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Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of many award-winning books, including Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks and more.

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Our key curriculum resource

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Chock full of helpful resources to help you get ready for tough conversations.

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Such a GREAT presentation on allowing students to interact with materials and show mastery in a way that is culturally relevant.

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Sharing Stories: Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning with Andratesha Fritzgerald

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Resources for the D. T. Howard Middle School school-wide reading of Stamped

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A wealth of information from the National Council of Teachers of English

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What an amazing time we had with Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, hearing from them about their latest novel Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You! The discussion was timely and well received, so thank you for your participation, and a special thank-you to our moderator Sonja Cherry-Paul.

Below we've compiled a list of resources to help you continue the conversation within your communities.

IBRAM X. KENDI www.ibramxkendi.com
Facebook - /ibramxkendi
Twitter -@DrIbram
Instagram -@IbramXK

NEW BOOK COMING JUNE 16!

With bold art and thoughtful yet playful text, Antiracist Baby introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism. Learn more.

DR. SONJA CHERRY-PAUL
Educator's Guide

"This guide suggests a month-long approach to reading and discussing Stamped with middle-school and high-school readers in English, English language arts, social studies, history, and humanities classrooms." Access it here.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Roads

How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Adapted for Young Readers) by Trevor Noah

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

March by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

A Black Women's History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali N. Gross

Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights by Mikki Kendall

All American Boys by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Black Appetite. White Food.: Issues of Race, Voice, and Justice Within and Beyond the Classroom by Jamila Lyiscott

Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood . . . and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Christopher Emdin

The Gold Cadillac by Mildred D. Taylor

The Guide for White Women Who Teach Black Boys by Eddie Moore, Jr., Ali Michael, and Marguerite W. Penick-Parks

Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson

The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter

How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Letting Go of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students by Carlin Borsheim-Black and Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

Miles Morales: Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds

"Multiplication Is for White People": Raising Expectations for Other People's Children by Lisa Delpit

Murder on the Red River by Marcie Rendon

Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom by Matthew R. Kay

Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson

Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist by Eli Saslow

So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Stamped: For our Classrooms, Homes, and Communities from Hachette Book Group

Sulwe by Lupita Nyong'o

Surviving Becky(s): Pedagogies for Deconstructing Whiteness and Gender by Cheryl E. Matias

The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein

Teaching Race: How to Help Students Unmask and Challenge Racism by Steven Brookfield

There, There by Tommy Orange

This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work by Tiffany Jewell

What If All the Kids Are White? Anti-bias Multicultural Education with Young Children and Families by Julie Olsen Edwards, Louise Derman-Sparks, and Patricia Ramsey

White Rage by Carol Anderson

*These texts were shared by participants within the chat during the live discussion.

What Antiracist Language Teachers Do

Antiracist language teachers consciously work to create safe learning environments for all students. This poster provides a description of what these teachers do.

Qualities of Antiracist ELA Curricula

Antiracist ELA curricula must celebrate and sustain diversity as part of educational justice in a changing world. This poster describes the qualities of such curricula.

Take a look at what we discussed with Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi.

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Stamped: Resources for your Classroom - NCTE

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IBRAM X. KENDI www.ibramxkendi.com Facebook - /ibramxkendi Twitter -@DrIbram Instagram -@IbramXK NEW BOOK COMING JUNE 16! With bold art and thoughtful yet playful text, Antiracist Baby introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism. Learn more.

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This is by no means a complete guide to introducing the topics covered by Stamped, but it is intended to provide you with ideas for supplemental materials to make connections to key characters with whom students may not be familiar and to extend learning.

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National Ambassador for Young People's Literature:  Write. Right. Rite.

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National Ambassador for Young People's Literature:  Write. Right. Rite.

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Sign up for the Grab the MIC newsletter: https://guides.loc.gov/jason-reynolds/grab-the-mic/newsletter

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Welcome to the "Write. Right. Rite.," a "GRAB THE MIC: Tell Your Story" video series! The "Write. Right. Rite." is meant to be an entertaining and inventive way to engage with the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Jason Reynolds.

According to Reynolds, the "Write. Right. Rite." is all about learning the ritual of "authentic"-not to be confused with "correct" or "exact"-expression. Throughout the series, Reynolds shares his passion for storytelling while discussing topics like creativity, connection, and imagination. At the end of each video, Reynolds shares a prompt that encourages young people to work toward a specific idea. The activities are fun-filled and some are more challenging than others, but Reynolds always makes sure to include brainstorming "get-you-going" questions.

So, what do you say? Are you ready to dive into, try on, and work through all the "Write. Right. Rite." episodes?

Go for it!

Watch the Entire "Write. Right. Rite." Series:

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Research Guides: Jason Reynolds, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature: "Write. Right. Rite." Series

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On January 13, 2020, Jason Reynolds was announced as the seventh National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Learn more about Jason and his activities as National Ambassador through this guide.

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A graphic organizer you can use

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Jason Reynolds Wants Young People’s Stories to be Heard

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Jason Reynolds Wants Young People’s Stories to be Heard

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Award-winning YA Author Jason Reynolds wants kids and teens to have the language they need for constructive conversations about race.

In his new book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Reynolds remixes Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning into an accessible primer on antiblack racism in America that he calls "not a history book."

Reynolds was recently named the seventh National Ambassador for Young People's Literature by the Library of Congress.

In his two-year appointment, Reynolds plans to travel the country and interview children about their lives and hometowns to create what he describes as "proof of life on record."
Produced by Victoria Chamberlin

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Jason Reynolds Wants Young People's Stories To be Heard - The Kojo Nnamdi Show

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Award-winning YA Author Jason Reynolds wants kids and teens to have the language they need for constructive conversations about race. In his new book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Reynolds remixes Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning into an accessible primer on antiblack racism in America that he calls "not a history book."

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More helpful materials on teaching Stamped

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All February Picks For Teen Readers
Using humor and a conversational style, author Jason Reynolds deftly reworks Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, exposing young adult readers to the history of America's racist past that textbooks leave out.

Get This Book

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"Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You" - NEA Read Across America Official Selection

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All February Picks For Teen Readers Using humor and a conversational style, author Jason Reynolds deftly reworks Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, exposing young adult readers to the history of America's racist past that textbooks leave out. Get This Book

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Jason Reynolds is the Bard of Black YA Fiction

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Jason Reynolds is the Bard of Black YA Fiction

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Jason Reynolds arrives for breakfast at the Busboys and Poets on V Street one winter Saturday, he looks, atypically for a writer, like a model-black Saint Laurent coat and boots, black Rag & Bone jeans, silver 1960 Rolex GMT-Master. (Luxury watches are his new collecting obsession.) On his fourth finger, though, is possibly the cheapest and also most constant item in his wardrobe: a wide silver-colored ring.

Reynolds, now 36, bought it for $8 when he was 15 or 16, at a church flea market in Prince George's County. He says that after he left the stand, the seller told police he'd stolen it. Officers questioned him, a confusing and terrifying turn of events. But one of them recognized him from another part of town-the U Street poetry scene-and said he was no thief. Reynolds doesn't remember being angry, only hugely grateful: "Like, Man, that was close.

"I wear it every day as a reminder that true wealth, by definition, is a good name. And my name at that moment had gotten me out of trouble."

Today Reynolds's name is much more widely known, for popularizing stories not so unlike that one: of what it can be like to grow up young and black in America. His young-adult novels-he has published 13 in the last six years-tackle fraught subjects including violence and deeply troubled families, and they typically star a male teenager in a tough city neighborhood, almost always underestimated or misunderstood.

Until recently, these were perspectives rarely seen in YA fiction. While lucrative, the genre was a historically homogeneous corner of the book world. But Reynolds, who grew up in Oxon Hill, has helped expand the pantheon in spectacular fashion. At 2.5 million copies sold, his books are monster bestsellers. He's a two-time National Book Award finalist and a Newbery honoree who headlines dozens of appearances before teenage audiences every year. He wrote Marvel Comics' first novelization of a non-white Spider-Man-the biracial Miles Morales-which earned him a cameo mention in the most recent Spider-Man movie. His novel Long Way Down, about a young man considering retaliation for his brother's murder, has been optioned by Universal and a producer of The Social Network. And in January, the Library of Congress named him the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, an honor that will send him on a cross-country tour.

At this rate, Reynolds could likely carry on easily in YA. With a seven-figure book deal, he has already netted accoutrements of a life he never imagined for himself-collections of Langston Hughes letters, programs from James Baldwin plays, a signed first edition of Toni Morrison's Beloved. Instead, he's making something of a professional swerve.

This month, the publisher Little, Brown released his first attempt at nonfiction, and as you might expect, it's neither a reductive nor comfortable tale. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You is an adaptation of the trenchant, highly influential work by American University scholar Ibram X. Kendi. Reynolds's job: to make this history readable for the 11-to-17-year-old set.

How do you distill a 592-page, 400-year account of our country's most painful legacy into something a kid might actually want to read? With a lot of false starts, it turns out. As Reynolds says, "It was the hardest thing I've ever done."

To understand how Reynolds became a literary star whom kids flock to see, maybe all you need to know is that when he was their age, he wasn't a reader. He says he didn't finish a book until he was 17-Richard Wright's Black Boy -because the stuff he was exposed to didn't reflect life in his largely African American patch of Washington.

Not that he didn't love language. As a teenager, he started frequenting U Street spoken-word events designed for adults. Friends would come to see him at the now-defunct Bar Nun. "They'd be like, 'Bro, we don't know what you talkin' about, but we here,' " Reynolds says. " 'We are in the building, and we are going to support you.' "

At the University of Maryland, Reynolds self-published two poetry collections. He and a friend, Jason Douglas Griffin, also spent $30,000 printing a coffee-table book, with Reynolds running up debts on the kind of high-limit credit card no longer available to students. An agent was impressed by their nerve, and from there the two Jasons collaborated on a YA book, heavy on visuals, about a white artist and a black writer trying to make it in New York. It tanked. Reynolds wrote and wrote but couldn't sell anything.

Around 2009, when he was 25, he picked up Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, wanting to see why everyone in publishing made such a fuss about it. He couldn't relate to a girl getting her period, but he was struck by the honesty of Judy Blume's story. Next up was The Young Landlords by Walter Dean Myers, an early YA giant. The 1979 novel follows young black teens who take over a rundown building in Harlem-and speak like Reynolds's childhood friends. It felt like permission to tell stories he knew.

He began laboring over a gritty novel about an African American teen with a price on his head after a small misunderstanding: When I Was the Greatest, his breakout hit. Partly autobiographical, the story was inspired by Reynolds's older brother, a bruiser stabbed in the face at age 16 who came out of surgery to discover an unexpected bond with his younger, mellower sibling. It showed off what would become other hallmarks of a Reynolds novel: layered subplots yoked to supporting characters with rich backstories, dashes of humor (wherein the word "fartleks"-running jargon-becomes "fart licks"), and symbolism you don't discover until a second or third reading. In his most recent novel, there's a friendship handshake that, if you were to see it, would be sign language for "I can hear you even when the world can't."

Reynolds frequently examines friendships and their sustaining power in the lives of teenagers with broken families. (His parents split up when he was ten, and he was raised mostly by his mother, who worked in insurance. He's still so close to his childhood friends that they now have keys to his house.) "Track," a multi-book series, looks at four kids on an elite track team who become unlikely pals. They hail from varied backgrounds-one is albino, another's neighborhood is "not to be played with," a third is motherless-but all share the experience of running to escape something painful.

The point is to render life in its messy, three-dimensional particulars-and bust stereotypes. "There are so many basketball books. So many good ones. You know, because black kids just wanna play basketball," Reynolds says, tongue in cheek. "I'm not going to ever pretend that part of my mission isn't to push back against the stereotype about what black children are. I mean, we do everything like everybody else, we're children like everybody else's children, but we don't often get the opportunity to be that in media."

In 2017, Reynolds released Long Way Down, perhaps his knottiest plot and most daring stylistic treatment yet. Many of his novels read like a performance on the page, in the rhythmic prose of rap. ("The pancakes I had this morning had turned back into batter. A bitter batter, pitter-pattering up my throat," says one narrator who's nervous.) But Reynolds chose to tell this one entirely in verse.

The book takes place over 60 seconds, as a young man descends an elevator, meeting ghosts from his past who help him weigh whether to seek revenge for his brother's death. It's a scene from the author's own life: At age 19, Reynolds got a late-night call saying a friend had been brutally murdered. "There was a moment when I realized that I could completely avenge his death-that I had that kind of anger and that kind of pain," he says. He and some buddies met up to debate whether to retaliate. The novel isn't supposed to vilify youth facing a similar calculation, "or even to make any grandiose statement about gun violence," Reynolds explains. "It's more to humanize those young people who are going through that, who have nowhere else to put that pain."

The story spent 77 weeks on the New York Times YA bestseller list. "I was destroyed," wrote a critic in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Aja Clark, the manager of reading programs for DC libraries, used to teach high-school English and run a book club for African American youth. "I wish we had had his books then," says Clark, who often resorted to helping students analyze rap lyrics. "These boys never had the words to say how it felt walking down the street or experiencing anger and pain. With Mr. Reynolds, it's 'We're seen, we're heard, people can empathize with us.'"

Last year, people checked his books out of the DC libraries 2,028 times-basically, six times a day.

Kendi, the American University prof who founded its Antiracist Research & Policy Center, wasn't that into books in high school, either. So when he had the idea to adapt Stamped From the Beginning for a younger audience, he knew he'd need a partner. He had liked Reynolds's "Track" series; the bonds between such different characters "made me think about what's possible for this country," he says. After meeting Reynolds at the 2016 National Book Awards dinner, he felt the author was plenty intellectual for the job. "He's deeply reflective about his past and about what he's trying to do and why."

Reynolds fended off Kendi's requests. He wasn't much of a scholar, he'd say: "I don't know how to study, you know?"

Many months in, he finally relented-in hopes that a reimagined Stamped might change the conversation. With novels, Reynolds says, "you hope to make somebody laugh or cry-that's pretty much the end of it. Ibram's like, 'We have the opportunity to make a thing that could be a sea change. It's bigger than either one of us.' "

But how? Kendi gave Reynolds an outline of what he thought were the most essential stories, but Reynolds struggled. He filed two drafts that were just slightly edited versions of Kendi's tome-each an unwieldy 300 pages.

His editor reminded him that they wanted a Jason Reynolds book. Were they sure? "I'm gonna have to ruin what he's done," Reynolds remembers replying-ruin "one of the most important race documents of this century." Still, the directive freed him. Out came a chatty, irreverent story, one that's supposed to read, he says, like it's "from your barber who happens to be a history buff."

The book has the same hyper-personal opening as his novels, a character speaking directly to you-"Before we begin, let's get something straight"-who promises that the story won't feel like a list of dates with an occasional war thrown in. While Kendi's version begins with the Great Hurricane of 1635, Reynolds gets straight to race: "Uh-oh. The R-word. Which for many of us still feels rated R. Or can be matched only with another R word-run. But don't." Instead of a winding account of Gomes Eanes de Zurara, the 15th-century biographer who built up Portuguese Prince Henry's evangelical justification for enslaving Africans, Reynolds just dubs him "World's First Racist"-as if it's a senior-class superlative in one very messed-up yearbook-and explains that he's like a cheerleader who "made sure Prince Henry was looked at as a brilliant quarterback making ingenious plays, and that every touchdown was the mark of a superior player."

With its nicknames (Thomas "Contradiction" Jefferson), wordplay ("When the going gets tough, the tough get racist"), and chatty asides (cockamamie is the "best word ever"), the book shares DNA with Reynolds's fiction. The whole manuscript actually sounds as if it could be performed, down to written-in pauses-"P A U S E"-after particularly abhorrent historical ideas. "I'm probably the most proud of it," Reynolds says.

Yet for all the sweat of completing the book, he won't cop to worrying about its reception. "It's coming out of something that already exists, you know? All I was is the translator of the information."

Reynolds sometimes writes at Maketto, the high-concept coffee shop/clothing boutique/restaurant on Northeast DC's H Street, other times at home in nearby Kingman Park. He bought a condo there in 2018, a couple years after moving back from New York to be closer to his mother. He chose the neighborhood where she'd grown up, where his grandmother and cousins had resided for years, and he's been living that head-jerking experience common to Washington natives who leave for a while and return to find a whiter, glossier, bougier city. You can probably see where this story's going: It's all new material.

Reynolds has been working on a novel about a twentysomething who's obsessed with writing eulogies. The setting is a changing city-DC-that's grappling with the relationship between preservation and erasure. But as much as it sounds like a paean to his hometown, the project also scans like a new chance to prove himself: It's his first novel for adults.

"I don't know when this started, I don't know who said something the first time, but there's so much disparaging stuff that's said about people who write for kids," he tells me. "I choose to write for children because I love children, but my abilities are my abilities." He wants the freedom to write for any audience he pleases-and due respect. "You read To Kill a Mockingbird in eighth grade. You read Of Mice and Men in the seventh grade. You read Lord of the Flies in eighth grade. You call those classics. You think they're brilliant pieces of capital-L literature, but what I make is less than?"

His agent, naturally, is betting otherwise. She recently sent an archivist to town to start cataloguing Reynolds's papers-drafts with his editor's handwritten notations (some 20 takes of Long Way Down alone), pieces of Fabriano paper with possible book titles. It's a weird exercise for someone so young to sell rights to his literary estate-authors often do so late in life-but people have been asking, he says. No decisions have been made yet, but Reynolds is pretty sure his papers won't go to the highest bidder.

