service have gone to great lengths to find these books and we and they made their way back to austin now. so you get a kind of book. and again i will put that in the chat. all right, just so you know that there is a feature called the q&a and if you hold out there missing participants in the polls in the and things like that. if youar q&a, you can ask questions and the professor can see that. and they can answer towards the end here so thank you for using that. all right some housekeeping. some e-mails but were very

thrilled c-span book tv so thank you cspan for picking this up and it will be a fantastic addition. on book tv and i'm really excited about this one is very interesting. so let me first introduce our moderator, paula anderson, professor at clinton university. other for 25 years correct. >> twenty-one or 22 summer there. jonathan: short history of the american civil war was published in 2019. by bloomsbury. i believe you guys have a relationship from way back. an author today is robert elder a and baylor university research focuses on the american and his first book.

[inaudible]. i work on this beforehand. moderate and 1790 - 1860 the moderate south. heels a phd from emory university and 2 degrees from clinton and shelley. [inaudible]. so again thank you i so much for being here and thank you all for attending and i will leave you to it. robert: thank you jonathan for that introduction. i am . sure is colder today in texas if that is possible bob than charleston, south carolina or maybe some of the folks are for joining us from. but i give you a chance to say hello if you would like. robert: yes. everyone who was on the call, jonathan and thank you all for

being at show here. it isit a very blustery evening outside. but the internet is working. some looking forward to it and i should say before we get started that this is kind of coming full circle because it was 20 or 21 years ago and one of paul's classes and we think it was his jefferson calhoun class. then i first got hooked on history. he is the reason that i went to the historical profession. paul: [laughter] i am not sure of the blame. i credit you. there is one thing that i remember about that first class about is talking about that first class all of those years

ago to where we are right now. and that is that "calhoun" is our guide to get to know parties really are going to get to know so i can imagine coming from student to scholar what that was milike for you to write a biography and on and very difficult person to make reason and . canma you talk about thata little bit. robert: sure, it is not incredibly personable or colorful character in the sense that he's not somebody john quincy adams who has died dyer's letters overflow with information. it's a . cerebral real personality but always found him fascinating in a different way and it goes back to a call that i ran into that i used to explain what ever this book against back to quote david

potter's book, the impending crisis. and i read in graduate school. and in the book, he described "calhoun" as the most majestic champion since elton. [inaudible]. and as we know i was an english mentor and it was the poem and is the most interesting thing in the poem. i was fascinated the description of somebody and somebody being brilliant and and yet some of the arguments that he made were obviously about slavery reprehensible and constitutional theories articulate destructive. and i it was just kind of a literary dramatic literary, idea of him that drew me to him as a topic of a biography rated there

were moments in writing it when i regretted being drawn to him in that way. five or sixin years is a very lg time to spend with the personality like john calhoun but that was the initial thing that drew me to him. i'm of the course of the book and, it started to figure out parts of him that were more quick you can see through the armor especially when he would write to his children. he was incredibly warm and bubbly. overindulgent father. so that was one place where you could kind of see some human francis in his argument about slavery or some of the other things that were the darker aspects of his character.

so some of those things but yeah, is it very difficult figure and people had vastly different reactions to him during his lifetime. some people found him charming and and polite and that some people liked the english. martineau said that nobody can ever given him the idea of possessions of possession. more than him but his utter certainty was unnerving. paul: if my fading man memory doesn't tell me here, he's actually been the subject of all of that much biographical literature. charles is obviously the big three volumes and then margaret is another one that people .2.

then there's one or two others but it seems more or less open it and i would guess in this age particularly partitions for re-examination of calhoun. robert: was one of the things that when i realized that maybe this was an opportunity to write a book like this was it happened right after the shootings in charleston in 2015. and folks on call, they remember the shootings, after the shootings the people began connecting issues of racial justice in charleston it but also around the country to "calhoun". there were some activists on the monument and charleston and there were university.

