Blue Bicycle Books, Charleston, SC

Robert Elder, Calhoun: American Heretic, Feb. 16, 6:30 pm

Join us on Zoom, Tues., Feb 16, 6:30 pm as Baylor University professor Robert Elder discusses his newest book, Calhoun: American Heretic (Basic Books, hb., 640 pp., $35). Elder, a Clemson Grad, will be joined in conversation by Paul Anderson, professor of history at Clemson University.

This event is free and open to the public.

To buy a signed copy of the book click here.

To register, click here.

About the book: John C. Calhoun was first elected to Congress in 1810, and went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a “positive good” and for his famous doctrine of “state interposition,” which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union—and arguably set the nation on course for civil war.

Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years,  as protests over racial injustice have focused on his legacy. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is even more broadly significant than these events suggest, and that his story is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. By excising Calhoun from the mainstream of American history, he argues, we have been left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present.

About the Author: Robert Elder is an assistant professor of history at Baylor University, where his research focuses on the American South. His first book was The Sacred Mirror: Evangelicalism, Honor, and Identity in the American South, 1790‒1860. He has a B.A. and M.A. from Clemson University, a PhD. from Emory University and lives in Woodway, Texas.

About the Moderator: Paul Anderson is Associate Professor of History and University Historian at Clemson University, where he has taught the history of the American South and the history of South Carolina for twenty years. His most recent book, A Short History of the American Civil War, was published in 2019 by Bloomsbury.

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