"I don't need the money," he says. "It's all about who I'm in conversation with. It's like, where's Baldwin? Where's Judy Blume?"

This article appears in the March 2020 issue of Washingtonian.

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Jason Reynolds, the Bard of Black YA Fiction, Just Released a Book on an Impossibly Challenging Topic

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Jason Reynolds arrives for breakfast at the Busboys and Poets on V Street one winter Saturday, he looks, atypically for a writer, like a model-black Saint Laurent coat and boots, black Rag & Bone jeans, silver 1960 Rolex GMT-Master. (Luxury watches are his new collecting obsession.)

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In addition to the resources on the DEI Guide, check out Britannica School in the Galileo folder in MyBackpack. We have access to tons of primary sources through this resource.

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Welcome to Britannica School, a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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Booklist interview with Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

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Booklist interview with Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

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Shelf Care Interview: Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds on Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Booklist's Shelf Care Podcast

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Welcome to the Shelf Care Interview, an occasional conversation series where Booklist talks to book people.

This Shelf Care Interview is sponsored by Little Brown Books for Young Readers.

In this episode of the Shelf Care Interview, Maggie Reagan talks to Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds.

Ibram X. Kendi, a professor of history and international relations, is one of America's foremost historians and leading anti-racist voices. He is the New York Times' bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning, and the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C.

Jason Reynolds is the New York Times bestselling multi-award winning author of many books for children, including the Track series and the Printz, Newbery, and Coretta Scott King Honor book, Long Way Down. Recently he was appointed the new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Jason's remix for young readers of Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped From the Beginning, comes out in March from Little Brown.

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John C. Calhoun assumed office as the nation's seventh vice president on March 4, 1825, during a period of extraordinary political ferment. The demise of the Federalist Party after the War of 1812 had not, as former president James Monroe had hoped, ushered in an "Era of Good Feelings," free from party divisions. Contrary to Monroe's expectations, the partisan strife of earlier years had not abated during his two terms as president but had, instead, infected the Republican Party, which had declined into a broad-based but rapidly disintegrating coalition of disparate elements. Five individuals, all of them Republicans, had entered the 1824 presidential contest, one of the most controversial and bitterly contested races in the nation's history. The "National Republicans," a group that included Calhoun, House Speaker Henry Clay, and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, supported an expansive, nationalist agenda; the "Radicals," allies of Treasury Secretary William Crawford, were strict constructionists and advocates of limited government. Other Republicans had rallied to the standard of Andrew Jackson, a former Tennessee senator and the military hero whose stunning victory at the Battle of New Orleans had salvaged the nation's pride during the War of 1812.

In this momentous contest, John Quincy Adams had emerged the winner, but his victory came at great cost to his administration and to the nation. The election was decided in the House of Representatives, where Clay had used his influence as leader of the western bloc and as Speaker to secure Adams's election. Adams, in turn, had appointed Clay secretary of state, a nomination that stunned Jackson supporters, strict constructionists, and particularly Vice President Calhoun. The "corrupt bargain" deeply offended Calhoun's strict sense of honor and propriety, pushing him toward the opposition camp, a fragmented assortment of Radicals, southern agriculturalists, and men of conscience who shared the vice president's conviction that Adams and Clay had subverted the popular will. These diverse elements, which were frequently at odds with one another, would eventually coalesce to form the Democratic Party. But the nation would first pass through a chaotic and turbulent period of political realignment, which Calhoun described for his friend and mentor, Monroe, in the summer of 1826:

Never in any country...was there in so short a period, so complete an anarchy of political relations. Every prominent publick man feels, that he has been thrown into a new attitude, and has to reexamine his position, and reapply principles to the situation, into which he was so unexpectedly and suddenly thrown, as if by some might[y] political revolution...Was he of the old Republican party? He finds his prominent political companions, who claim and take the lead, to be the very men, against who, he had been violently arrayed till the close of the late war; and sees in the opposite rank, as enemies, those with whom he was proud to rank....
Taking it altogether, a new and dangerous state of things has suddenly occurred, of which no one can see the result. It is, in my opinion, more critical and perilous, than any I have ever seen.

Congress was changing, as well. The Senate, as Senator Robert C. Byrd has noted in his authoritative history, was "beginning to challenge the House as the principal legislative forum of the nation." Before the 1820s, the press and public had paid relatively little attention to the Senate's deliberations, being drawn instead to the livelier and more entertaining theater in the House of Representatives. By 1825 the House had become too large to permit the lengthy speeches and extended debates that had drawn observers to its galleries, while in the Senate, growth had brought increased influence. "At the formation of the Government," Calhoun observed in his inaugural remarks, "the members of the Senate were, probably, too small to attract the full confidence of the people, and thereby give to it that weight in the system which the Constitution intended. This defect has, however, been happily removed by an extraordinary growth"-11new states, and 22 senators, in a 36-year period. The 1819-1820 debate over the extension of slavery into the Missouri territory signaled that an era of increasingly virulent sectional discord had arrived. The Senate, with its equality of representation among states and rules permitting extended debate, would become the forum where sectional concerns were aired, debated, and reconciled during the next turbulent quarter century.

Calhoun, who presided over the Senate at the dawning of this era, had reached the height of his career. Given his meteoric rise to national prominence as a talented young congressman during the War of 1812 and his solid record of accomplishment as secretary of war during Monroe's administration, he had every reason to assume that he would one day become president.

Calhoun's Early Life and Career

John Caldwell Calhoun was born on March 18, 1782, near Long Canes Creek, an area later known as the Abbeville District, located in present-day McCormick County, South Carolina. His parents, Patrick and Martha Caldwell Calhoun, were of Scotch-Irish ancestry. The Calhouns had immigrated to Pennsylvania during the 1730s and moved steadily southward until 1756, when Patrick reached the South Carolina back country. One of the most prosperous planters (and one of the largest owners of enslaved people) in his district, Patrick Calhoun was a leader in local politics; he served in the South Carolina legislature from 1768 to 1774. During the late 1760s, he was a Regulator, one of the self-appointed vigilantes whose well-intentioned but rough efforts to impose justice on a crime-racked frontier wholly lacking in judicial institutions finally prompted the South Carolina legislature to establish circuit courts in the back country. During the Revolution, he sided with the patriot cause.

Young John received only a sporadic education during his early years, attending a "field school" for a few months each year. In 1795 he entered a private academy in Appling, Georgia, but the school closed after a few months. The boy plunged into an exhausting course of self-study, but his father's death soon forced him to return to Abbeville to manage the family farm. The disappointed young scholar remained at home until 1800, when his mother and brothers, having recognized his formidable intellectual abilities, returned him to the academy, which had since reopened. He was a diligent student, qualifying for admission to Yale College in 1802.

Calhoun completed his studies at Yale in 1804. After graduation, he spent a month at the Newport, Rhode Island, summer retreat of Floride Bonneau Colhoun. Mrs. Colhoun was the widow of the future vice president's cousin, Senator John Ewing Colhoun; her daughter, also named Floride, was attractive, well-connected in South Carolina lowcountry circles, and socially accomplished. John C. Calhoun married his young cousin in 1811. The union conferred wealth and social prestige on the earnest young upcountry lawyer, but Calhoun was also attracted to Floride's "beauty of mind...soft and sweet disposition," and "amiable and lovable character." Not until later would he experience her stubborn will and unwavering sense of moral rectitude, so like his own.

Calhoun began his legal education in 1804 soon after leaving Newport, studying first in Charleston and later at the Litchfield, Connecticut, school of Tapping Reeve, a distinguished scholar who counted among his former students such notables as James Madison and Aaron Burr. He returned to South Carolina in 1806 and served brief apprenticeships at Charleston and Abbeville. Admitted to the bar in Abbeville in 1807, Calhoun soon found another calling. In the summer of 1807, he helped organize a town meeting to protest the British attack on the American vessel Chesapeake off the Virginia coast. His speech recommending an embargo and an enhanced defense posture electrified the militantly nationalistic crowd assembled at the Abbeville courthouse, winning him immediate acclaim. He was elected to the South Carolina legislature, where he served two terms, and in 1810 he won a seat in the United States House of Representatives.

Congressman Calhoun

Calhoun arrived in Washington shortly after the 12th Congress convened on November 4, 1811, taking quarters in a boardinghouse soon to be known as the "War Mess." The nation's capital boasted few amenities during the early 19th century, and members of Congress rarely brought their families to town. They lodged instead with colleagues from their own states or regions and, as one student of early Washington discovered, "the members who lived together, took their meals together, and spent most of their leisure hours together also voted together with a very high degree of regularity." Calhoun's mess mates included two members of the South Carolina delegation, Langdon Cheves and William Lowndes; Felix Grundy of Tennessee; and the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, Henry Clay of Kentucky. They, and other like-minded young congressmen known as the "warhawks," believed that nothing short of war would stop British raids on American shipping and restore the young nation's honor.

Calhoun, who had been appointed to the Foreign Affairs Committee at the beginning of his first term and became its chairman in the spring of 1812, played a leading role in the effort, supporting legislation to strengthen the nation's defenses. Working in concert with Secretary of State James Monroe, he introduced the war bill that Congress approved in June 1812. Although Calhoun soon realized that Madison was "wholly unfit for the storms of war," he labored so diligently to defend the administration and to assist in the war effort that he became known as "the young Hercules who carried the war on his shoulders." He was, as a historian of the period has noted, "an administration leader second only to Clay."

Calhoun served in the House until 1817. Sobered by the nation's near-defeat during the War of 1812, he continued his interest in military affairs, opposing troop reductions and advocating the establishment of two additional service academies. As his modern biographer has observed, Calhoun "equated defense with national self-sufficiency." Toward that end, he accepted protective tariffs and helped draft legislation to establish the Second Bank of the United States in 1816. Concerned that the nation's interior settlements lacked the roads and other improvements that he believed essential to economic development and national security, he proposed legislation to earmark for internal improvements the $1.5 million charter fee the bank paid to the federal government, as well as the yields of government-owned bank stocks.

Secretary of War

Calhoun resigned from the House in November 1817 to accept an appointment as secretary of war in President James Monroe's cabinet, a post he would hold for more than seven years. Calhoun was not the president's first choice; Monroe had approached several others, but all had declined. With the nation's military establishment in complete disarray after the war, reforming a badly managed department with over $45 million in outstanding accounts (at a time when the government's annual budget amounted to less than $26 million) seemed to most a near-impossible task. But Calhoun believed that a strong defense establishment was essential to maintaining the nation's honor and security, and he welcomed the chance to reform the troubled department. The 32-year-old cabinet officer was also ambitious and well aware that, as another biographer has noted, "no man had yet held the presidency...who had not proved his worth in some executive capacity."

President Monroe relied heavily on his cabinet and submitted all matters of consequence to his department heads before deciding upon a course of action, a practice that assured the gifted young war secretary a prominent role in the new administration. Monroe seems to have felt a special fondness for Calhoun-and for Floride, who moved to Washington and soon became one of the capital's most popular hostesses. Official protocol during the early 19th century dictated that the president refrain from "going abroad into any private companies," but when the Calhouns' infant daughter contracted a fatal illness in the spring of 1820, Monroe visited their residence every day to check on her condition.

Calhoun began his first term as secretary of war with an exhaustive review and audit of the department's operations and accounts. Acting on his recommendations, Congress reorganized the army's command and general staff structure, revamped the accounting and procurement systems, and voted annual appropriations to construct fortifications and pay down the war debt. By the end of Calhoun's second term as secretary, outstanding accounts had been reduced from $45 to $3 million. Congress, however, refused to approve Calhoun's proposals for a network of coastal and frontier fortifications and military roads, imposing steep cuts in the defense budget after Treasury Secretary William Crawford's 1819 annual report projected a budget deficit for 1820 of $7 million (later adjusted to $5 million). Postwar economic expansion had given way to a depression of unprecedented severity, and the panic of 1819 had left hundreds of speculators impoverished and in debt. These conditions, and Crawford's dire forecast, prompted calls for sharp reductions in government expenditures. The War Department came under immediate attack, which intensified when the press reported that one of Calhoun's pet projects, an expedition to plant a military outpost on the Yellowstone River, had run significantly over budget.

Some scholars have suggested that Crawford timed the release of his report both to embarrass Monroe and Calhoun and to enhance his own presidential prospects. Shortly afterwards, the president received an anonymous letter alleging that Calhoun's chief secretary had realized substantial profits from an interest in a materials contract. The transaction was not illegal, for War Department officials enjoyed considerable latitude in awarding government contracts, and the primary contractor had submitted the lowest bid, but the appearance of impropriety gave Crawford additional ammunition. Congress began an exhaustive review of the War Department, with the "Radicals" taking the lead. Although the investigation found no evidence of malfeasance on Calhoun's part, Republicans were inherently suspicious of standing armies, and even the National Republicans were reluctant to fund a peacetime army on the scale envisioned by Calhoun. Congress ultimately reduced the War Department budget by close to 50 percent.

The 1824 Presidential Election

Calhoun declared himself a candidate for the presidency in December 1821, much to the surprise of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, widely considered to be Monroe's heir apparent by virtue of his office. Calhoun and Adams were friends; both avid nationalists, they had also been political allies until the Missouri crisis in 1820 exposed their profound disagreement over slavery. Calhoun, however, became convinced that Adams was too weak a candidate to defeat Crawford, who enjoyed a significant following within the congressional nominating caucus. The South Carolinian, determined to prevent Crawford's election at any cost, therefore decided to become a candidate himself.

In addition to Calhoun, Adams, and Crawford, the crowded field of prospective candidates for 1824 soon included House Speaker Henry Clay and the revered hero of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson-all Republicans. Calhoun believed that he was the only candidate who could command a national following; he had been warmly received during a visit to the northern and middle states in 1820, and his efforts to strengthen the nation's defenses had won him a following in the West, as well. His quest, however, lost momentum after the South Carolina legislature voted to endorse another favorite son, William Lowndes. Not only did Calhoun face formidable opposition from Crawford's supporters, now ably led by New York senator Martin Van Buren, but, to the amazement of many, Jackson soon emerged as a leading contender. Calhoun's Pennsylvania supporters eventually declared for Jackson, endorsing Calhoun as their vice-presidential candidate. As other states followed suit, the ambitious young secretary of war was, in one scholar's words, "everybody's 'second choice.'" Thus, in the general election, Calhoun was overwhelmingly elected vice president, with support from both the Jackson and Adams camps.

None of the presidential candidates, however, achieved an electoral majority-although Jackson received a plurality. The election was therefore thrown into the House of Representatives, where each state delegation had a single vote. Having come in fourth in the general election, Clay was not a contender in the House balloting, but he played a pivotal part in determining the outcome by persuading the delegations of the three states he had carried (Ohio, Kentucky and Missouri) to vote for Adams. These three western states, as well as New York, after heavy lobbying by Clay and Massachusetts representative Daniel Webster, gave Adams the margin he needed to defeat Jackson.

Clay's maneuvering and his subsequent appointment as Adams's secretary of state deeply offended Calhoun, nudging him toward the Jackson camp. He "would probably have coalesced with the Jacksonians in any event," one scholar of the period has surmised, since South Carolina and Pennsylvania, the two states crucial to Calhoun's abortive presidential strategy, had gone for Jackson. But politics alone could not fully account for Calhoun's shift. He knew that the Kentucky legislature had expressly instructed its delegation to vote for Jackson, who had run second to Clay in the general election. Yet, at Clay's urging, the Kentuckians had cast their state's vote for Adams, who had received few, if any, popular votes in the state. "Mr. Clay has made the Prest [President] against the voice of his constituents," Calhoun confided to a friend, "and has been rewarded by the man elevated by him by the first office in his gift, the most dangerous stab, which the liberty of this country has ever received."

The Senate Examines the Role of the Presiding Officer

Wholly lacking in experience as a presiding officer, Calhoun prepared himself for his new responsibilities by studying Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Practice and other parliamentary authorities. But even this rigorous course of study could not adequately prepare him for the challenges he would face. The Senate, experiencing "growing pains" as it completed its transformation from the "chamber of revision" envisioned by the Constitution's framers to a full-fledged legislative body in its own right, was beginning to reconsider rules and procedures that seemed outdated or impractical. As the Senate's debates became increasingly contentious, the body began rethinking the role of its presiding officer, as well.

Calhoun's difficulties began shortly after the 19th Congress convened in December 1825, when he announced appointments to the Senate's standing committees. Prior to 1823, the Senate had elected committee members by ballot, an awkward and time-consuming process. The rule was revised during the 18th Congress to provide that "all committees shall be appointed by the presiding officer of this House, unless specially ordered otherwise by the Senate." Before Calhoun became vice president, the new procedure had been used only once, on December 9, 1823, the day the Senate adopted the revised rule. On that occasion, Vice President Daniel Tompkins was absent, a frequent occurrence during his troubled tenure, and President pro tempore John Gaillard of South Carolina had appointed the chairmen and members of the Senate's standing committees.