and i see the historian's job is to kind of explain path to the present. and so i that happening, i thought but is out there on calhoun. i knew a couple of the biographies and when i went and looked, i realize that a biography had not been written at this time 23 years and no it's 28. so almost kind of an unimaginable. that you would go that long thwithout the major biography ad what it happened in the 23 years the entire field of southern history, slavery studies had changed so dramatically that janet think the interpretation of calhoun that i was reading in some of those older books which are great books, irving's

biography the great political of 1993. that was the last thing published in is a biography of the entire field has changed multiple fields have changed in dramatic ways since then read in ways i thought would make a new biography of calhoun come across as a much more modern figure and we might even to think about. because this is when my working theories about him is that he liked to protecting him as a kind of reactionary father of a failed political project in the confederacy because we don't want to have the connections

between him and her current situation today. we don't acknowledge that he is part of american that growers trying to size him up i think. paul: that's one thing that strikes me immediately is that you don't shy from that read and a couple of things that are connected, one is the notion ofm as a modern and this is all new, for those of you on the call, this is, bob and i kinda grow up in scholarly terms kinda broke together with a view of the south has totally been reevaluated. not just politically but socially culturally and every which way. one of those revaluations have spent to get away from the older notion of the south backward kind reactionary region and much

more integrated if you willing to what might be called transatlantic or some sort of a modernizing world. but you mentioned there that calhoun fits with that. robert: so there's a couple of different examples of how that has shifted and how i interpret calhoun so perhaps a prominent one is on the new scholarship on slavery and capitalism. calhoun, one of the things is most famous for his his argument for slavery is a positive good. he moves in south away from his older argument is slavery as a necessary evil the people like thomas jefferson had offered it to this argument in 1937 in

speech in the senate he argued it as slavery is for the positive good for white and black people socially politically, economically. that is been seen as kind of a action against that what he was doing there, just trying to make a last-ditch effort for a society in a system that was outside of the currents of the modern world. and calhoun really suited for this entire interpretation we associate with scholars. as slavery in the american south is kind of the premodern precapitalist or even tight capitalist. perhaps even because i and when i was even in grad school, and when you are in grad school, that was interpretation of the

south in this new scholarship on slavery and capitalism has completely overturned that. and still doing so. it is controversial go one of the key insights that it has is slavery is not only fundamentally tided to that global capitalist system, manchester england and lower massachusetts. obviously ran on southern cotton but also slavery itself as it was practiced relied on a lot of modern management techniques, planters used financial instruments that we associate with modern business history and accounting. hope when i re- read the argument about slavery in that way, credit comes out is that is

arguing for slavery is perfectly suited to main developments in his book, the world of the time which was capitalism and democracy. and slavery would allow this is all predicated on what was in his day, emerging scientific we would say pseudoscientific. it was accepted scientific fact at the time about black racial inferiority. predicated on that, there was a class of people cannot be grant political equality. therefore there perfectly suited to be a sort of underclass that allows equality for white people and that allows true democracy and equality for white people. and not only that, politically this is a good thing because if you are white, you are equal and

with any other white person in this society but at least you are not a slave. these are not black. and also calhoun argued that slavery solved this modern conundrum people like karl marx, began writing about the conflict between labor and capitol in a capitalist system. in calhoun's argument is that slavery unites interest of labor and capitol. that you're not going to have the conflict he saw emerging all over in this world, europe and in the american north. between these verging industrial classes in the industrial elite. the working class in the late . his argument was slavery solved those problems.

while certainly nobody today would agree with his arguments about slavery in a moral sense, his arguments of slavery actually fit into how historians are interpreting slavery now, much better than they did 20 years ago or something like that read. paul: that's me is striking a couple of levels. let me ask you, i am. [inaudible]. is not a political argument. how convicted is in that case. robert: is completely a political argument and i think that calhoun believes this because calhoun, one of the aspects of the character, to very interesting things about it, one that is you think capable of rationalizing almost

anything read and human beings in general, with the self-deception, calhoun is very good at it. paul: i taught you well. [laughter] robert: but historians in general i think fit in with that. but also, in addition to that he said what he believed. if calhoun came to a conclusion whether it's through processing and rationalizing it or whatever but many came to a conclusion, he would say and he would hold to it. one of his political allies actually was incredibly frustrating about calhoun is why some of his political allies, he never became president is because he has a habit of when he came toca a conclusion of jut putting it out there and saying

it. so i do think he believed it but also undoubtedly political argument in a sense that calhoun saw the need for new ideological, very aggressive ideological emulation that could encounter the abolitionist arguments that were growing in the 1830s. so he makes his famous argument for slavery is a positive good. beginning in 1837 and reallyfo 1836 and 1837. i will make up for the rest of his life until 1850. in leading up to that was william garrison the writer in 1831, matt turner in 1931, great mbritain abolishing slavery throughout his empire in 1833. floods of antislavery petitions

