John C. Calhoun was a major actor in the political history of nineteenth-century America. His dramatic career will always be of interest. However, Calhoun is equally important as a political thinker who continues to elicit widespread interest from the most diverse points of the ideological spectrum. The Essential Calhoun presents a full-fledged selection of speeches and writings taken from the entire forty-year span of Calhoun's public career and from many varieties of occasions, public and private. For the first time, it is possible to appreciate Calhoun fully and to consider his thought...

THIS EDITION OF The Papers of John C. Calhoun presents documents from August 1848 through July 1849 that elaborate on the statesman's labors to rally united action among Southerners in defense of their institutions and constitutional rights. Calhoun worked to complete his Disquisition on Government, which further illuminated his stance on such fundamental issues as the nature of man in society and the natural responsibilities of governments and the governed.

James Johnston Pettigrew was the quintessential southern cavalier. Born into fortunate circumstances, this North Carolinian pursued activities that developed his mind as well as his character. Finishing first in his class at the University of North Carolina, Pettigrew taught, wrote poems, and traveled in Europe, carefully noting in his diary the similarity of the Old South to romantic Spain and Italy. Upon returning home, he became a successful Charleston lawyer, militiaman, and when the time came, an ardent secessionist. The men who worked with Pettigrew, and later knew him as a soldier,...

In this second installment of The Wilson Files, we collect some of Dr. Wilson's most sagacious writings on the topic of nullification and the unenumerated rights reserved to the several sovereign States that comprise the confederation known as the United States of America. For half a century historian Clyde Wilson has been writing about what he calls "our lost and stolen heritage of states' rights." As Dr. Donald Livingston, founder of the Abbeville Institute, has remarked of current devolutionary strategies, "Clyde Wilson had been plowing the ground long before any of us came to plant."...

IN THIS INSTALLMENT OF THE WILSON FILES, we turn our attention to Dr. Clyde Wilson's writings on the "Grand Old Party." Rush Limbaugh recently told his audience that for years he had been misled to believe that the Republican Party was a barrier to the leftist agenda. He now knows better. Clyde Wilson has been saying the same thing for almost half a century. The Republicans are not a political party at all, but an electioneering machine. The dominant elements of the party care nothing for ideas, principles, values. They are, as Wilson has documented through all recent history, interested only...