As one scholar of the period has noted, Calhoun made "an honest effort to divide control of the committees between friends and enemies of the administration." An analysis of his appointments suggests that he took into account a senator's experience. He reappointed 9 of the 15 standing committee chairmen whom Gaillard had chosen two years earlier. The two chairmen who had left the Senate he replaced with individuals who had previously served on their respective committees. Of the four remaining committees, three were chaired by senators friendly to the administration. After Military Affairs Committee chairman Andrew Jackson resigned his seat in October 1825, Calhoun chose as his replacement the only member of the Senate whose military record could match Jackson's-Senator William Henry Harrison, the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe.

As a result of Calhoun's appointments, senators hostile to the administration retained or gained control of several important committees: Maryland senator Samuel Smith, a Crawford Republican who would eventually join the Jackson camp, remained in charge of the influential Finance Committee, while New York senator Martin Van Buren, who would soon unite the opposition forces behind Andrew Jackson, continued to chair the Judiciary Committee. Administration supporters were outraged to learn that the Foreign Relations Committee included only one Adams-Clay man and that its new chairman was Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina, who had voted against confirming Clay as secretary of state. Bitter divisions between administration supporters and the opposition forces were beginning to infect the Senate, and Calhoun, in his attempt to please everyone, had satisfied no one. The pro-administration Philadelphia Democratic Press and several other papers vehemently criticized Calhoun, publishing unfounded allegations that he had made the offending appointments after Adams ignored Calhoun's demand to dissociate himself from Henry Clay.

In the meantime, Senator Van Buren had enlisted Calhoun's support for a concerted challenge to the expansive agenda that President Adams outlined in his December 6, 1825, annual message to Congress. Adams had proposed a national university, a national observatory, and a network of internal improvements unprecedented in the nation's history, as well as foreign policy initiatives. In particular, Calhoun, not yet the strict constructionist he would later become, was concerned that Adams's plan to send observers to a conference of South and Central American ministers scheduled to meet in Panama the following year would reinvigorate the sectional tensions that had emerged during the Missouri crisis. Calhoun saw United States participation in the Panama Congress as a perilous first step toward extending diplomatic recognition to Haiti, a nation of former slaves. He had cautioned Adams, through an intermediary, that the initiative would "in the present tone of feelings in the south lead to great mischief." But Clay, an early and enthusiastic supporter of the Latin American independence movements, had prevailed.

The president sent the names of prospective delegates to Panama to the Senate for approval in late December 1825, touching off a protracted and contentious debate that continued through March 14, 1826, when the Senate approved the mission by a narrow margin. Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton later reflected that "no question, in its day, excited more heat and intemperate discussion, or more feeling between a President and Senate, than this proposed mission." Although the vice president had "no vote, the constitutional contingency to authorize it not having occurred," Benton recalled, Calhoun had been "full and free in the expression of his opinion against the mission." It was a costly victory for the administration. The United States delegation arrived too late to have any impact on the deliberations, and all but one of the Latin American republics failed to ratify the accords approved at the convention. The president had wasted a great deal of political capital in a confrontation that hardened the party divisions in the Senate, and Calhoun and Van Buren had taken the first tentative steps toward an alliance that would drive Adams from office in the next election.

Calhoun also endorsed the opposition's efforts to curtail the powers of the executive through constitutional amendments to abolish the Electoral College and to limit the president to two terms. Although the Senate had considered similar amendments in previous sessions, the move acquired a new urgency after the 1824 election. Thomas Hart Benton renewed the initiative on December 15, 1825, with a resolution to appoint a select committee "to inquire into the expediency" of choosing the president and vice president" by a direct vote of the People, in districts." Other senators suggested amendments to provide for the election of the president and vice president "without the intervention of the Senate or House of Representatives" and to "prohibit the appointment of any Member of Congress to any office of honor or trust under the United States during the term for which such Senator or Representative should have been elected." The latter proposal represented an obvious slap at Secretary of State Henry Clay, who had resigned from the House to take the executive post.

Calhoun appointed Benton chairman of the select committee, which the Senate directed to determine "the best, most preferable, and safest mode in regard to such elections." Benton was pleased that the other members of the nine-man select committee "were...carefully selected, both geographically as coming from different sections of the Union, and personally and politically as being friendly to the object." Only one, Senator John Holmes of Maine, was an Adams man. Calhoun had appointed the administration's most vocal critics to the committee, which reported to the Senate on January 19, 1826, a constitutional amendment calling for the direct election of the president and vice president. Calhoun confided to a correspondent that he expected the administration to resist "all attempts that can limit or counteract the effects of patronage. They will in particular resist any amendment of the Constitution," he predicted, "which will place the Presl [Presidential] election in the hands of the voters, where patronage can have little, or no effect." As for Calhoun, he promised that "no one who knows me, can doubt where I will be found."

The constitutional debate over the select committee's report took an unexpected turn on March 30, 1826, when Virginia senator John Randolph rose to address the Senate after North Carolina senator John Branch offered a resolution protesting the president's appointment of ministers to the Panama Congress "without the advice and consent of the Senate." Randolph was a die-hard "Old Republican," a strict constructionist and a resolute opponent of change in any form. Stubbornly clinging to the customs, attire, and rhetoric of a bygone era, he regarded any departure from the dicta of the Founding Fathers as tantamount to heresy. Calhoun thought him "highly talented, eloquent, severe and eccentric," while others, alternately amused and offended by his rambling and caustic speeches, his eighteenth-century dress and manners, and his bizarre behavior, dismissed him as thoroughly insane. His March 30 address was vintage Randolph: a disjointed litany of personal grievances interspersed with his objections to the administration, the Panama Congress, and the "practice...that the Secretary of State shall succeed the President." Calhoun remained silent as the agitated Virginian took Adams to task for elevating patronage above patriotism-"buying us up with our own money"-and suggested that Clay had "manufactured" the invitation to the Panama Congress. Even Randolph's likening of Adams and Clay to "Bliful and Black George," two unsavory characters from the popular novel, Tom Jones, brought no rebuke from the chair.

After Randolph ended his harangue, the Senate turned to the select committee report. Randolph, trumpeting his opposition "to all amendments to the Constitution," moved to table the report. New Jersey senator Mahlon Dickerson, who had spoken at great length the previous day in support of his own proposal to limit the president to two terms in office, prepared to speak in opposition to Randolph's motion. He had just started to explain his position when Calhoun cut him short, ruling him out of order on the grounds that "the motion now pending...did not admit of debate." Randolph added that "it is unreasonable, after having spoken an hour and thirty-five minutes [the previous day], to speak again to-day" and explained that he would oppose any effort to amend the Constitution. When Dickerson attempted to respond to Randolph's remarks, Calhoun ruled him out of order a second time. Randolph finally agreed to Dickerson's request to postpone the discussion until the next day, bringing the awkward exchange to an end. On April 3, 1826, the Senate approved the select committee's amendment providing for the direct election of the president and vice president.

Fallout from the explosive session of March 30, 1826, would haunt Calhoun for the remainder of his term. Deeply offended at Randolph's charges, Clay demanded a duel with the Virginian. The resulting nerve-wracking but bloodless encounter ended with a handshake after two exchanges of fire. Those who had expressed amusement at Randolph's March 30 performance, or agreed with him in principle, were suddenly sobered at the thought that the vice president's failure to restrain an intemperate senator had resulted in a near-tragedy. Calhoun's enemies criticized him for twice calling the sedate and congenial Dickerson to order while permitting Randolph to vent his spleen at will. In the following weeks the Senate, for the first time in its history, attempted to define the vice president's legislative duties and responsibilities.

In the decade prior to 1826, the Senate had paid increasing attention to organizational matters, a clear indication of its increased workload, enlarged membership, and heightened importance as a national forum. It had established standing committees in 1816, revised its rules in 1820, and required the publication of regular financial reports by the secretary of the Senate after 1823. The body also enhanced the powers of the chair. Not only had it authorized the presiding officer in 1823 to appoint members of standing and select committees, but in 1824 it also directed the presiding officer to "examine and correct the Journals, before they are read," and to "have the regulation of such parts of the Capitol...as are...set apart for the use of the Senate and its officers." These changes reflect an institution in transition, conscious of its changing role in a rapidly altering political environment. After the March 30, 1826, spectacle, however, any discussion of Senate rules inevitably invited comment on the vice president's legislative duties and on Calhoun's conduct as president of the Senate.

On April 13, 1826, John Randolph offered a motion to rescind "so much of the new rules of this House, which give to the presiding officer of this body the appointment of its committees, and the control over the Journal of its proceedings." The debate continued on April 15, as several Calhoun supporters, including Van Buren, reviewed "the considerations that had led the Senate" to change its rules in 1823 and 1824. The fragmentary published accounts in the Register of Debates suggest that, when the Senate vested in the presiding officer the power to appoint committees, it had done so assuming that the president pro tempore would actually make the selections-a reasonable assumption when the debilitated Daniel D. Tompkins served as vice president. Randolph's cryptic remarks on April 12, when he notified the Senate that he would propose the rules changes on the following day, also hint that the Senate had given the presiding officer the responsibility of supervising the Journal because the secretary of the Senate had been negligent in performing this important task.

The reporter who followed the April 15 debate was careful to note that "the gentlemen who favored the present motion, as well as the one who offered it, disclaimed the remotest intention to impute to the Vice President an improper exercise of the duties devolved on him by the rules." But the debate took a personal turn after Randolph, sensitive to mounting and widespread criticism of Calhoun for failing to stifle his recent outburst, asserted that "it is not the duty, nor the right, of the President of the Senate to call a member to order." That right, Randolph argued, was reserved to members of the Senate. At the conclusion of the debate, the Senate voted, by overwhelming margins, to resume its former practice of selecting committee members by ballot, and "to take from the President of the Senate, the control over the Journal of the Proceedings."

Some contemporary observers, as well as modern day scholars, have interpreted the April 15 vote as a pointed rebuke of a vice president who had exceeded his authority and offended the Senate. On the other hand, the caveats of Van Buren and opposition senators suggest that, although some senators may well have intended to curtail Calhoun's authority, others were animated by concern for maintaining the Senate's institutional prerogatives. Calhoun, edging toward the strict constructionist stance he would champion in later years, seems to have approved of the changes, or at least to have accepted them with his customary grace." [N]o power ought to be delegated which can be fairly exercised by the constituent body," he agreed shortly after the vote, "and...none ought ever to be delegated, but to responsible agents...and I should be inconsistent with myself, if I did not give my entire assent to the principles on which the rules in question have been rescinded." Calhoun did bristle, however, at the suggestion that he had been negligent in not calling Randolph to order. He had diligently studied the Senate's rules, he informed the senators, and had concluded that, although the chair could issue rulings on procedural matters, "the right to call to order, on questions touching the latitude or freedom of debate, belongs exclusively to the members of this body, and not to the Chair. The power of the presiding officer...is an appellate power only; and...the duties of the Chair commence when a Senator is called to order by a Senator." He had been elected vice president by "the People," he reminded the Senate, and "he had laid it down as an invariable rule, to assume no power in the least degree doubtful."

The debate over the vice president's role in the Senate continued a month later on May 18. A select committee chaired by Randolph that had been appointed "to take into consideration the present arrangement of the Senate chamber," reported a resolution that would make access to the Senate floor by anyone other than past and current members of Congress and certain members of the executive and judicial branches contingent upon written authorization by the vice president. The resolution also specified that the officers of the Senate would be responsible to the vice president and that all, except for the secretary of the Senate, would be subject to immediate removal "for any neglect of duty." The Senate Chamber would "be arranged under the direction of the Vice President,...so as to keep order more effectually in the lobby and the gallery," a change intended to regulate the crowds who were flocking to the Senate galleries in increasing numbers.

As this first session of the 19th Congress neared its end, Senator John Holmes submitted a resolution, for consideration in the next session, to appoint a committee that would consider rules to clarify and enhance the powers of the chair. Randolph moved to take up the Holmes resolution immediately, but Calhoun ruled him out of order on the grounds that "when a member offered a resolution, if he did not desire its consideration, it would lie one day on the table." Undaunted, Randolph moved to instruct the committee that it would be "inconsistent with the rights and privileges of the States" to authorize the chair to call a member. He then proceeded to castigate a Massachusetts editor for his alleged misconduct in the Chamber. The debate degenerated into a shouting match after Massachusetts senator James Lloyd rose to defend his constituent, but Calhoun remained impassive until Alabama senator William R. King intervened with a call to order. Rigidly adhering to the Senate's rule governing the conduct of debate, Calhoun instructed King "to reduce the exceptionable words to writing." King responded that "it was not necessary to reduce the words to writing," since he had merely intended to "check the gentlemen when they were giving way to effervescence of feeling." Calhoun explained that he had "no power beyond the rules of the Senate"; if King would not comply, Randolph was free to continue. After Randolph finished his diatribe, Calhoun again reminded the Senate that "The Chair...would never assume any power not vested in it."

A weary Calhoun left the chair on May 20, 1826, two days before the 19th Congress adjourned, in order to allow for the election of a president pro tempore, but the controversy over his conduct in the Senate continued throughout the spring and summer and into fall. On April 24, the National Intelligencer had published a letter from Senator Dickerson, who maintained that Calhoun had treated him with appropriate courtesy and respect during the March 30 debate, as well as a submission from an anonymous "Western Senator" defending the vice president. On May 1, the pro-administration National Journal published the first in a series of five articles by "Patrick Henry," an anonymous writer friendly to the administration, charging that Calhoun had abused his office. These essays, which continued through August 8, cited an impressive array of parliamentary scholarship to support the author's contention that Calhoun had been negligent in permitting the "irrelative rhapsodies of a once powerful mind" to disturb the Senate "without one effort of authority, or one hint of disapprobation from its president." The vice president had also allowed "selfish considerations" to influence his committee appointments, "Henry" charged." From the commencement of the Government until the last session of Congress," the essayist scolded Calhoun in his August 4 installment:

order had been preserved in the Senate under every Vice-President, and decorum, almost rising to solemnity, had been a distinctive feature of its proceedings. But no sooner were you sent to preside over it, than its hall became, as if by some magic agency, transformed into an arena where political disappointment rioted in its madness.

Modern scholars have never conclusively established the identity of "Patrick Henry," although Calhoun and many others believed him to be President Adams. The vice president responded in his own series of essays, published in the National Intelligencer between May 20 and October 12, 1826, under the pseudonym "Onslow," in honor of a distinguished 18th-century Speaker of the British House of Commons. Echoing Calhoun's pronouncements in the Senate, the writer's opening salvo offered a forceful defense of the vice president's refusal to restrain "the latitude or freedom of debate." The decision to rule Dickerson out of order had involved a procedural matter, well within the scope of the vice president's authority; silencing Randolph's outburst would have required "a despotic Power, worse than the sedition law." As for the vice president's committee appointments, "Onslow" maintained in his October 12 epistle, "The only correct rule is, to appoint the able, experienced, and independent, without regard to their feelings towards the Executive." To appoint only pro-administration partisans, he argued, would have drastically expanded the power of an executive who already had "the whole patronage of the Government" at his disposal. These arguments, the modern-era editors of Calhoun's papers have stressed, reveal "the ground principles of all Calhoun's later thinking," and mark "the 'turning point' in Calhoun's career from nationalist and latitudinarian to sectionalist and strict constructionist."

Not until 1828 did the Senate finally revise the rule governing debate to authorize the presiding officer, or any senator, to call a member to order. After this revision was adopted, Calhoun stubbornly remarked that "it was not for him" to comment on the change, assuring the Senate "that he should always endeavor to exercise it with strict impartiality." He did heartily approve of another change adopted in 1828, a revision that made rulings of the chair subject to appeal. "It was not only according to strict principle," he informed the Senate, "but would relieve the Chair from a most delicate duty."

The Calhoun-Jackson Alliance

On June 4, 1826, Calhoun notified Andrew Jackson that he would support his 1828 presidential bid. Calhoun, with his disciplined intellect and rigid sense of propriety, presented a striking contrast to the popular and dashing military hero. The two were never close, and Calhoun never completely trusted Jackson. In fact, several years earlier, while serving in Monroe's cabinet, the South Carolinian had urged the president to discipline Jackson for his unauthorized invasion of Spanish Florida during the Seminole War. But Calhoun needed time to recoup his political fortunes, and Jackson had vowed to serve but a single term if elected president. The old hero welcomed Calhoun's support, assuring him that they would "march hand in hand in their [the people's] cause," cementing one of the most ill-starred partnerships in the history of the vice presidency.

When Calhoun returned to the Senate for the second session of the 19th Congress in early December, he was relieved to find that he was not "the object of the malignant attack of those in power." He did observe, however, that in the Senate "the line of separation is better drawn, and the feelings on both sides higher than in the last session." Calhoun's respite came to an abrupt halt on December 28, when the Alexandria, Virginia, Phoenix Gazette, an administration mouthpiece, resurrected the old charges that Calhoun's chief secretary at the War Department had improperly profited from his interest in a materials contract. On the following day, Calhoun notified Secretary of the Senate Walter Lowrie that he had asked the House of Representatives to investigate the charges and would not preside over the Senate until the matter was resolved. "[A] sense of propriety forbids me from resuming my station till the House has disposed of this subject," he explained.