coming into congress and the senate and that is actually the location of his speeches and responding to a lot of these antislavery petitions. any sees that the old necessary evil argument is not going to cut it anymore politically. it's not going to be used by the south. and the way that he thinks he needs to be unified to counter the abolitionist threat. and when he makes the argument, even many of his fellow southerners are shocked by it previously 19 he makes the argument the senator from virginia stands up and essentially says, slaveholder, and the rest of us don't believe that. this is a radical argument that washington and madison and jefferson would not have acknowledged . and i thank you

so also clear that by 1860, calhoun's argument about slavery has mostly won the day in the south isn, that position the mas the election of abraham lincoln such a threat one of the things that makes it so nonnegotiable is slavery positive. it certainly a political beasley realizeses that power is in a democracy is cultural. it was more than a rash argument. paul: i think a couple of things there might be worth kind of elaborating on. one is that again i cannot see anyone on the call. but the notion first of all that democracy is more or less new. in the early 19 century.

i don't necessarily mean is an idea, the function. but in 1930 or 1840 for that matter, some of the slaves, a free society. so the slave society. what freedom means is the real question, not what slavery means.wh because people had been living with african-americans slavery and permanent race-based slavery for more or less 200 years that point. that is avenue think of the new thing is free society. what that means in between specifically, and politically and calhoun seems to me to be a key figure really keep figure for us toca understand that if u want to understand it but free society means that context. it does that make sense.

he kind of i am poking around it. robert: so yes, so in our day the argument is still the same argument kind of what is democracy. it was part of an how is this supposed to work. in calhoun's answer to that question, he viewed himself as a disciple of thomas jefferson. supported andrew jackson. he sees himself as a small democrat throughout his life. he comes from the country of south carolina which has a kind of a more democratic culture may be than other parts of the state. and so calhoun is part of this much larger argument. he started about what democracy is going to look like in the

modern world. in calhoun answer to that is to reject the natural rights argument that people like thomas jefferson which implies, broadly improves the democracy. usreally radical version of tha. in calhoun's argument is instead, to argue to have equality for some people, you have to have inequality for other people. but history shows, he thinks is that you always will that some people will always be pressed suppressed in a society and in society. it is a very bleak vision in a lot of ways. and his answer is simply that slavery is a more honest way of configuring that. were you just simply acknowledge

straightforwardly that yes you are slave and oppressing people. that gives you responsibility to them. and it allows equality for everybody else. i don't think that together looking back on this, that we kind of see that is a shocking argument tenant is. but we do not see how close perhaps, not just the united states but a lot of other societies saw themselves as democratically great entered great britain came to realize that portion of democracy in terms of their empires need so it is a version or an argument about the shape and composition of democracy about how you achieve equality. paul: i get that . leads me to this question.

it is a very interesting title of the book. very interesting, i may take on this tone here. it's very interesting indeed. why american, a loaded word bob. robert: well, you can thank my editor connor guy, he thought that my original title sounded a little too boring. but thisgi came up from the phre in my book where i called the calhoun it an american arctic party to that's i like it is a title. first of all, is that the idea that even in the early days, some of people solve calhoun as a political figure.

so in some ways, even though i am arguing that we need to put it in the center of american history also want to give knowledge that there were people saw him as kind of political. so constitutional theories, like altercation . which was seen by a lot of his contemporaries as a dangerous. that would lead to a scene and also for his ratio or theories about slavery. those two things were seen as kind of beyond the mainstream and the time. although, one of my arguments im that calhoun is simply ahead of his time. by 1860, his ideas are the mainstream. but the other reason that i like the title is that i think that it gets at something that i had

mentioned earlier which is calhoun's roll, for his rhetorical roll in modern american identity. which is as when you take his name off of the buildings and it would take down statutes because we don't want to identify ourselves with him in his abuse today. i think that's appropriate. and is good but i think there is also things happening that if you study religion at all, my first book was about religion, as this cultural function. we've vanished them to kind of absolving ourselves of our anxieties. so i was curious about how calhoun functions that regard with as modern americans. but by associating him and his sense of slavery by associating

him with the confederacy which didn't happen until ten years after he died. we had a feel him off from this narrative of american progress and freedom and wait don't want to acknowledge that parts of our history sometimes i think. the title is kind of an acknowledgment that he does function this way in a kind of gentle product first to be careful as we exercise him from the mainstream of american identities we cannot do that with her history. we can't without doing real damage to it. paul: can you elaborate on that . one of the things that strikes

me as well is that you don't shy away from the need to understand calhoun it in a modern context. sometimes historians really honestly have a problem with that. like this they were restarting it. but you make somewhat of the opposite assertion here. robert: so i think that in one sense, the book is arguing that calhoun is still relevant today. not in the sense of trying to rehabilitate him more apologize for him in the sense of that word. but since i think it's just objectively true that we run the risk of distorting our view of our world if we kind of dismiss him totally enemy net in a couple of different ways.

