An Uneasy Character: John Calhoun’s Cameos in The Gorgeous Hussy and Amistad

Pólemos ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-51
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Martinico
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
American History ◽  
Traditional Treatment ◽  
Steven Spielberg ◽  
History And Literature ◽  
Clarence Brown

Abstract This article explores the figure of John Calhoun in two movies, The Gorgeous Hussy (1936), directed by Clarence Brown, and Amistad (1997), directed by Steven Spielberg. In both these movies, John Calhoun’s character had very few but significant scenes that portrayed him as one of those having moral responsibility for the forthcoming Civil War. This representation is in line with the traditional treatment reserved for Calhoun in American history and literature. Building on these cameos in this essay I shall try to reconstruct his thoughts on two matters: States’ rights and slavery.

The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War.

1995 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 1299
Author(s):  
Robert McColley ◽  
William W. Freehling
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American History

scholarly journals Book Review: Reconstruction: A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 326
Author(s):  
Matthew Laudicina
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American History ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
Time Periods

The Reconstruction Era is often considered to be one of the most tumultuous time periods in American History. This era, which encompasses the twelve or so years immediately following the American Civil War, was a time of great social, economic, and constitutional strife. Here to provide a concise reference work on this era is Reconstruction: A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic.

To 1750

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. McNeill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
American History ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The United States ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Columbian Exposition ◽  
The Republic

IN THE LATTER part of the nineteenth century, east coast city dwellers in the United States had difficulty repressing a sense of their own persistent cultural inferiority vis-à-vis London and Paris. At the same time a great many old-stock Americans were dismayed by the stream of immigrants coming to these shores whose diversity called the future cohesion of the Republic into question almost as seriously as the issue of slavery had done in the decades before the Civil War. In such a climate of opinion, the unabashed provinciality of Frederick Jackson Turner's (1861-1932) paper "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered at a meeting of the newly founded American Historical Association in connection with the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1892), began within less than a decade to resound like a trumpet call, though whether it signalled advance or retreat remained profoundly ambiguous....

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