On January 2, 1827, the Senate chose Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina to preside over its deliberations while a House select committee pursued the allegations. Henry Clay, who still commanded enormous influence in the House of Representatives, played a silent role in the appointment of the House select committee, which was heavily weighted against Calhoun. Even though the committee cleared Calhoun after six weeks of hearings, press accounts of the investigation, combined with the muddled language that Clay had persuaded his allies to insert in the select committee's February 13, 1827, report, contributed to the widespread perception that the vice president had done something wrong while serving as secretary of war. Some Jacksonians would have gladly withdrawn their support for Calhoun's vice-presidential bid at that point. But Jackson's chief strategist, Martin Van Buren, insisted that Calhoun was essential to his strategy of forging a coalition of "planters of the South and the plain Republicans of the North" to drive Adams from the White House.

The vice president, for his part, was increasingly disturbed at the concessions that Van Buren seemed willing to make to secure Jackson's election, particularly with respect to the tariff. Van Buren and New York senator Silas Wright had finessed a protective tariff through the Senate in the spring of 1828. This so-called "Tariff of Abominations" included no concessions to southern agricultural interests, as had previous tariffs, and imposed severe hardships on the region. Still, Calhoun convinced the South Carolina delegation to hold its fire, fearing that the backlash might cost Jackson the election and hoping that Jackson would, if elected, reform the tariff schedules. "[T]he Tariff of the last session excites much feelings in this and the other Southern atlantick states," he wrote to Jackson from South Carolina in July, continuing,

The belief that those now in power will be displaced shortly, and that under an administration formed under your auspices, a better order will commence, in which an equal distribution of the burden and benefit of government . . . and finally the removal of oppressive duties will be the primary objects of policy is what mainly consoles this quarter of the Union under existing embarrassment.

Jackson and Calhoun won 56 percent of the popular vote in 1828-a sweeping victory widely acclaimed as a triumph for "the common man." The "Jacksonians" boasted an organization vastly more efficient than that of Adams's National Republicans, a factor that had helped them gain control of both houses in the 1827 congressional elections. The presidential campaign was one of the most bitterly contested in the nation's history. Adams's supporters charged Jackson and his wife with immoral conduct (the two had married before Rachel's divorce from her first husband) and Jacksonians countered by reminding the electorate of the "corrupt bargain." Calhoun and the National Republican vice-presidential candidate Richard Rush were barely noticed in the fray.

Candidate Calhoun had spent most of the election year at "Fort Hill," his Pendleton, South Carolina, estate, supervising farm operations and, at the request of the South Carolina legislature, preparing a critique of the tariff. His point of departure for the resulting South Carolina "Exposition" was an argument that Jefferson had marshaled three decades earlier in his crusade against the Alien and Sedition Acts: that the Union was a compact between states, which retained certain rights under the Constitution. But Calhoun carried the argument several steps farther, asserting that a state could veto, or "nullify," any act by the federal government that encroached on its sovereignty or otherwise violated the Constitution. The "Exposition" and an accompanying set of "Protest" resolutions were widely circulated by the South Carolina legislature. Calhoun, wary of jeopardizing his national standing, was careful not to claim authorship, but Jackson and Van Buren soon suspected that the vice president had written the controversial tract.

The Senate Debates Nullification

Calhoun's second vice-presidential term was even more of an ordeal than his first. His suspicions that Jackson might pose as great a threat to popular liberties as his predecessor were soon confirmed. The president failed to repudiate the tariff-clear evidence that he had fallen under Van Buren's spell-and his appointment of the "Little Magician" as secretary of state boded ill for Calhoun. The vice president was soon isolated within an administration where Van Buren and his protectionist allies appeared to be gaining the upper hand.

Calhoun's novel theory came under attack in the Senate early in his second term, during a debate over the disposition of western lands, a lengthy exchange that one historian has termed "the greatest debate in the history of the Senate." The debate began on December 29, when Connecticut senator Samuel Foot offered a resolution to curtail the sale of public lands in the West. South Carolina senator Robert Y. Hayne changed the tone of the debate on January 19, 1830, when he argued that the federal government should leave land policy to the states and that individual states could nullify federal legislation. The remainder of the debate, which lasted through January 27, consisted of a spirited exchange between Hayne and Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster, who summoned all of his formidable oratorical talents in a passionate defense of the Union.

But the Webster-Hayne debate was, in fact, a confrontation between Webster and Calhoun. Hayne received a steady stream of handwritten notes from the chair as he articulated Calhoun's doctrines for several hours on January 21, and Webster clearly directed at the vice president his second reply to Hayne of January 26-27.His charge that "leading and distinguished gentlemen from South Carolina" had reversed their stand on internal improvements brought an immediate and pointed inquiry from the vice president: "Does the chair understand the gentleman from Massachusetts to say that the person now occupying the chair of the Senate had changed his opinions on the subject of internal improvements?" Webster responded: "If such change has taken place, I regret it. I speak generally of the State of South Carolina."

The president, although not directly involved in the debate, was clearly interested in the outcome. Jackson sympathized with advocates of states' rights, but, as a passionate defender of the Union, he regarded nullification as tantamount to treason. When his friend and adviser, William B. Lewis, having witnessed the sparring between Hayne and Webster from the Senate gallery, reported that Webster was "demolishing our friend Hayne," the president responded with a succinct "I expected it." An open confrontation between Jackson and Calhoun soon followed, at the April 13, 1830, banquet commemorating Jefferson's birthday. The event was a longstanding tradition among congressional Republicans, but the recent use of Jefferson's writings to justify nullification imbued the 1830 celebration with particular significance. Warned in advance by Van Buren that several "nullifiers" were expected to attend, the president and his advisers carefully scripted his remarks. After the meal, and an interminable series of toasts, Jackson rose to offer his own: "Our Union. It must be preserved." Calhoun was well prepared with an explosive rejoinder: "The Union. Next to our liberty, the most dear." Jackson had the last word a few days later, when he asked a South Carolina congressman about to depart for home to "give my compliments to my friends in your State, and say to them, that if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach."

Jackson Repudiates Calhoun

Even without Calhoun's intransigence on the tariff and nullification, Jackson had ample reason to dislike his vice president. In May 1830, the president finally received incontrovertible proof that Calhoun, as he had long suspected, had urged Monroe's cabinet to censure him for his invasion of Spanish Florida during the Seminole War. Demanding an explanation from Calhoun, Jackson was stunned when the vice president responded that he could not "recognize the right on your part to call in question my conduct." Calhoun went on to explain that neither he, as secretary of war, nor President Monroe had authorized the occupation of the Spanish posts in Florida, and that "when orders were transcended, investigation, as a matter of course, ought to follow." His opponents had resurrected a long-forgotten incident to discredit him in Jackson's eyes, the vice president warned. "I should be blind not to see, that this whole affair is a political manoeuvre." Thus began a lengthy and strident correspondence, which concluded only after Jackson wrote from his Tennessee home in mid-July that "I feel no interest in this altercation...and now close this correspondence forever," and Calhoun concurred that the correspondence "is far from being agreeable at this critical juncture of our affairs." Anxious to contradict inaccurate press accounts of his quarrel with the president, Calhoun published the correspondence in the United States' Telegraph of February 17 and 25, 1831, prefaced with a lengthy explanation addressed "To the People of the United States." His break with Jackson, so long in the making, was now complete.

Calhoun soon found himself completely eclipsed by Van Buren. After a longstanding dispute over official protocol had culminated in the resignation of the entire cabinet in April 1831, all of Jackson's new secretaries were Van Buren men. Calhoun had his wife Floride to thank for this unfortunate development. Mrs. Calhoun, the unofficial arbiter of Washington society, had thrown the capital into turmoil with her deliberate snub of Secretary of War John Eaton and his wife, Peggy. Peggy Eaton was a lively and attractive woman of dubious reputation and a special favorite of the president. The daughter of an innkeeper, she was clearly not the social equal of the haughty and highly critical Floride. She had married Eaton, a boarder at her father's hotel, soon after her first husband had died at sea-Washington scandalmongers hinted that he had taken his life in despair after learning of Peggy's affair with Eaton. Floride's reputation as an accomplished hostess, her husband's position, and the fact that both the president and Van Buren were widowers gave her enormous influence in Washington society. When she refused to return Peggy Eaton's calls, several of the cabinet wives followed suit.

Floride's actions put her husband in an awkward position, but he acquiesced in her decision because he regarded social protocol as her rightful sphere of authority and because he knew that nothing he did or said would shake her resolve. The president, who considered Eaton "more like a son to me than anything else"-and later pronounced Peggy "chaste as a virgin"-was sorely offended. His outrage was compounded by memories of his late wife, Rachel, who had suffered a fatal heart attack after hearing the vicious attacks on her character that the Adams camp had circulated during the presidential campaign.

The "Petticoat War" split the cabinet for well over a year, with Van Buren emerging the winner. The shrewd and gallant widower had conspicuously entertained the Eatons and orchestrated the cabinet's resignation to resolve the impasse. Jackson was profoundly grateful to Van Buren for the opportunity to purge his cabinet of Calhoun's supporters, and rewarded him with an appointment as ambassador to Great Britain.

Nullification Leader

Calhoun initially believed that his break with Jackson would only enhance his chances of winning the presidency in 1832. He still enjoyed considerable support in the South and believed he might be able to reconcile southern agriculturalists and northern manufacturers with selective modifications in the tariff schedules. But events in South Carolina soon forced him to make public his position on the tariff and nullification, a move that effectively killed his chances of ever becoming president. In the summer of 1831, Calhoun protégé George McDuffie electrified a Charleston, South Carolina, audience with a fiery declamation advocating nullification and secession. Calhoun was horrified at this development, as well as by accounts that South Carolina merchants were refusing to pay duties that they considered unconstitutional. Calhoun had advanced the doctrine of nullification to provide southern states with a peaceful mechanism for obtaining redress of their grievances, never contemplating the possibility of disunion. He had not endorsed secession in his 1828 "Exposition," arguing that a state could veto and refuse to enforce any law it considered unconstitutional, but, if three fourths of the states subsequently affirmed the law, the nullifying state must defer to the collective will.

Until this point, Calhoun had never publicly claimed authorship of his controversial doctrine, but now he felt compelled to assume control of the nullification movement to minimize its destructive potential. He published in the July 26, 1831, issue of the Pendleton, South Carolina, Messenger his first public statement on nullification, the "Rock Hill Address," a forceful restatement of the principles first articulated in the South Carolina "Exposition." Calhoun was well aware of the risk he had assumed."I can scarcely dare hope," he conceded shortly after the "Rock Hill Address" appeared in print, "that my friends to the North will sustain me in the positions I have taken, tho' I have the most thorough conviction that the doctrines I advanced, must ultimately become those of the Union; or that it will be impossible to preserve the Union." Once the most ardent of nationalists, Calhoun would henceforth be known as the South's advocate and, by Jackson supporters, as a traitor.

Calhoun "Elects" a Vice President

Calhoun returned to Washington after a lengthy absence in time for the opening of the 22nd Congress in December 1831. He had devoted the time since the 21st Congress had adjourned on March 3 to nullification and to his anticipated presidential campaign. One of the first items on the Senate's agenda was the confirmation of Jackson's reconstituted cabinet. The Senate approved these nominations without incident, but Jackson's appointment of former secretary of state Martin Van Buren as ambassador to Great Britain aroused a firestorm of controversy. Henry Clay, leading the anti-Jackson forces in the Senate, blamed Van Buren for the "pernicious system of party politics adopted by the present administration,"a sentiment shared by many disaffected Jacksonians and Calhoun supporters, as well.

Tempers flared as the Senate debated the controversial nomination on January 24 and 25, 1832, with several senators venting to their anger at the administration. Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster took Van Buren to task for his trade policies, while his southern colleagues, Senators Stephen Miller of South Carolina and George Poindexter of Mississippi, took aim at Van Buren's personal life. When Missouri's Alexander Buckner rose to Van Buren's defense, asserting that only a "liar" would accuse Van Buren of malfeasance or misconduct, Vice President Calhoun ruled him out of order. Georgia senator John Forsyth, a staunch Jackson man, pointedly reminded the vice president, "[I]f you remember your own decisions you must know that you are grossly out of order for this interference. "Forsyth clearly intended to taunt Calhoun, not to raise a substantive objection, since the Senate had, four years earlier, revised its rules to authorize the presiding officer to call a member to order.

The debate over Van Buren's appointment ended in a tied vote-orchestrated, one scholar suggests, to give the vice president the "distinction and honor of defeating Van Buren's nomination." Calhoun, as expected, cast his vote against the nomination, a decision that, Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton predicted, "elected a Vice President." But Benton was only partially correct. Rigid in defense of his principles, but wholly lacking the abundant political skills of the "Little Magician," Calhoun had played into Van Buren's hands throughout his second term as vice president. His decision to assume control of the South Carolina nullification movement had already killed his presidential prospects. Van Buren would become the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1832 and would succeed Jackson as president four years later.

Calhoun spent the remainder of the year in the Senate disheartened by the enactment of the 1832 tariff. That measure was intended to reconcile northern manufacturers and all but the most die-hard free traders, but, in one scholar's assessment, it "satisfied neither protectionists nor free traders." "It is, in truth," Calhoun wrote to a kinsman as the Senate labored over the tariff in early March 1832, "hard to find a midle [sic] position, where the principle of protection is asserted to be essential on one side, and fatal on the other. It involves not the question of concession, but surrender." In early July, a despairing Calhoun offered a gloomy précis of the Senate's action on the tariff:

We have spent a long & fruitless season. The Tariff Bill was late last evening ordered to the 3d. reading in the senate with many amendments all going to increase the burden on us. Every southern member voted against it including the South West, with the exception of the Senators from Louisiana. The question is no longer one of free trade, but liberty and despotism. The hope of the country now rests on our gallant little State. Let every Carolinian do his duty.T hose who do not join us now intend unqualified submission.

Senator Calhoun

In South Carolina, where antitariff sentiments had reached a fever pitch, Calhoun found it increasingly difficult to contain the deadly forces that he had unwittingly unleashed. Nullifiers gained control of the state legislature in the fall 1832 election. The new legislature promptly called for a nullification convention, which passed an ordinance declaring the 1828 and 1832 tariffs void as of February 1, 1833. The Ordinance of Nullification also warned that, if the administration resorted to coercion to collect the offensive duties, South Carolina would "proceed to organize a separate government." An irate Jackson ordered reinforcements to the federal installations surrounding Charleston Harbor but soon announced his support for a revised tariff. On December 10, he proclaimed nullification "incompatible with the existence of the Union."

Calhoun would help defuse this explosive situation, but not as vice president. Elected to the Senate to replace Robert Hayne, he resigned the vice presidency on December 28, 1832, more than two months before his term was up. Except for a brief stint as secretary of state during John Tyler's administration, he spent the rest of his life in the Senate, valiantly defending his state and attempting to reconcile its interests with those of the nation at large. Undaunted by rumors that Jackson intended to try him for treason if the impasse over nullification resulted in an armed confrontation, Calhoun joined forces with Henry Clay to help guide through the Senate a revised tariff, acceptable to the southern states. The nullifiers, encouraged by the prospect of a more equitable tariff, and counseled by cool-headed emissaries from Virginia to show restraint, postponed the effective date of the ordinance until March 4. Jackson's supporters had, in the meantime, introduced a measure to force South Carolina's compliance with the old tariff, which passed the Senate by overwhelming margins. Calhoun and eight of his fellow senators stalked out of the chamber in protest when the Senate adopted the "Force bill," but Jackson never had occasion to employ its provisions against the nullifiers. The crisis passed after Congress approved both the revised tariff and the Force bill shortly before adjourning on March 3, 1833. Calhoun returned to South Carolina firmly convinced that nullification had "dealt the fatal blow" to the tariff.

For the next several years, Calhoun remained aloof from the Jacksonian coalition, which had become known as the Democratic Party. But during Van Buren's administration, from 1837 to 1841, he set aside his longstanding aversion to "the Little Magician" and risked the wrath of his fellow South Carolinians to support the independent treasury plan, Van Buren's solution to the credit and currency problems that he and Calhoun believed responsible for the 1837 depression. Alarmed at the prospect that Whig presidential candidate William Henry Harrison would back tariff concessions for special interests, Calhoun rejoined the Democrats in 1840 and began making plans to enter the 1844 presidential race.

Hoping to present himself as an independent candidate with no institutional affiliation, Calhoun resigned from the Senate on March 3, 1843. His campaign faltered, however, when several prominent Virginia Democrats backed Van Buren and the New York City convention followed suit. Calhoun consoled himself by focusing his attention on his farm, badly in debt after several years of depressed cotton prices, and his family, torn by protracted financial disputes between Calhoun's son, Andrew Pickens Calhoun, and his son-in-law, Thomas Green Clemson. In mid-March 1844, he accepted President John Tyler's offer of an appointment to succeed Secretary of State Abel Upshur, who had been killed by an exploding cannon during an outing on the ship Princeton. Calhoun remained at the State Department until Tyler's term ended on March 3, 1845, participating in the final stages of the negotiations for the Texas Annexation Treaty.

Calhoun returned to the Senate in November 1845 and remained there for the rest of his life. Increasingly defensive about the institution of slavery as the abolition movement gained momentum, and agitated at the growing discord between the slaveholding and free states, he spoke, as he informed the Senate in 1847, as "a Southern man and a slaveholder." As secretary of state Calhoun had strongly supported the annexation of Texas. After Pennsylvania representative David Wilmot offered his famous proviso as an amendment to an administration war bill, however, the South Carolina senator realized that the acquisition of additional territory would inevitably heighten the sectional conflict over slavery. The Wilmot Proviso, which would have barred slavery from all lands acquired from Mexico, pushed Calhoun into the anti-administration camp. He vehemently opposed the war policy of President James K. Polk, warning that the acquisition of Mexican territory, with its population of "pure Indians and by far the larger portion of the residue mixed blood," would corrupt the nation's culture and institutions.