obviously this country still struggling with the heritage of racial oppression that calhoun represents. so that is obvious thing and then the protests and events that led me to write the book show that we still need to be studying and being conscious of that. beyond that, i thinks it's objectively true the calhoun's constitutional theory in his thinking are still incredibly fresh and relevant today. so in the epilogue to talk about kind of a revival of his political theory that begins in the 1970s the e field called associational democracy. and one of the features of this

field which studies how to maintain democracy and deeply divided societies, the pickup one of the scholars and founders, picks up calhoun's idea of a mutual veto. so at the end of the slide, his final speech he says, the only way to maintain the union, peace between the north and the south is to institute dual executives essentially. he proposes a constitutional amendment. it would institute dual executive north and south that would give both sides veto power over one another. that idea gets picked up by this associational democracy and is proposed in south africa as a means to end and gets proposed by both anti- and part groups in south africa and they don't end

up adopting that system but northern ireland it does in the adopting it directly from this political scientist who is in it directly influenced by calhoun's theory and northern ireland in a good friday agreement institutes and directly which is basically a dual president and the institute calhoun's idea of the concurrent majority, the idea that in a deeply divided society, you have to decide things like consensus. and in that they institute an arrangement where both the unionist and the nationalist groups have to separately approvest any major legislation. you don't have to look very far the last few years in the united states find that we are still figuring out what the exact relationship is between the

states and the federal government and what the or how to protect minority rights in the system while still maintaining a majoritarian system and how far can you go in protectingwh the rights of a minority in the way that calhoun argues that we should and in his tcase, there was slaveholders f course. how far can you go before you cripple the system. and so we are still asking some of these questions that modern scholars see calhoun as being incredibly relevant to so in essence i don't see what i'm doing is arguing that he is relevant today so much as just laying out of the book, here are the examples including many americans think of secessionists attend deal. we hope that we've solved that.

but the study and the argument about secessionists and incredibly wild field today because all of the world, this is one of the features of the modern nation state is that they, domine get made and how that happens in the rules governing. our incredibly important debate. they were the first figures kind of started work that out. a lot of things going on there very much food for thought. i remember long time ago sitting in the class and the professor know the colorado itself. that if not, the constitutional. [inaudible]. he meant it as an observation. anna strikes me and i don't want

to put words in your mouth but your sympathetic in the notion of as an observation. that is probably true. robert: yes, i think this gets back to him as a figure that he makes these incredibly reprehensible arguments about slavery. and yet at the same time, he's trying to defend it and slaveholders within the american constitutional system and the unions. but because he is doing it within the union and within the constitutional system that exists, he works out these constitutional arguments that people are still studying. and he has the sense unlike a lot of other people and even of his generation, calhoun has the sense that the constitution is still a work in progress.

so this should be amended constantly. his actual mechanism of nullification was a way to force a constant reevaluation and amendment of the constitution in the light of experience. and in essence he's ironically, the conservative sure buddies a living constitutionalist, there is no doubt that he believes that he can and should be amended as situations shift. one of the things that i talk about in the epilogue is the english philosopher, john stuart who was completely opposed to slavery. he did not approve of anything

about calhoun in terms of what he was defending. and yet in 1850, after his death, and i think he's obviously talking about calhoun's to published after his death. and he calls him the best speculative thinker that america has produced since founding generations. that was not a compliment. it comment on his moral character. it was simply a comment on his intellectual stature. paul: celeste saying that i think will kind of turn to questions and i do think this is important. for me to make sure that stress, bob, is a true gifted person.

