This is CBSi on the world. I'm John Bachelor visiting with Professor Alan Taylor of the University of Virginia

his new book American Civil Wars, A Continental History 1850 to 1873.

The three republics, well two republics and one Dominion, watching each other at this time and

watching especially the outspoken and aggressive voices of men from

the South. There was an opinion at the time that the South dominated the U.S. Congress. It was called the

slaveocracy and it was organized and aggressive with some very, very well-spoken

politicians. We need to meet some of them to understand the rhetoric

of the period. Professor John C. Calhoun, I always think of him coming into the

room and you can smell sulfur.

Who was he? What do we need to know about him?

Well you could also smell intellect.

He's one of the smartest men to ever be in the US Senate.

And he had started out his career as a great nationalist in the 18th.

But as the South began to lag behind the northern states in population and economic development.

That meant lagging behind in political power in the House of Representatives.

And Calhoun then became very concerned about a future in which the northern states

would be dominant and they might interfere in Southern society and in particular

with the defining institution of Southern society which was chattels slavery.

So Calhoun devoted his later career not to boosting the United States, but by trying to limit the

power of the federal government to do anything within the states.

He became a great champion of states rights.

Now he's a complex man in that he was not on board with many other southerners who were trying to expand slave society into Texas, Mexico, Cuba, Sano Domingo, in that he saw that as expanding the power of the federal

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