By 1850, the precarious balance between the slaveholding and free states was again at risk. California's petition to enter the Union as a free state threatened to upset the delicate equilibrium. Other unresolved issues, too, including slavery in the District of Columbia and the enforcement of fugitive slave laws, loomed large on the horizon during the final weeks of Calhoun's life. To resolve the impasse, Calhoun's old friend and rival, Henry Clay, on January 29, 1850, offered a series of proposals, collectively known as the Compromise of 1850. Clay proposed that California enter the Union as a free state and that Congress agree to impose no restrictions on slavery in the New Mexico and Utah territories. The compromise also provided that Congress would not prohibit or regulate slavery in the District of Columbia, would abolish the slave trade in the District, and would require northern states to comply with fugitive slave laws. Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster sought Calhoun's support for the compromise, but the South Carolinian, vehemently opposed to abolishing the slave trade in the nation's capital and admitting California as a free state, refused to endorse the plan.

On March 4, a dispirited and emaciated Calhoun, his body so ravaged by tuberculosis that he could no longer walk unassisted and his once penetrating voice so weak that he could no longer speak, presented his final address to the Senate. Virginia senator James Masonspoke for Calhoun, who sat nearby, his pitiful frame huddled in his chair. Only an immediate halt to antislavery agitation and a constitutional amendment to preserve the balance between North and South would save the Union, Calhoun warned. Even senators who had long considered Calhoun a disunionist were shocked when Mason pronounced his ultimatum: if the northern states were unwilling to reconcile their differences with the South "on the broad principle of justice and duty, say so; and let the States we both represent agree to separate and part in peace." Three days later, Senator Webster delivered his famous "Seventh of March" speech, a ringing plea for compromise and Union that Calhoun interrupted with a resolute, "No sir! the Union can be broken"-one of his last utterances in the Senate.

The Senate ultimately approved Clay's compromise, not as a package, but as separate items. Calhoun died on March 31, 1850, convinced that his beloved South would one day withdraw from the Union he had labored so long and hard to strengthen and preserve. Even in death, he was a controversial figure. Senator Thomas Hart Benton refused to speak at the April 5 memorial service in the Senate Chamber; Calhoun was "not dead," he maintained. "There may be no vitality in his body, but there is in his doctrines." Senator Daniel Webster, one of the official mourners chosen by the Senate to accompany Calhoun's body to South Carolina, could not bring himself to perform this awkward and painful task. He took his leave from Calhoun at the Virginia landing as the funeral party departed for the South. Calhoun was buried in Charleston, in a crypt in St. Philip's churchyard.

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John C. Calhoun, 7th Vice President (1825-1832)

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John C. Calhoun assumed office as the nation's seventh vice president on March 4, 1825, during a period of extraordinary political ferment. The demise of the Federalist Party after the War of 1812 had not, as former president James Monroe had hoped, ushered in an "Era of Good Feelings," free from party divisions.

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Compiled by Kenneth Drexler, Digital Reference Specialist

The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with John C. Calhoun. This resource guide compiles links to digital materials related to Calhoun such as manuscripts, letters, broadsides, government documents, and images that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web site. In addition, it provides links to external Web sites focusing on Calhoun and a bibliography containing selected works for both a general audience and younger readers.

Library of Congress Web Site | External Web Sites | Selected Bibliography
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875

This collection contains a large selection of congressional material related to John C. Calhoun's political career as a member of the House of Representatives (1811-17), secretary of war (1817-25), vice president (1825-32), secretary of state (1844-45), and U.S. senator (1832-43 and 1845-50).

A selection of Calhoun's speeches:

Report of the Foreign Relations Committee, December 12, 1811

Commercial Treaty with Great Britain, January 9, 1816

Removal of the Deposits from the Bank of the United States, January 13, 1834

Repeal of the Force Act, April 9, 1834

Incendiary Publications through the Mails, February 4, 1836

Abolition Petitions, March 9, 1836

Sub-Treasury Bill, February 15, 1838

Support of the Veto Power, February 28, 1842

Oregon Bill, June 27, 1848

Compromise of 1850, March 4, 1850

The Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana

Alfred Whital Stern (1881-1960) of Chicago presented his outstanding collection of Lincolniana to the Library of Congress in 1953. Begun by Mr. Stern in the 1920s, the collection documents the life of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) both through writings by and about Lincoln as well as a large body of publications concerning the issues of the times including slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and related topics. The collection contains more than 11,100 items, including eleven items that reference John C. Calhoun.

Andrew Jackson Papers

The Andrew Jackson Papers contain more than 200 items to, from, or referring to John C. Calhoun.

The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress

The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress presents the papers of the nineteenth-century African-American abolitionist. The collection contains an article written by Douglass that responds to a speech by John C. Calhoun.

Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera

The Printed Ephemera collection comprises 28,000 primary source items dating from the seventeenth century to the present and encompasses key events and eras in American history. Search the bibliographic records and the full-text option to find items related to John C. Calhoun.

James Madison Papers, 1723 to 1859

The James Madison Papers from the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress consist of approximately 12,000 items captured in some 72,000 digital images. The Madison Papers contain five letters to or from John C. Calhoun.

Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606 to 1827

The Thomas Jefferson Papers contain fifteen items to, from, or referring to John C. Calhoun.

Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years

In honor of the Manuscript Division's centennial, its staff has selected for online display approximately ninety representative documents spanning from the fifteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.

Chronicling America

This site allows you to search and view millions of historic American newspaper pages from 1789-1924. Search this collection to find newspaper articles that reference John C. Calhoun from this time period.

A selection of articles related to Calhoun includes:

"Mr. Calhoun at Fort Hill," Edgefield Advertiser. (Edgefield, S.C.), August 8, 1849.

"Speech of Mr. Calhoun, of South Carolina, Delivered in the Senate of the United States on the 4th of March, 1850, on the Slavery Question," The North-Carolina Standard. (Raleigh, N.C.), March 13, 1850.

"Death of the Hon. John C. Calhoun," Tarboro' Press. (Tarborough, Edgecombe Co., N.C.), April 6, 1850.

American Treasures of the Library of Congress: Compromise of 1850

Exhibit on Senators John C. Calhoun's and Daniel Webster's speeches from the Compromise of 1850 debate.

Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC)

Search PPOC using the subject heading Calhoun, John C.--(John Caldwell),--1782-1850 to find prints, photographs, political cartoons, and other digital images related to Calhoun. Search all text fields in PPOC using the phrase John Calhoun to locate additional images.

Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present

The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States, including Calhoun's home, Fort Hill, which is now located on the campus of Clemson University in South Carolina.

January 13

President Andrew Jackson wrote Vice President Martin Van Buren expressing his opposition to South Carolina's defiance of federal authority during the Nullification Crisis. The crisis was resolved without bloodshed in March 1833. Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, who had left the vice presidency at the end of 1832 to serve South Carolina in the Senate, drafted a reduced tariff agreement that pacified South Carolina while allowing the Federal government to stand firm.

March 18

On March 18, 1782, John C. Calhoun was born near Abbeville, South Carolina. Calhoun served as a congressman, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, and vice president of the United States.

Digital Reference Section Web Guides
Primary Documents in American History

This site offers a list of some of the most important documents in American history from 1763 to 1877, including documents related to Calhoun such as the Nullification Proclamation and Compromise of 1850.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress: John C. Calhoun

This publication contains a short biography of every member of Congress from 1774 to the present, including John C. Calhoun. It also provides a selected bibliography and a list of research collections related to Calhoun.

Clemson University: History

Fort Hill, the home of John C. Calhoun from 1825 until his death in 1850, is located on the campus of Clemson University. This site contains information about Fort Hill, as well as biographical information on Calhoun and his family.

United States Senate

The Art and History section of the U.S. Senate's Web site contains the following information on John C. Calhoun:

Calhoun, John C. Speeches of John C. Calhoun. Delivered in the Congress of the United States from 1811 to the Present Time. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1843.
LC Call Number: E337.8 .C15 [ Catalog Record] [ Full Text]

Cheek, H. Lee, Jr., ed. John C. Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2003.
LC Call Number: E337.8 .C13 2003 [ Catalog Record]

Crall, Richard K., ed. The Works of John C. Calhoun. 1851-56; rpt. New York: Russell & Russell, 1968.
LC Call Number: E337.8 .C143 [ Catalog Record] [ Full Text]

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john c. calhoun senate senator congress bibliography guide virtual program service digital reference section library of congress

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Compiled by Kenneth Drexler, Digital Reference Specialist The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with John C. Calhoun. This resource guide compiles links to digital materials related to Calhoun such as manuscripts, letters, broadsides, government documents, and images that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web site.

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What to the Slave is the 4th of July?

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‘What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?’: Descendants Read Frederick Douglass' Speech  | NPR

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Sojourner Truth." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Sojourner Truth." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth.

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A former slave, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women's rights in the nineteenth century. Learn more at womenshistory.org.

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The electrifying speeches of Sojourner Truth - Daina Ramey Berry

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Sojourner Truth was born into slavery and escaped to freedom. Her prominence quickly rose when she advocated for the abolition of slavery and women's rights.

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Short Biography video

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Frederick Douglass: First African American Nominated for Vice President | Biography

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Check out Freedom on the Move, which looks at escaped slave ads and provides lesson plans for incorporating them into instruction.

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The real Uncle Tom

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From its very first moments in print on March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was a smashing success. It sold 3,000 copies on its first day, and Frederick Douglass reported that 5,000 copies-the entire first print run-were purchased within four days. By May 3, the Boston Morning Post declared that "everybody has read it, is reading, or is about to read it."

According to reports at the time, it took 17 printing presses running around the clock to keep up with demand. By the end of its first year in print, the book had sold over 300,000 copies in the United States alone, going on to become the best-selling novel of the 19th century.

In Canada, a former enslaved laborer and aging Methodist minister named Josiah Henson-whose life story bore uncanny resemblances to Stowe's titular character-immediately understood its importance.

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Born near Port Tobacco, Maryland, around 1789, Henson's first memory was of his father being whipped, having his ear cut off, and sold south-all as punishment for striking a white man who had attempted to rape his wife. He never saw his father again.

Henson was later separated from his mother and sold to a child trafficker, but soon fell deathly ill. The slave trader offered the boy to Henson's mother's owner, an alcoholic gambler named Isaac Riley, for a bargain: free of charge if the young Henson died, a barter of some horseshoeing work if he survived.

But he did recover, and Henson and his mother were enslaved about 12 miles from Washington, D.C., on Riley's plantation. He endured countless beatings as a child-especially after an ill-fated attempt to learn to read.

Henson had great physical strength and leadership ability, and eventually became Riley's market man in the nation's capital. As the person in charge of selling all his master's farm produce, he rubbed shoulders with eminent lawyers and businessmen and learned the skills of running a business.

Despite the fact that he wouldn't learn to read until much later in life, Henson also became a great preacher, memorizing verses and relying on his eloquence and natural sense of humor to connect with parishioners. A white minister convinced him to secretly raise money to purchase his own freedom while traveling between the Riley family's farms. The minister arranged for churches to host Henson, and he raised $350 towards his emancipation, but Riley swindled him out of the money and tried to sell him south to New Orleans. Henson narrowly avoided that harsh fate through a highly providential twist of events: Riley's nephew Amos, the young man tasked with selling Henson, contracted malaria. Rather than letting the son die, Henson loaded him on a steamship and returned north. In 1830, Henson ran away with his wife and two youngest children; they walked more than 600 miles to Canada.

Once in a new land, Henson helped start in 1841 a freeman settlement called the British American Institute, in an area called Dawn, which became known as one of the final stops on the Underground Railroad. Henson repeatedly returned to the U.S. to guide 118 other slaves to freedom. It was a massively dangerous undertaking, but Henson saw a greater purpose than simply living out his life in Ontario, Canada. In addition to his service to the school, Henson ran a farm, started a gristmill, bred horses, and built a sawmill for high-quality black lumber- so good, in fact, that it won him a medal at the first World's Fair in London ten years later.

Before the Civil War, Henson frequently traveled unhindered between Ontario and Boston, where he often preached. During one such trip, Henson befriended the abolitionist Samuel Atkins Eliot, a former mayor of Boston and state legislator; Eliot would later serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Impressed with Henson, Eliot offered to pen the story of his life as a memoir. That book, titled The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself, was published in early 1849.

Henson's book garnered attention at the abolitionist reading room in Boston as well as in like-minded households throughout the North. On one of his trips home from Boston, Henson took a detour to visit a woman who was about to write a book of her own. As a later edition of Henson's memoir recalls:

"I was in the vicinity of Andover, Mass., in the year 1849, where Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe resided. She sent for me and my travelling companion, Mr. George Clark, a white gentleman, who had a fine voice for singing, and usually sang at my meetings to add to their interest. We went to Mrs. Stowe's house, and she was deeply interested in the story of my life and misfortunes, and had me narrate its details to her. She said she was glad it had been published, and hoped it would be of great service, and would open the eyes of the people to the enormity of the crime of holding men in bondage. She manifested so much interest in me, that I told her about the peculiarities of many slaveholders, and the slaves in the region where I had lived for forty-two years. My experiences had been more varied than those of the majority of slaves..."

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In March 1851, Stowe wrote to Gamaliel Bailey, editor and publisher of The National Era, a Washington antislavery paper, and offered him the story she had been working on, which she thought would run for three or four installments. The plot, at its most basic, details the journeys of two enslaved laborers on the precipice of being sold off by their owner, a Kentucky farmer in arrears. One, named Harry, flees with his mother, Eliza, to the North, eventually ending up in Canada, while the other, Uncle Tom, is transported down the Mississippi River, where he is eventually sold to a vicious Louisiana plantation owner. Tom's faith nearly falters, but a pair of visions places him back on firm ground. After encouraging two women to escape north, Tom is beaten to death when he refuses to reveal where they've gone; an attempt by Tom's original owner to purchase Tom back arrives too late. Upon returning to Kentucky, the farmer's son sets all of his late father's enslaved free, encouraging them to remember Tom's sacrifice whenever they see his cabin.

Uncle Tom's Cabin debuted in the Era on June 5, 1851, and it ran in 41 weekly installments over the following ten months, and immediately grabbed the capital city's attention. The paper's subscriber base grew by 26 percent, and an estimated 50,000 people read Stowe's story in serial form, spurring John P. Jewett and Company to publish it as a novel in two volumes of 312 pages each.

Henson wrote of the release: ""When this novel of Mrs. Stowe came out, it shook the foundations of this world... It shook the Americans out of their shoes and of their shirts. It left some of them on the sandbar barefooted and scratching their heads, so they came to the conclusion that the whole thing was a fabrication."

Indeed, the backlash against the novel came rapidly and rabidly. Critics argued that Stowe's writing was far too emotional to impact events in the real world. After all, it was a novel. It wasn't based on facts, they said. And in any case, some said, she'd overlooked many of the "benefits" of slavery, including romantic love between an enslaved woman and her master.

Stowe wasn't concerned about the politics. To her, an ardent abolitionist and daughter of a world-famous preacher, slavery was a religious and emotional challenge. Her goal, as stated in the first edition preface, was "to awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race." On this point she certainly hit her mark, with many moderate antislavery advocates praising the book for putting a human face on slavery. If the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 had been a tipping point, then Uncle Tom's Cabin was a hard shove toward abolitionism.

Proslavery advocates saw the novel as sectarian propaganda. They insisted that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, and that Stowe had fabricated an unrealistic, one-dimensional picture of slavery in the South. Pro-slavery newspapers were mocking and sarcastic in their reviews, which had titles like "More Anti-Slavery Fiction," "A Few Facts for Mrs. Stowe," and "Uncle Tom Mania." Editors lamented that " Uncle Tom's Cabin seems fated to be an ever-springing fountain of discord," and "We tremble for the traditional chivalry of the South."

Rather than letting the media and propagandist anti-Tom novels gain attention and discredit the truths behind her novel, Stowe decided to fight fire with fact. Her response to critics was another book, published in early 1853, called The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon Which the Story Is Founded, Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work. A giant annotated bibliography of her sources, the book pointing to hundreds of documented cases of real-life incidents that were similar or identical to those portrayed in her story.

Stowe had named names. She had described the various people who had inspired the characters of Mr. Haley, George Harris, Eliza, Simon Legree, and the rest. One of those characters, of course, was of particular interest. Who was Uncle Tom?

Stowe wrote in The Key: "The character of Uncle Tom has been objected to as improbable; and yet the writer has received more confirmations of that character, and from a great variety of sources, than of any other in the book." Stowe spends several pages describing the inspiration for various scenes in Uncle Tom's story, and then she declares: "A last instance parallel with that of Uncle Tom is to be found in the published memoirs of the venerable Josiah Henson . . . now pastor of the missionary settlement at Dawn, in Canada."

There were significant overlaps between the lives of Josiah Henson and Tom, and readers familiar with Henson's story immediately saw them. Their real-life and fictional slave owners both separated a mother from her child while she begged him not to tear the family apart. Both Josiah and Tom lived on plantations in Kentucky. Legree constantly beat Tom, and Tom was sold to pay his owner's debts before being sent to Louisiana, a fate Josiah just barely escaped. Both would cross the Ohio River in their daring escapes. Above all, it was Josiah's faith in God in the face of hardship that fused him to Stowe's hero, for both Tom and Josiah were strongly religious men.