so you're confronting as you might've mentioned that thisyo began his life in his under scholar life comes from a family leaders, his motherme might've read 16 libraries by now as far as i know. she's quite the well-written person. how do you adapt the demands of marriage of accessibility and a certain style to someone who can be so distant from that predict his own style, you know the jokes i let you tell the jokes about calhoun. bud one of the demands as a craft or narrative to approach someone who seems that not just in a human sense but also from a

narrative sense. robert: yeah, well the famous joke that you're probably thinking of is when calhoun set it down to write a love poem, he began it with whereas. there's lots of things like tha. it's of reflective reality. these letters, they went from a congressman who shared a room with him for a while by the end of it said that i can't take iti anymore read. [laughter] this guy, he's too serious. he just 23 brio into intense for me did so i think there's a couple of things. one of them is defining the moment where there is some drama or human connection. in the main reason i did that in

the book was the relationship with his daughter anna. i would argue is most important relationship of his life and probably of hers as well. and that relationship does humanize him in a way although this is a challenge because in humanizing a character like calhoun, you run the risk of humanizing them so much that then you sympathize with some of the arguments these making outside of that relationship. so that is a challenge and in the other moments, certainly other moments like that might strategy in that regard i hope this works in the book the people just have read it and see. as i eventually thought that i would try to get the human aspect and calhoun is much as i can but what is really compelling about calhoun's

arguments, his ideas and how do i dramatize those. i will explain, i tried to view this assorted intellectual biography and white. unnecessarily as influences, try to do that but he is famously tightlipped about his influences. met more of how does arguments function in their original context predict and how i dramatize for the reader a compelling or repelling some of these arguments were to people in their original context. so in thate sense, a lot of wht i tried to do was simply to layout what everybody acknowledges about calhoun's his friends and even his enemies which is that he constructed

these arguments that were incredibly well constructed and well thought out. and even if you hated him he disagreed with him and that they were morally destructive or something, the they were ingenious arguments. and this is why people compared themes so often to militant. so now for me was the drama that i ended up try to do the book because the person, he is hard to get out but as intellectual contribution was the thing that most people know him for anyway. paul: i'm going to dip into the q&a here. we got some really good ones. so i will kind of go through these we have about 15 minutes or so. the first one is wants to know

and this is an interesting question because i have a thing for the 1930s american-style. these things are very dynamic interesting times. it was to know what dead in the 1930s aquarians from calhoun would be able or with a able make selective use of o hi legacy. robert: that is a great great question. thank you for joining this call. part of the things that i talked about in the blog is i could've written a whole essay about this is how calhoun is, there's an editor summer saying i'm so glad he didn't. but he selectively adopted by various strands of american conservatism in the 20th century.

one was that he was asking that of course is a group of southerners who writeer this bok in 1930s i think it is 1931 party that will take my stand, which is a statement of a kind of a agrarian resistance against the industrial north. and they think that capitalism industrialism is kind of taking over the south. and they are going to resist that and protect with a view is the southern way of life.so in the agrarian saw this in calhoun beasley saw him as the 1930s, they saw him as an offender and his goes back to that old interpretation of slavery in the south. they saw him as the defender of an agrarian society against an aggressive capitalist in the north. and in my read on that is that

they are the parts of calhoun that they certainly key into but i think that in this context, because calhoun viewed himself as allies with progress. in the 19 since real americans that progress was the main force in the world. calhoun did not see himself as a resisting progress. his entire argument was slavery in the south fit into the demands of progress. the modern world is only after the defeat of the confederacy in the end of slavery the people then began reading back into calhoun's, this kind of reactionary defense of a feudal agrarian system and i don't thank you so quite accurate.

paul: those of you who are listening, if you've never read the declarations essentially as many declarations of independence as many of these wrote in 1860, in 1951 when they left the union and as bob said, they left the union on the election of abraham and lincoln. it wasn't any or it was the immediate approximate cause, jefferson davis was a president before abraham lincoln was not so quickly the profession came about. but if you read those, they are all very clear how they stand on the side of progress. so i'm going to pick up with mre digs deeper. this is positioned just get continuation of the old them in a power do with you can and the

poor stuff aboutca what the most another was the democracy is just more inside of themselves and minute power seeking power. but the real for continuous slaves to make them powerful. [inaudible]. robert: so in one sense, yes, and calhoun, he's getting this from history. his position is that exploitation is a common fact in every society. he stands up and he says, let's not deny this. he said let's not deny that every society, the rich pray upon the poor and export them. and it has been this way for all of human history. that is a very bleak pronouncing

pronouncements. calhoun in that sense is kind of a realpolitik or a philosopher of just negative power. in the human relationships that says in his argument is that slavery is simply more on this configuration of that exploitation. and he says his accusations and this is why historians are fascinated by calhoun. he says this out printed that you northern capitalist don't do the same thing. but you simply can feel it with your wage labor and your banks and financial mailings. you can feel the exploitation in your attacking us for the exploitation. and even if you believe that there is a real and important between slavery and free labor,