The parallels were close enough for prominent African-Americans to take notice. On April 15, 1853, Martin Robison Delany, one of the first three black men admitted to Harvard Medical School, and the only black officer who received the rank of major during the Civil War, wrote a letter to Frederick Douglass in which he confirmed Stowe's estimation of Josiah. He wrote, "It is now certain, that the Rev. JOSIAH HENSON, of Dawn, Canada West, is the real Uncle Tom, the Christian hero, in Mrs. Stowe's far-famed book of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'"

Delany suggested to Douglass that perhaps Stowe owed Josiah something more substantial than a citation in her book: "Since Mrs. Stowe and Messrs. Jewett & Co., Publishers, have realized so great an amount of money from the sale of a work founded upon this good old man, whose living testimony has to be brought to sustain this great book . . . would it be expecting too much to suggest, that they-the publishers-present Father Henson . . . but a portion of the profits? I do not know what you may think about it; but it strikes me that this would be but just and right."

Not only would Henson-the real Uncle Tom-never receive a dime from Stowe's publishers, history itself didn't remember him kindly because of his connection to the fictional hero. After the publication of Stowe's novel, theater owners adapted the story for the stage, producing "Tom shows," better known as "minstrel shows" that inverted version the novel's plot. Played by white men in blackface, Tom was a caricature, an old hunchback with poor English who would happily sell out his own race to curry favor with his owner. Even though the novel was the best-selling book of the century, considerably more people saw one of these racist performances than read the book. That perversion of the name "Uncle Tom," has stuck ever since.

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Among all the readers of Stowe's Key, there was one whose influence could not be overstated. According to the Library of Congress's circulation records, President Abraham Lincoln borrowed The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin on June 16, 1862, and returned it 43 days later, on July 29. The dates correspond exactly to the time during which he drafted the Emancipation Proclamation. We may never know the degree to which Harriet Beecher Stowe influenced Abraham Lincoln himself. But it is clear that the northern writer used her celebrity platform to powerfully sway public opinion toward emancipation. And during the critical time when Lincoln was crafting the Emancipation Proclamation, he had Stowe's Key-and Josiah Henson's story- near at hand.

Which would be fitting as the original offering played a major role in Lincoln's election. His Republican Party had distributed 100,000 copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin during the presidential campaign of 1860 as a way to stir up abolitionist support. Without the abolitionist press and Stowe's book, it's possible that Lincoln would not have garnered enough support to be elected President. As Radical Republican leader and U.S. Senator Charles Sumner declared, "Had there been no Uncle Tom's Cabin, there would have been no Lincoln in the White House."

For his part, Henson used the publication of Stowe's books to agitate for change in the United States. He re-published his memoir and used the funds to purchase his brother's freedom. He supported black families whose husbands and fathers went off to fight in the Civil War. He ran businesses in Canada to employ black refugees. In 1876, at age 87, Henson did a 100-plus city speaking tour of the United Kingdom to relieve himself of debts shouldered on behalf of the work at Dawn, and Queen Victoria invited him to Windsor Castle. Sixteen years after the Civil War ended, Rutherford B. Hayes entertained him at the White House.

Henson died in Dresden, Ontario, in 1883 at the age of 93; the New York Times obituary included his literary connection in the first line.

His funeral was one of the largest in Dresden's history. Bells rang from the churches, and most of the businesses closed for the service. Black musicians performed hymns, and 50 wagons followed his casket in a nearly two-mile procession to the graveside. Thousands of black and white attendees paid their respects.

Henson's cabin in Dresden is now a small museum, and more than 200 of his descendants are still alive today. The village of Dresden is still home to hundreds of descendants of enslaved laborers, men and women who first settled in the area as fugitives in Josiah Henson's time.

Though history has been unkind to Uncle Tom, there's hope that his reputation as a martyr can be resuscitated as readers extricate him from the more negative connotations. Were he still alive today, one would hope Henson could still proudly repeat his words upon learning of his connection to the novel's hero: "From that time to the present, I have been called 'Uncle Tom,' and I feel proud of the title. If my humble words in any way inspired that gifted lady to write... I have not lived in vain; for I believe that her book was the beginning of the glorious end."

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The Story of Josiah Henson, the Real Inspiration for 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'

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From its very first moments in print on March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was a smashing success. It sold 3,000 copies on its first day, and Frederick Douglass reported that 5,000 copies-the entire first print run-were purchased within four days.

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An NPR story on the negative connotations of the term with folklorist, Patricia Turner

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MICHEL MARTIN, host:

As we've just said, the apology for slavery from the House of Representatives is just the latest public act in the century-long drama of slavery in the U.S. Fiction has shaped much of how America has viewed the lives of enslaved Americans. From "Gone to the Wind," to "Roots," to "Amistad," the public imagination has evolved from seeing slaves as happy servants to victims of history to defiant heroes who demanded that the country live up to its core beliefs.

But "Uncle Tom," is the most enduring fictional slave. He's the title character in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the novel written by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852. The bestseller was meant to rally the moral sentiments of whites against the horrors of slavery, and it succeeded. But the character of "Uncle Tom" has become synonymous with servility and self-hatred.

Today, we reexamine the character of "Uncle Tom," as part of NPR's In Character series, a look at the fictional characters who have defined American life. With us to help unravel the story of "Uncle Tom" is Patricia Turner, folklorist and professor of African-American studies at the University of California, at Davis. Welcome.

Prof. PATRICIA TURNER (African-American Studies, University of California, Davis; Folklorist): I'm glad to be here.

MARTIN: Professor Turner, it's my understanding that "Uncle Tom" was based on a real slave in Maryland named Josiah Henson. Can you tell us a little bit more about him, and how did Harriet Beecher Stowe know about him?

Prof. TURNER: Harriet Beecher Stowe was very offended by the passage of the fugitive slave bill in 1850 that required northerners who were protecting blacks from - on the Underground Railroad. It required them to return them to the South and to slavery, and she decided to write a book to combat that influence.

To do her research, she looked into slave narratives, which were accounts of very real slaves who had escaped along the Underground Railroad into freedom, one of whom was Josiah Henson. She used a variety of these texts to put together the characters in "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

MARTIN: As I mentioned, the book became a bestseller. How big of a bestseller was it back in the day?

Prof. TURNER: It outsold the Bible when it was published. They had to keep the printing presses open 24 hours a day. It's commonly called "the first bestseller," because there had been nothing like this in popular literature prior to "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

MARTIN: You wrote a book about black images and their influence on culture. How much of an influence is "Uncle Tom" on today's culture? Can you give us a sense of just how much - I mean, let's set aside the whole stereotype, pejorative aspect of it, but just as a story. How important is it in the culture?

Prof. TURNER: If you look at the history of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," it's a widely successful book in the 1850s. By the late 1850s, producers of dramatic stage shows, minstrel shows, had embraced it and were starting to stage "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in theaters throughout the United States, throughout England, really throughout the world.

By the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Alva Edison films "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to experiment with film. It's one of the very first things that we have on film, and throughout the rest of the 20th century, we've got classic comic books, we've got cartoons, we've got stage shows.

When Showtime emerges as a cable channel, one of the first things it does is "Uncle Tom's Cabin." So it's had an enormous impact for the past, you know, 120 years.

MARTIN: Do you remember when you first read "Uncle Tom's Cabin"?

Prof. TURNER: I actually read it in about fifth grade, which is young. I read it so young, that I - I think I'm one of the few African-Americans who read the novel before being really familiar with the slur. So I don't remember ever hearing my parents referring to anyone as an "Uncle Tom" before I had actually read the novel.

MARTIN: So does that make you crazy when you - having read the novel at such a young age, did it make you crazy when you heard people refer to people that way? And did you want to go, no, no, but...

Prof. TURNER: Absolutely, and at that tender age, all of the sentimentality that Stowe incorporates into the novel really struck me. I mean, I wept when Uncle Tom died at the end, and I didn't see him as any kind of a sell-out, and so I've always found my self wanting to correct people who accuse someone of being an "Uncle Tom."

It was a really rough time for me during the Clarence Thomas hearings because it was very common in the black community to refer to Clarence Thomas as an "Uncle Tom." And my understanding of Justice Thomas, you know, he wasn't good enough to be the real Uncle Tom. I couldn't imagine him being someone who would have let himself be beat to death rather than reveal where these two black women were.

MARTIN: What is it that African-Americans hate about this story?

Prof. TURNER: Many African-Americans don't hate the real story that Stowe wrote. The Uncle Tom character that she gives us is extraordinarily Christian. The climax of the story really comes when Uncle Tom is asked to reveal where two slave women are hiding, who had been sexually abused by their master. And he refuses. Knowing that he is going to be beaten to death, he refused to say where they are. And African-Americans who have read the novel can appreciate what kind of heroism that took for a black man to sign away his life to save two black women.

Unfortunately, the stage depictions don't include that part of the story. They grossly distort Uncle Tom into an older man than he is in the novel, a man whose English is poor, a man who will do quite the opposite, who will sell out any black man if it will curry the favor of a white employer, a white master, a white mistress. It's that distorted character that is so objectionable to African-Americans.

MARTIN: How did that happen? It is quite remarkable that this is a book which was intended to, and in many ways succeeded in revealing to people who were not aware or chose not to pay attention to the horrors of slavery, I mean, the unimaginable brutality, the exploitation of women, the physical violence, all of that. It was meant to reveal this, and somehow or other this character, who is meant to be very brave and an example of, you know, Christian forbearance, turned into this - the sell-out. How did that happen?

Prof. TURNER: The producers of the early stage shows didn't think that they could attract an audience for the Uncle Tom as he was depicted by Stowe. They couldn't sell tickets to a theatrical production, the climax which would have been this man dying, rather than the revealing the whereabouts of these women.

They could sell tickets, as they had been successful by showing blacks in minstrel depictions, showing them liking to dance more than they liked to work, showing their insensitivity to each other, showing their willingness to tell the master or mistress what he or she wanted to hear. That sold tickets, and so those were the shows that they produced, staged and circulated throughout the world.

MARTIN: You're saying that this was a - that some of these sort of producers were modifying the story to fit commercial aims, but could part of that have just been racism? They just didn't want to accept the fact that African-Americans could be heroic figures. They didn't want to accept the brutality of slavery. I mean, there are slavery deniers, just like there are deniers of other, you know, genocides throughout history, right?

Prof. TURNER: Absolutely. I think they were interested in using their stage shows to revise the image of slavery that Stowe had, and other abolitionists had depicted in their literature. Stowe faced an enormous amount of criticism after the success of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" from the apologist for slaveries.

Even something like the film "Birth of A Nation," which was based on a novel entitled "The Clansman." The author of "The Clansman" said that he wrote that to counter the influence that the literary, the real "Uncle Tom's Cabin," had had. That it wasn't right for people to assume that slavery was this egregious institution and that slave owners were egregious individuals. He wanted to revisit and revise that to show how inferior blacks were and how superior white Southern planters were.

MARTIN: So that they would deserve their maltreatment.

Prof. TURNER: Exactly.

MARTIN: What about the real literary Uncle Tom? Is there any possibility of Uncle Tom's being redeemed to his original purpose? Has that ever happened? Do literary figures ever get restored to their original meaning, even if they have become something else in popular culture?

Prof. TURNER: I don't think the real Uncle Tom will ever be able to escape the shackles of the distorted Uncle Tom. I don't think that Stowe's character will ever be able to reclaim that. I think that if - if people interested in 19th century American literature take the time to read the novel, it gives them a grounding in what the abolitionists were trying to accomplish with the fight to abolish slavery.

MARTIN: Patricia Turner is a folklorist and author of "Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies," "Black Images and Their Influence on Culture," among other books. She joined us from UC Davis, where she is a professor of African-American and African studies. Thank you so much for speaking with us.

Prof. TURNER: It was nice to be with you.

Copyright © 2008 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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Why African-Americans Loathe 'Uncle Tom'

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Folklorist Patricia Turner discusses "Uncle Tom" - the lead character in the anti-slavery novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe - as part of NPR's In Character series. The series examines the fictional characters who have defined American life.

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By the President of the United States: A Proclamation [Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation]

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Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections Online: By the President of the United States: A Proclamation [Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation]

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The National Portrait Gallery is open Wednesdays through Sundays 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. at Eighth and G streets N.W. except for Dec. 25 and Jan. 20, 2021. Refer to Visit for visitor safety guidelines, including free timed-entry passes required for all ages.

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The National Portrait Gallery is open Wednesdays through Sundays 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. at Eighth and G streets N.W. except for Dec. 25 and Jan. 20, 2021. Refer to Visit for visitor safety guidelines, including free timed-entry passes required for all ages.

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Biography

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Biography from PBS

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The son of a merchant sailing master, William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1805. Due in large measure to the Embargo Act, which Congress had passed in 1807, the Garrison family fell on hard times while William was still young. In 1808 William’s father deserted the family…

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Biography from National Abolitionist Hall of Fame

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NATIONAL ABOLITION HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

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Born in Massachusetts in 1805, William Lloyd Garrison was an untiring reformer who worked for women's right to vote, civil rights, and prohibition, but he is best know for his "fierce opposition to slavery." He led the moral crusade for abolition of slavery in the United States. Garrison's lifelong interest in human rights first found expression in the early 1830s through the issue of slavery. He established the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832, and the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, and popularized the need for immediate, as opposed to gradual, abolition of slavery.

He founded The Liberator, an antislavery newspaper, in 1831, and was its outspoken editor until the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865. Though criticized heavily for his well-written editorial opinions, and imprisoned for a short time for these editorials, he refused to be silenced. When speaking in public gatherings, he was frequently heckled by proslavery interests in the North, and physical threats to his personal safety were common. In October of 1835, he was tied up and dragged through the streets of Boston with the threat of being lynched for his antislavery views. His preferred tactics of non-violence, and the moral persuasion of slaveholders concerning the sin of slavery were the keystones for a group of active and influential abolitionists centered in Boston.

Garrison's view of the Constitution of the United States as a proslavery document alienated him from political activity, and from those abolitionist colleagues who saw office acquisition and legislation as a valuable route to the emancipation of slaves. Garrison refused to vote while the government sanctioned slavery. His opposition to political activity fostered a split in abolitionist ranks in 1840 which eventually led to the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for President in 1860 by those who favored political activity. Garrison did not support the Civil War until Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation.

It was Garrison who discovered the young and newly escaped slave Frederick Douglass in Massachusetts in 1841, and encouraged Douglass to speak and share his experiences.

​It was Douglass who pointed out in 1874, that the continued discrimination against African-Americans following emancipation reflected the lack of moral commitment on the part of most Americans to the process of achieving equality among the races - a fact which exonerated Garrison's long-term emphasis on the need for moral persuasion of the public mind before equality between the races could be achieved.

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Born in Massachusetts in 1805, William Lloyd Garrison was an untiring reformer who worked for women's right to vote, civil rights, and prohibition, but he is best know for his "fierce opposition to slavery." He led the moral crusade for abolition of slavery in the United States.

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Photograph

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DocsTeach is a product of the National Archives education division. Our mission is to engage, educate, and inspire all learners to discover and explore the records of the American people preserved by the National Archives. The National Archives and Records Administration is the nation's record keeper.

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The first issue of The Liberator

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The first issue of The Liberator, dated 1 January 1831, contains an editorial by its founder William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison, known in Boston as an incendiary public speaker in the antislavery cause, responded to his critics: "It is pretended, that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective, and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true."

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The first issue of The Liberator, dated 1 January 1831, contains an editorial by its founder William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison, known in Boston as an incendiary public speaker in the antislavery cause, responded to his critics: "It is pretended, that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective, and the precipitancy of my measures.

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Masthead from The Liberator

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Disunion: Address of the AASS

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Disunion. Address of the American anti-slavery society;

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Disunion. Address of the American anti-slavery society;

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Click here for the text of this historical document.

David Walker's Appeal, arguably the most radical of all anti-slavery documents, caused a great stir when it was published in September of 1829 with its call for slaves to revolt against their masters. David Walker, a free black originally from the South wrote, ". . .they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us. . . therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, kill or be killed. . . and believe this, that it is no more harm for you to kill a man who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty." Even the outspoken William Lloyd Garrison objected to Walker's approach in an editorial about the Appeal.

The goal of the Appeal was to instill pride in its black readers and give hope that change would someday come. It spoke out against colonization, a popular movement that sought to move free blacks to a colony in Africa. America, Walker believed, belonged to all who helped build it. He went even further, stating, "America is more our country than it is the whites -- we have enriched it with our blood and tears." He then asked, "will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood?"

Copies of the were discovered in Savannah, Georgia, within weeks of its publication. Within several months copies were found from Virginia to Louisiana. Walker revised his Appeal. He died in August of 1830, shortly after publishing the third edition.

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Click here for the text of this historical document. David Walker's Appeal, arguably the most radical of all anti-slavery documents, caused a great stir when it was published in September of 1829 with its call for slaves to revolt against their masters. David Walker, a free black originally from the South wrote, ".

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Biography

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Nat Turner was the leader of a violent enslaved people rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831.

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Biography from PBS

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Nat Turner was born on October 2, 1800, in Southampton County, Virginia, the week before Gabriel was hanged. While still a young child, Nat was overheard describing events that had happened before he was born. This, along with his keen intelligence, and other signs marked him in the eyes of his people as a prophet "intended for some great purpose." A deeply religious man, he "therefore studiously avoided mixing in society, and wrapped [him]self in mystery, devoting [his] time to fasting and praying."

In 1821, Turner ran away from his overseer, returning after thirty days because of a vision in which the Spirit had told him to "return to the service of my earthly master." The next year, following the death of his master, Samuel Turner, Nat was sold to Thomas Moore. Three years later, Nat Turner had another vision. He saw lights in the sky and prayed to find out what they meant. Then "... while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn, as though it were dew from heaven, and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood; and then I found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens."

On May 12, 1828, Turner had his third vision: "I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first... And by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work, and until the first sign appeared I should conceal it from the knowledge of men; and on the appearance of the sign... I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons."

At the beginning of the year 1830, Turner was moved to the home of Joseph Travis, the new husband of Thomas Moore's widow. His official owner was Putnum Moore, still a young child. Turner described Travis as a kind master, against whom he had no complaints.

Then, in February, 1831, there was an eclipse of the sun. Turner took this to be the sign he had been promised and confided his plan to the four men he trusted the most, Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam. They decided to hold the insurrection on the 4th of July and began planning a strategy. However, they had to postpone action because Turner became ill.

On August 13, there was an atmospheric disturbance in which the sun appeared bluish-green. This was the final sign, and a week later, on August 21, Turner and six of his men met in the woods to eat a dinner and make their plans. At 2:00 that morning, they set out to the Travis household, where they killed the entire family as they lay sleeping. They continued on, from house to house, killing all of the white people they encountered. Turner's force eventually consisted of more than 40 slaves, most on horseback.

By about mid-day on August 22, Turner decided to march toward Jerusalem, the closest town. By then word of the rebellion had gotten out to the whites; confronted by a group of militia, the rebels scattered, and Turner's force became disorganized. After spending the night near some slave cabins, Turner and his men attempted to attack another house, but were repulsed. Several of the rebels were captured. The remaining force then met the state and federal troops in final skirmish, in which one slave was killed and many escaped, including Turner. In the end, the rebels had stabbed, shot and clubbed at least 55 white people to death.

Nat Turner hid in several different places near the Travis farm, but on October 30 was discovered and captured. His "Confession," dictated to physician Thomas R. Gray, was taken while he was imprisoned in the County Jail. On November 5, Nat Turner was tried in the Southampton County Court and sentenced to execution. He was hanged, and then skinned, on November 11.

In total, the state executed 55 people, banished many more, and acquitted a few. The state reimbursed the slaveholders for their slaves. But in the hysterical climate that followed the rebellion, close to 200 black people, many of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion, were murdered by white mobs. In addition, slaves as far away as North Carolina were accused of having a connection with the insurrection, and were subsequently tried and executed.

The state legislature of Virginia considered abolishing slavery, but in a close vote decided to retain slavery and to support a repressive policy against black people, slave and free.

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Africans in America/Part 3/Nat Turner's Rebellion

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Nat Turner was born on October 2, 1800, in Southampton County, Virginia, the week before Gabriel was hanged. While still a young child, Nat was overheard describing events that had happened before he was born. This, along with his keen intelligence, and other signs marked him in the eyes of his people as a prophet "intended for some great purpose."

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With the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States (1865-1869), an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states' rights views.

With the Assassination of Lincoln, the Presidency fell upon an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states' rights views. Although an honest and honorable man, Andrew Johnson was one of the most unfortunate of Presidents. Arrayed against him were the Radical Republicans in Congress, brilliantly led and ruthless in their tactics. Johnson was no match for them.

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1808, Johnson grew up in poverty. He was apprenticed to a tailor as a boy, but ran away. He opened a tailor shop in Greeneville, Tennessee, married Eliza McCardle, and participated in debates at the local academy.

Entering politics, he became an adept stump speaker, championing the common man and vilifying the plantation aristocracy. As a Member of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 1840's and '50's, he advocated a homestead bill to provide a free farm for the poor man.

During the secession crisis, Johnson remained in the Senate even when Tennessee seceded, which made him a hero in the North and a traitor in the eyes of most Southerners. In 1862 President Lincoln appointed him Military Governor of Tennessee, and Johnson used the state as a laboratory for reconstruction. In 1864 the Republicans, contending that their National Union Party was for all loyal men, nominated Johnson, a Southerner and a Democrat, for Vice President.

After Lincoln's death, President Johnson proceeded to reconstruct the former Confederate States while Congress was not in session in 1865. He pardoned all who would take an oath of allegiance, but required leaders and men of wealth to obtain special Presidential pardons.

By the time Congress met in December 1865, most southern states were reconstructed, slavery was being abolished, but "black codes" to regulate the freedmen were beginning to appear.

Radical Republicans in Congress moved vigorously to change Johnson's program. They gained the support of northerners who were dismayed to see Southerners keeping many prewar leaders and imposing many prewar restrictions upon Negroes.

The Radicals' first step was to refuse to seat any Senator or Representative from the old Confederacy. Next they passed measures dealing with the former slaves. Johnson vetoed the legislation. The Radicals mustered enough votes in Congress to pass legislation over his veto-the first time that Congress had overridden a President on an important bill. They passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established Negroes as American citizens and forbade discrimination against them.

A few months later Congress submitted to the states the Fourteenth Amendment, which specified that no state should "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

All the former Confederate States except Tennessee refused to ratify the amendment; further, there were two bloody race riots in the South. Speaking in the Middle West, Johnson faced hostile audiences. The Radical Republicans won an overwhelming victory in Congressional elections that fall.

In March 1867, the Radicals effected their own plan of Reconstruction, again placing southern states under military rule. They passed laws placing restrictions upon the President. When Johnson allegedly violated one of these, the Tenure of Office Act, by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him. He was tried by the Senate in the spring of 1868 and acquitted by one vote.

In 1875, Tennessee returned Johnson to the Senate. He died a few months later.

Learn more about Andrew Johnson's spouse, Eliza McCardle Johnson.

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With the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States (1865-1869), an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states' rights views.

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An article from NEH

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The National Endowment for the Humanities

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When the farmer complained, the school refused to let the wrongly accused man graduate. Stevens, unable to stomach this injustice, contacted the farmer on his own, fessed up, and made arrangements to pay damages. The farmer withdrew his complaint, and, within a few years, Stevens paid the farmer back. In gratitude, the farmer sent Stevens a hogshead of cider.

The anecdote demonstrates early on in his life Stevens's basic character-his rashness, his inconsistencies, his convictions, and his tenacity.

We know Thaddeus Stevens as an ardent abolitionist who championed the rights of blacks for decades-up to, during, and after the Civil War. With other Radical Republicans, he agitated for emancipation, black fighting units, and black suffrage. After the war, he favored dividing up Southern plantations among the freed slaves, embracing William Tecumseh Sherman's "forty acres and a mule." Throughout his career, he championed reforms in education and finance, but what seems to us today a minor cause-a growing hostility to freemasonry-was the spark that ignited his early political career.

Thaddeus, the second of four children, saw the light of day in a village in northern Vermont in 1792 and was named to honor Polish patriot Thaddeus Kościuszko. He was born with a clubfoot, and when he was twelve his father abandoned the family. Thad's mother held things together while he and his siblings were growing up, and she insisted her sons all get a decent education.

Just as Stevens was graduating from Dartmouth, he heard of a teaching opportunity in York, Pennsylvania. He traveled to the state's south-central county bordering the Mason-Dixon Line and took up the post, teaching Latin, Greek, English, math, science, and moral philosophy. At night, he studied law. He soon passed the bar exam and set up a practice in Adams County in the town of Gettysburg.

Stevens became known as a formidable opponent in court. Defending a Gettysburg man who was accused of killing a fellow worker with a scythe, Stevens skillfully employed an insanity defense. His client was found guilty, but Stevens's creative and vigorous advocacy was widely admired and his practice grew. In another early case, he represented a slave owner against a runaway slave, and won. Shortly afterward, however, he began representing runaway slaves and never changed sides on the issue again.

Future president James Buchanan worked with Stevens on a case being tried in York. During a break, Buchanan attempted to persuade the rising attorney to get involved in politics-on the side of the Jacksonian Democrats. Stevens declined, as he was still in search of the political party that best matched his beliefs.

An entrepreneur as well as a lawyer, Stevens founded an ironworks called Caledonia that he operated until 1863. The forge was destroyed by Confederate General Jubal Early on the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg. The decision to destroy the forge was entirely Early's. He justified the action by citing Stevens's hostility to slave owners' property in the South. Stevens was always highly regarded, though, by employees at Caledonia. When the forge was destroyed, he made sure his workers were not immediately cut off without income.

Stevens vehemently opposed secret societies, especially the Masons. During the colonial period and the Revolution, the Masons had found many adherents among the Founders. Freemasonry is a nondogmatic, ritualistic fraternal order whose members recognize a supreme being and are devoted to charitable work. But Stevens and others regarded the Masons, with their oaths and penalties, as elitist and a peril to democracy.

In the late 1820s, anti-Masonic feeling was on the rise, putting many local and national leaders who were active Masons on the defensive. In a letter dated January 11, 1835, to John Quincy Adams, Stevens sought the former president's views, which he felt might "materially aid the cause of pure Antimasonry." The Whigs in Pennsylvania found it easy to come together in opposition to President Andrew Jackson-a Mason-and his attack on the U.S. Bank. Stevens favored rechartering the Bank, while Jackson opposed it. Stevens and the Whigs believed firmly in sound money and high tariffs. Jacksonian democracy became their common enemy.

Stevens the lawyer took up more high-profile cases, at least once placing himself in the middle of a convoluted feud between the local anti-Masonic newspaper (which he would later come to own) and the local pro-Masonic newspaper. In 1833, he was elected to the state legislature as the representative from Adams County. In a speech in the State House in March 1834, he railed against Governor George Wolf and President Andrew Jackson for their policies regarding the Bank of the United States-policies which, Stevens felt, left Pennsylvania in debt and without credit: "A spendthrift Administration, regardless of every thing but the wants of their needy favorites, have squandered her treasure, deranged her finances, and loaded her people with burthens, . . . the hungry cormorants of office and plunder will hardly be sated!"

And there was more. "It makes the soul of the patriot die within him," he continued, "to see the heart's blood of this great state, sucked by the creeping vampyres, and her bones crushed by the Hyenas and Jackalls of party!" Then, with no intended irony regarding the bondage of African Americans, he observed, "Pennsylvania is so patient under tyranny, that slavery seems well to become her."

Drawing near the peroration, Stevens said, "When Rome was the sport of a despot, she had all the forms of freedom. Her Senate-her Tribunes and Aediles. But her Senators were the tools, and her Tribunes and Aediles the slaves of Caesar."

This early hyperbolic speech was seasoned with what became characteristic Stevens rhetoric. His tendency to loosely refer to any harsh reality in the lives of contemporary whites as slavery, however, dissipated as he reacted to other currents in the national debate.

When legislators from Virginia, Kentucky, and Mississippi insisted that abolitionists in other states refrain from criticizing the "peculiar institution," he answered them. "Every citizen of the non-slave holding states," he declared in May 1836, "has a right freely to think and publish his thoughts on any subject of national or state policy. Nor can he be compelled to confine his remarks to such subjects as affect only the state in which he resides." At the Pennsylvania Convention of 1837, he was the only member to vote against amendments that would exclude blacks from voting. He said he had not expected to hear it maintained "that GOD did not, out of one clay, create all mankind; nor to hear the Holy Scriptures cited as an apology and license for oppression."

Stevens's oral remarks and written correspondence have been gathered in The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, edited by Beverly Wilson Palmer and Holly Byers Ochoa and published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. "The Old Commoner," as he came to be known, had nearly indecipherable handwriting and destroyed many of his letters. The natural question is, Was he hiding something? Palmer thinks not, speculating that he merely discarded whatever he thought was incidental. But his remaining letters, plus his arguments before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, his speeches throughout the commonwealth, and, later, those in Congress, limn the arc of a remarkable career-one in which he agitated ceaselessly for educational and financial reform, an end to slavery, and universal black suffrage.

Stevens's legal work gained him a good income, and he was at one time Gettysburg's largest property holder. From 1821 to 1830, according to biographer Alphonse Miller, he participated in every case that went to the State Supreme Court from Adams County. As a state legislator, he gained attention while working with his sometime foe Governor Wolf to rescue an education law for free schools. On April 11, 1835, in the Pennsylvania House, Stevens eloquently expressed his hope that the "blessing of education . . . shall be carried home to the poorest child of the poorest inhabitant of the meanest hut of your mountains, so that even he may be prepared to act well his part in this land of freemen."

By the early 1840s, Stevens's fortunes as an anti-Mason Whig and a state legislator were turning against him. The undistinguished finale came during the Buckshot War-an unsettled few weeks following statewide elections marked by alleged corruption. At issue were lost election tallies in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia. When the new legislative session got underway, angry mobs with bowie knives and other weapons forced Stevens to leap from a window of the Capitol.

Stevens was now looking to move on and increase his law business, mainly so he could meet mounting debts incurred at Caledonia. He chose Lancaster-a Democratic city with a large Pennsylvania-German population, surrounded by farmland cultivated by thrifty farmers-a fair share of whom were wealthy and tended to support the Whigs.

Not long after he arrived in August 1842, Stevens purchased a townhouse just south of the central square. His new digs served as both residence and office. Lydia Hamilton Smith, a woman of color and a widow with two children, did the housekeeping. At first she lived in a separate house in the rear, but after a time she moved into the main residence with her children. If there was an intimate side to her and Stevens's relationship, it never came out in any letters or documents, but biographer Fawn Brodie found much circumstantial evidence implying otherwise. Stevens always treated Mrs. Smith as a confidante and coequal. When there were events and gatherings in Stevens's home, Mrs. Smith was the hostess. Stevens's niece in Indianapolis would sometimes implore the two of them to visit and would tell her uncle to "give her a great deal of love for me." Formal invitations to soirées at the Stevens addresses in both Lancaster and Washington were few, but the ones that were sent out were always in Mrs. Smith's hand. Late in life, Stevens denied any intimacy with Mrs. Smith, but in many ways they had lived as a couple.

In Lancaster, Stevens's practice grew steadily, and young men sought him out to study law in his offices, while his interest in politics and personal causes diminished not at all. He hired spies to keep an eye on slave-catchers in town, and his residence became a station on the Underground Railroad-a fact acknowledged in April 2011 by the National Park Service. The Christiana riot trial, in which Stevens helped gain acquittal for two Quakers who stood by during a melee, refusing to help slave-catchers, won him few friends in nearby Lancaster City. Meanwhile, he instructed his personal physician to send him the bill for any "deformed or disabled" boys he treated.

Still no mainstream Whig, Stevens continued to attract political foes of nearly every stripe-Silver Grey or Cotton Whigs and other northerners and proslavery Democrats such as the Hunkers and the doughfaces and, eventually, the Copperheads, who were unwilling to oppose slavery. Stevens crossed swords with any proponent of popular sovereignty who would have the new territories decide the slavery question for themselves.

Stevens corresponded with another young lawyer interested in antislavery issues: Abraham Lincoln who, then a U.S. congressman, had met Stevens at the Philadelphia Whig convention. "You may possibly remember seeing me at the Philadelphia Convention-introduced to you as the lone Whig star of Illinois," wrote Lincoln, almost deferentially, in September 1848. Thus began one of the few letters between the two future Republicans who would lead the country through civil war and emancipation. Even here the contrasts stand out, with Lincoln ever halting and cautiously waiting for public approval before committing to action, while the radical Stevens would always be far in advance of popular opinion. On this day, however, Lincoln was merely gathering information from the savvy Lancastrian: "I desire the undisguised opinion of some experienced person and sagacious Pennsylvania politician, as to how the vote of that state, for governor, and president is likely to go."

Stevens could, indeed, be sagacious but he could also be erratic. In 1859, he supported the presidential nomination of Judge John McLean over Lincoln. McLean had been appointed a justice of the Supreme Court in 1830 by Andrew Jackson, and Stevens got to know McLean when the two lived briefly in the same bachelors' quarters. Stevens had always admired McLean's combative stance toward Jackson. Today, of course, his decision to support the conservative McLean over Lincoln looks, as Fawn Brodie put it, "absurd."

Stevens was better known for his rapier wit than for his abilities as a kingmaker. His barbs often found their mark during spontaneous repartee, rather than in letters. One day, as he was following a narrow path in Lancaster, he encountered one of his enemies, who was coming from the other direction and refused to give way. The man shouted, "I never get out of the way for a skunk." Stevens stood aside and replied, "I always do."

Years later, when Lincoln discussed cabinet positions with Stevens, the president inquired about one of Stevens's adversaries from Pennsylvania, Simon Cameron. Stevens implied that Cameron could be less than scrupulous in financial matters. "You don't mean that Cameron would steal?" asked Lincoln. "No," came Stevens's near-instant reply, "I don't think he would steal a red hot stove."