that argument is a striking argument. i think that calhoun is simply adopting an older site and applying it in the modern world is fundamentally rejecting when thomas jefferson argued in the declaration of independence that all men are created equal and all the political and social implications that come out of sothat. paul: one or two other political questions but i want to make sure that we had time to address a question the common guys asking. you touch wha on this he has key talk a little bit about what it was like to finishing the book is that calhoun statute of charleston was being taken down. robert: good question conor. and conard connor is my editor so he knows a little bit about this question. he has the inside track.no

as connor knows i was writing the epilogue of this book when i think i finished the version of the epilogue of the week before this past summer when they took the statute down in charleston. and rewrite the epilogue. in fact i rewrote the process and the epilogue slightly. to count for this because is the clearest example possible i think about people rightly connecting calhoun in his legacy. to the issues of racial justice that surrounded that statute coming down. and also a moment and in some d ways my entire book was aimed at which was now taking the statute down, or taking the names off,

now is historians and the citizens, we have to do the work of actually knowing the history. and i don't think taking the statute down as a raising history or anything likeow that. now we still have to do the work actually knowing the history. but it is . anxiety producing to not snow but that statute is going to be up or down as i was getting ready to turn the epilogue in two connor. paul: so that is history being rewritten is even have as it was being written. robert: it was. one of the cause, and process was that is kind of speech which i thought was right when they took itn down the statute and e said that it's a given that we have to struggle with calhoun's

towering legacy but we don't have to do it in the shadow of the statute. in some ways i think that's what the book is. it is my effort as a historian to say okay, let's take all of this down and the names off of the buildings but we still have a struggle in history and thele legacy. paul: i'm just going to get this one out of the way now because there must be some knowing to the both of us, i'm know what he is out there doing tonight .er wants to know there's some serious questions and it might be serious for lena but did you ever find out what calhoun thought about. [inaudible]. the clearly human dimension of this whole book. robert: this is an important issue and from calhoun's brady

department have him. a few weeks before he dies. where calhoun looks like he is dying which he is. at tuberculosis one was prominent things about this picture that much you say you can see it. i think this goes into a larger issue about the relationship of calhoun in place which is i think that they had a very opaque marriage. she did not write him a lot. he complained about that actually frequently. and for instance, when she got word of his final illness in washington dc, she didn't travel to see him. at the sameng time, and many children and calhoun to one of his sons, when they were having a conflict that involved him,

calhoun called her the only cross of his life which i think that says a lot about their relationship right there. s so that's all i know. she never mentioned anything else. paul: it never came up. ... ...

>> he can be an obstructionist when he wants to be but the key is calhoun believes the world would work better if everybody agreed with him. >> don't we all. >> the key to understanding nullification, seen by a lot of people as obstruction and paralyzing the government which it could have and did but if you read how he thought it should work and if everybody agreed with this it could have worked and that is how calhoun viewed everything, he had a theory how it worked, it was all worked out and no one else had worked out the constitutional mechanisms for how states nullification would work, calhoun did that, just

that nobody would follow his system. he always -- he was not a compromiser like henry clay but his obstruction is usually not standing at history yelling stop, it was here's my version of what should happen and we should all follow that. >> time for one more question and it seems to me particularly appropriate at least from my perspective, someone who stepped out of the academic realm, comes from jennifer howard, reminds me of many conversations and it is important to ask, what wisdom, would you share with budding

authors as they work on learning history, quite a substantial book about the work of learning history in a world ripe with media distraction and demand for the entertainment factor. >> that is a great question. >> passing the torch to you. >> 5 or 6 years to write and for historian to get a book out, and - compared to that what i would say is the work that had to go before i could write this book one of the reasons i could write this book is the papers of john c calhoun

have been compiled and published over 50 some years by the university of south carolina press, multiple different editors died while they were compiling these things so that we would have this really complete incredible record of the past and our society today is not geared to appreciate that kind of work but it is absolutely essential to preserving and understanding our world, i took 5 or 6 years to write a book, these editors and all the people associated with the project spent decades on network and i don't know what to say, don't have any advice in terms of how we encourage and instill in people the willingness to put in

network and to read it but i think it is absolutely essential because otherwise we are stuck in the tyranny of the present to rough off of calhoun. >> i want to thank everyone for coming tonight, listening to our conversation. i will let jonathan come back on and say a few words but conversation is hosted by

the commonwealth club in san francisco. >> hello, everyone, i am your moderator today as the club continues to host virtual events. we are grateful for the continued support of our members and our donors and we hope that you also consider making a donation online and text it to (415)329-4231 we also