Elected to Congress, Stevens wasted little time in stating his opposition to slavery. On February 20, 1850, he reiterated his abhorrence of slavery but reaffirmed that he would "stand by all the compromises of the Constitution, and carry them into faithful effect." He continued-now using the term "slaves" consciously and ironically-by sarcastically congratulating the South on, in his view, its successes in intimidation: "You have more than once frightened the tame North from its propriety, and found 'dough-faces' enough to be your tools. And when you lacked a given number, I take no pride in saying, you were sure to find them in old Pennsylvania, who, in former years, has ranked a portion of her delegation among your most submissive slaves." The Lancaster Intelligence r commented that it was "a violent tirade of abuse against the Southern people and their 'peculiar institution,'" concluding that Stevens's philippic would only "inflame their passions and excite still further prejudices against the North."

The Commoner's enemies in the South were certainly delighted that Stevens's foray in Congress was for just one term. On the House floor in June 1850, Stevens said that, according to his interpretation of the Constitution, "any slave escaping or being taken into New Mexico or California, would be instantly free." And he followed that up with what was anathema for Southerners and many northern Democrats sympathetic to the South, that "Congress alone has the exclusive power to legislate for the territories."

In Lancaster County, support among Whigs for nominating Stevens to another term dwindled, and he was not selected by them to run again. Returning to the Red Rose City, Stevens concentrated on his law and business interests, but politics was never far from his mind. He organized nativists and Know-Nothings to help defeat Whig candidates. At a rally in Lancaster in October for Republican presidential candidate John Frémont, Stevens skewered the Democratic candidate, his fellow townsman: "There is a wrong impression about one of the candidates. There is no such person running as James Buchanan. He is dead of lockjaw. Nothing remains but a platform and a bloated mass of political putridity." The intemperate tone was faithful to many speeches by many politicians of the day, on the floor of Congress and elsewhere, but Stevens could go further, injecting a strong whiff of brimstone into his remarks.

Eighteen fifty-seven was another busy year for Stevens in his law office, and he spent the time exercising his profession, which included perfecting his sarcastic asides during cross-examinations. In August, however, he was nominated again for Congress, now as a Republican. He reiterated his unwavering stance against slavery and his support for tariffs, claiming the state's workshops were idle due to the effects of free trade. The Intelligencer's reaction: "He has always been powerful for mischief, but powerless for good, and has destroyed every party and every cause where he has been permitted to take the lead."

Back in Congress in 1859, Stevens was, in spite of the Intelligencer 's misgivings, permitted to take the lead, and at a most propitious moment. John Brown had been hanged on the Friday before for his unsuccessful raid on the muntions depot in Harpers Ferry. On Monday, Stevens was engaged in the rapid-fire exchange of insults and general acrimony between Southern representatives and House Republicans, the Southerners blaming the Radical Republicans for Harpers Ferry. Stevens so infuriated William Barksdale of Mississippi that Barksdale threatened Stevens with a bowie knife. Shaken by the suggestion of violence, Stevens, nevertheless, shrugged it off as "a mere momentary breeze."

Later on in that session, Stevens showed that he would not be brushed off. "Now, sir," began the Commoner, addressing the clerk and baiting the Democratic party, "which means, of course, the Democrats of the South; the others are mere parasites." There was laughter at the remark and an objection from Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, one of John Brown's interrogators after the events at Harpers Ferry and one of Stevens's most combative enemies, who found Stevens's language "untrue and offensive." Stevens withdrew the word "parasites" in order to "simply use the word satellite -revolving, of course, around the larger body, as according to the laws of gravitation they must-and that is not offensive." Again, there was laughter.

In the special thirty-seventh session of Congress, though, Stevens, now a Radical Republican both in name and in deed, did much more than display his wit; he became a war leader. He whisked many bills through the chamber to finance the war, including one revising the tariff in order to increase revenue. "He knew how to make deals," Palmer said in a telephone interview for this article, "and he was crafty." Stevens often disagreed sharply with Lincoln on conduct of the war itself, especially with regards to blockading Southern ports.

The government, Stevens reasoned, had put itself in a "false position by attempting to close the ports, and calling it a blockade. Nations do not, correctly speaking, blockade their own ports. That term applied only to operations against foreign nations. When a blockade is declared, it is a quasi admission of the independent existence of the people blockaded." Stevens went to the White House to tell Lincoln he should have closed the ports instead. Lincoln acknowledged the error, allowing he knew little about international law.

In Stevens's last eight years, starting in 1859, his victories in Congress were roughly equal in number to his losses, but the quality of his victories could be considered great. He passed a bill to authorize black soldiers and a bill for the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, which represented the culmination of much of his life's work. Passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, establishing equal protection before the law and the right of all males to vote, were major victories for Stevens and the Republicans, but during this same period Stevens saw a large number of defeats, such as the failed attempt to impeach Andrew Johnson.

On the House floor on February 2, 1863, the Commoner offered a near perfect summation of his own principles as he answered a critic of authorizing black soldiers. "The gentleman from Kentucky," began Stevens, "objects to their employment lest it should lead to the freedom of the blacks. . . . That patriotism that is wholly absorbed by one's own country is narrow and selfish. That philanthropy which embraces only one's own race, and leaves the other numerous races of mankind to bondage and to misery, is cruel and detestable." But it was upon passage in the House of the bill authorizing the Thirteenth Amendment that Stevens uttered the words he's best remembered for: "I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus, 'Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, and who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he had striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color.'"

In his final years, he remained as bellicose as ever, even as his health declined and he grew so weak that he had to be carried into the House chamber in a chair. His speeches in those days often started in a whisper as members formed a tight circle around him to hear, but then grew louder, as he gathered strength, until everyone could finally hear him. When he passed away in his home on South B Street, near the Capitol, in August 1868, there were many words of admiration. Even the Intelligencer found something nice to say, and Simon Cameron remarked that "from the time of his entry into public life no man assailed him without danger or conquered him without scars." It can be the stuff of tragedy when statesmen's words and deeds are no kin together, but the fighting words of Stevens were more often than not close cousins of his radical deeds, especially on issues of equality. If silence reigned for a few moments in Washington the day his body, guarded by black Zouaves, lay in state beneath the Capitol Rotunda, it was because the pugilist was finally at rest.

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When the farmer complained, the school refused to let the wrongly accused man graduate. Stevens, unable to stomach this injustice, contacted the farmer on his own, fessed up, and made arrangements to pay damages. The farmer withdrew his complaint, and, within a few years, Stevens paid the farmer back.

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Biography from the U. S. House of Representatives

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On this date, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, the fiery abolitionist, civil rights advocate, and leader of the Civil War-era Radical Republicans in the House, was born on the Vermont frontier in Danville. Afflicted with clubfoot, Stevens was a sickly child who immersed himself in study. He graduated from Dartmouth College, passed the Pennsylvania bar, and served in the state legislature before being elected as a Whig to the U.S. House in 1848. Stevens founded the Pennsylvania Republican Party and served as a House Republican from 1859 until his death in 1868. During the Civil War he chaired the Ways and Means Committee, making him the de facto Majority Leader. He also was an impeachment manager during the trial of President Andrew Johnson. Colleagues feared "Old Thad" as a parliamentarian who imperiously crushed opposition and enforced party discipline. Once provoked, Stevens would rise from his seat "by degrees, as a telescope is pulled out, until he stood in a most ungraceful attitude, his heavy black hair falling down over his cavernous brows, and his cold little eyes twinkling with anger . . . he would lecture the offender . . . sweeping at him . . . in uncouth gestures, as if he would clutch him and shake him." Though pitiless toward his opponents, Stevens was widely admired by House Members for his unwavering devotion to the cause of freed blacks.

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Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives

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On this date, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, the fiery abolitionist, civil rights advocate, and leader of the Civil War-era Radical Republicans in the House, was born on the Vermont frontier in Danville. Afflicted with clubfoot, Stevens was a sickly child who immersed himself in study.

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Also check out Episodes 18-22 on the Civil War

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Reconstruction and 1876: Crash Course US History #22

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The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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We've all heard the story of the "40 acres and a mule" promise to former slaves. It's a staple of black history lessons, and it's the name of Spike Lee's film company. The promise was the first systematic attempt to provide a form of reparations to newly freed slaves, and it was astonishingly radical for its time, proto-socialist in its implications. In fact, such a policy would be radical in any country today: the federal government's massive confiscation of private property - some 400,000 acres - formerly owned by Confederate land owners, and its methodical redistribution to former black slaves. What most of us haven't heard is that the idea really was generated by black leaders themselves.

It is difficult to stress adequately how revolutionary this idea was: As the historian Eric Foner puts it in his book, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, "Here in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, the prospect beckoned of a transformation of Southern society more radical even than the end of slavery." Try to imagine how profoundly different the history of race relations in the United States would have been had this policy been implemented and enforced; had the former slaves actually had access to the ownership of land, of property; if they had had a chance to be self-sufficient economically, to build, accrue and pass on wealth. After all, one of the principal promises of America was the possibility of average people being able to own land, and all that such ownership entailed. As we know all too well, this promise was not to be realized for the overwhelming majority of the nation's former slaves, who numbered about 3.9 million.

What Exactly Was Promised?

We have been taught in school that the source of the policy of "40 acres and a mule" was Union General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15, issued on Jan. 16, 1865. (That account is half-right: Sherman prescribed the 40 acres in that Order, but not the mule. The mule would come later.) But what many accounts leave out is that this idea for massive land redistribution actually was the result of a discussion that Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton held four days before Sherman issued the Order, with 20 leaders of the black community in Savannah, Ga., where Sherman was headquartered following his famous March to the Sea. The meeting was unprecedented in American history.

Today, we commonly use the phrase "40 acres and a mule," but few of us have read the Order itself. Three of its parts are relevant here. Section one bears repeating in full: "The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns river, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes [sic] now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States."

Section two specifies that these new communities, moreover, would be governed entirely by black people themselves: " ... on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves ... By the laws of war, and orders of the President of the United States, the negro [sic] is free and must be dealt with as such."

Finally, section three specifies the allocation of land: " ... each family shall have a plot of not more than (40) acres of tillable ground, and when it borders on some water channel, with not more than 800 feet water front, in the possession of which land the military authorities will afford them protection, until such time as they can protect themselves, or until Congress shall regulate their title."

With this Order, 400,000 acres of land - "a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John's River in Florida, including Georgia's Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast," as Barton Myers reports - would be redistributed to the newly freed slaves. The extent of this Order and its larger implications are mind-boggling, actually.

Who Came Up With the Idea?

Here's how this radical proposal - which must have completely blown the minds of the rebel Confederates - actually came about. The abolitionists Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens and other Radical Republicans had been actively advocating land redistribution "to break the back of Southern slaveholders' power," as Myers observed. But Sherman's plan only took shape after the meeting that he and Stanton held with those black ministers, at 8:00 p.m., Jan. 12, on the second floor of Charles Green's mansion on Savannah's Macon Street. In its broadest strokes, "40 acres and a mule" was their idea.

Stanton, aware of the great historical significance of the meeting, presented Henry Ward Beecher (Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous brother) a verbatim transcript of the discussion, which Beecher read to his congregation at New York's Plymouth Church and which the New York Daily Tribune printed in full in its Feb. 13, 1865, edition. Stanton told Beecher that "for the first time in the history of this nation, the representatives of the government had gone to these poor debased people to ask them what they wanted for themselves." Stanton had suggested to Sherman that they gather "the leaders of the local Negro community" and ask them something no one else had apparently thought to ask: "What do you want for your own people" following the war? And what they wanted astonishes us even today.

Who were these 20 thoughtful leaders who exhibited such foresight? They were all ministers, mostly Baptist and Methodist. Most curious of all to me is that 11 of the 20 had been born free in slave states, of which 10 had lived as free men in the Confederacy during the course of the Civil War. (The other one, a man named James Lynch, was born free in Maryland, a slave state, and had only moved to the South two years before.) The other nine ministers had been slaves in the South who became "contraband," and hence free, only because of the Emancipation Proclamation, when Union forces liberated them.

Their chosen leader and spokesman was a Baptist minister named Garrison Frazier, aged 67, who had been born in Granville, N.C., and was a slave until 1857, "when he purchased freedom for himself and wife for $1000 in gold and silver," as the New York Daily Tribune reported. Rev. Frazier had been "in the ministry for thirty-five years," and it was he who bore the responsibility of answering the 12 questions that Sherman and Stanton put to the group. The stakes for the future of the Negro people were high.

And Frazier and his brothers did not disappoint. What did they tell Sherman and Stanton that the Negro most wanted? Land! "The way we can best take care of ourselves," Rev. Frazier began his answer to the crucial third question, "is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor ... and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare ... We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own." And when asked next where the freed slaves "would rather live - whether scattered among the whites or in colonies by themselves," without missing a beat, Brother Frazier (as the transcript calls him) replied that "I would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over ... " When polled individually around the table, all but one - James Lynch, 26, the man who had moved south from Baltimore - said that they agreed with Frazier. Four days later, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, after President Lincoln approved it.

What Became of the Land That Was Promised?

The response to the Order was immediate. When the transcript of the meeting was reprinted in the black publication Christian Recorder, an editorial note intoned that "From this it will be seen that the colored people down South are not so dumb as many suppose them to be," reflecting North-South, slave-free black class tensions that continued well into the modern civil rights movement. The effect throughout the South was electric: As Eric Foner explains, "the freedmen hastened to take advantage of the Order." Baptist minister Ulysses L. Houston, one of the group that had met with Sherman, led 1,000 blacks to Skidaway Island, Ga., where they established a self-governing community with Houston as the "black governor." And by June, "40,000 freedmen had been settled on 400,000 acres of 'Sherman Land.' " By the way, Sherman later ordered that the army could lend the new settlers mules; hence the phrase, "40 acres and a mule."

And what happened to this astonishingly visionary program, which would have fundamentally altered the course of American race relations? Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor and a sympathizer with the South, overturned the Order in the fall of 1865, and, as Barton Myers sadly concludes, "returned the land along the South Carolina, Georgia and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it" - to the very people who had declared war on the United States of America.
Fifty of the 100 Amazing Facts will be published on The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross website. Read all 100 Facts on The Root.

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The Truth Behind '40 Acres and a Mule' | African American History Blog | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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This revolutionary idea became a failed promise to freed slaves after the Civil War.

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From Henry Louis Gates

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Land: Giving Rise to the Famous Phrase 40 Acres & a Mule

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From the Code Switch podcast

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast

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As the Civil War was winding down 150 years ago, Union leaders gathered a group of black ministers in Savannah, Ga. The goal was to help the thousands of newly freed slaves.

From that meeting came Gen. William T. Sherman's Special Field Order 15. It set aside land along the Southeast coast so that "each family shall have a plot of not more than forty acres of tillable ground."

That plan later became known by a signature phrase: "40 acres and a mule."

After wrapping up his famous march, Sherman spent weeks in Savannah, staying in an ornate Gothic revival mansion called the Green-Meldrim House. That's where he and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton held their meeting with local black leaders.

The house is now owned by a local church. Susan Arden-Joly, the site's preservationist and tour guide, leads visitors up a winding staircase.

"Sherman's memoirs say that he took them upstairs to his quarters. So that's where we will go," she says.

According to Arden-Joly, the meeting took place in a high-ceilinged room on a corner of the second floor. Sherman and Stanton asked the group's leader, the Rev. Garrison Frazier, a series of questions. She reads from Sherman's memoirs, where he quotes minutes from the meeting.

"Fourth question: State in what manner you would rather live, whether scattered among the whites, or in colonies by yourselves," she reads, continuing with Frazier's answer. "I would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over."

Charles Elmore, a professor emeritus of humanities at Savannah State University, says Sherman and Stanton listened to Frazier and the others.

"The other men chose this eloquent, 67-year-old imposing black man, who was well over 6 feet tall, to speak on their behalf," Elmore says. "And he said essentially we want to be free from domination of white men, we want to be educated, and we want to own land."

Four days later, Sherman signed Field Order 15, setting aside 400,000 acres of confiscated Confederate land for freed slaves. Sherman appointed Brig. Gen. Rufus Saxton to divide up the land, giving each family up to 40 acres.

And it wasn't in the order, Elmore says, but some also received leftover Army mules.

"But it became known as of Jan. 16, 1865, as '40 acres and a mule,' " Elmore said.

Stan Deaton, of the Georgia Historical Society, points out that after Lincoln's assassination, President Andrew Johnson reversed Sherman's order, giving the land back to its former Confederate owners.

"Once the passion of war was over, the idea of that kind of social experiment lost favor with a lot of people very quickly," he says.

Vaughnette Goode-Walker, a writer who leads tours focused on Savannah's black past, calls it one of the biggest "gotchas" in American history.

" 'Here, take this land - but we can't really give it to you because it doesn't belong to us; it belongs to the Confederates when they come back home.' How confusing is that?"

The reversal left many African-Americans with few options but to become sharecroppers, often working for former slaveholders. But Elmore says the meeting in Savannah 150 years ago accomplished one important thing.

"It set in motion the dialogue between the white power structure and black men in Savannah, Ga.," he says. " 'What do y'all want?' And they got some of it, however temporary and fleetingly. They got it. That is significant."

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast subscribe to Code Switch podcast As the Civil War was winding down 150 years ago, Union leaders gathered a group of black ministers in Savannah, Ga. The goal was to help the thousands of newly freed slaves. From that meeting came Gen. William T.

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From the Library of Congress

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The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans. It would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the majority of African Americans in the South were registered to vote.

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Research Guides: 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Primary Documents in American History: Introduction

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The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."