Eliminating every historical character that ever owned a slave (yes, I know Calhoun was 10x worse)… hm. So are you saying you wish Washington and Jefferson had never helped form America? Is the mark of slavery so great that it overshadows every other aspect of American history to the point that it wasn’t worth it?
Renaming doesn’t eliminate historical characters. Writing new history books doesn’t mean the earlier ones are destroyed. (at least in this country at this time)
I don’t believe we, as a country, have yet dealt with what slavery means in American history and how its impact is still felt today.
How do you suggest we deal with it? It’s preached in every history course I’ve taken, slavery bad, slavery bad, slavery bad. Granted, I’m younger than most of you, so I have gotten the more current perspective. What would be the way to “deal” with it?
Take a deep breath before you read this, because the air was pretty foul in some parts of the US during during the 1930’s.
We were experiencing the peak of the US Eugenics movement. On the east coast, Harvard and Yale were at the epicenter of the movement, so the campus culture at Yale was not all that supportive of the rights of any minority.
During this period, the entire house systems at both Harvard and Yale were established by a single donor. I have not found any links between this family and the Eugenics movement, but the family was linked to the Rockefellers who were documented supporters of Eugenics research. The amount of money donated by this family to Yale (in today’s dollars) is quite large. The donation to build the house system was initially rejected, then later accepted, which seems unusual. Maybe the donor had some say in the naming or maybe Yale acted independently. I couldn’t find any indicator either way.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Harkness
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/almanac/hall_of_fame/edward_harkness
The idea that cultural standards today are “higher” than in the past and that therefore we should judge certain people through our current lens is, in my opinion, shortsighted. What possible reason is there to believe that our current cultural standards are “higher”? The facts are that we value certain traits and characteristics differently than during prior periods in or history. As quick examples, we define and value religous observance, fidelity, race, gender and humanitarinism far differently than previously. To assume that our culture is “fixed” in its current attitudes is pretty simplistic.
Another related point is that while many of you hear only slavery when you hear the name John C Calhoun, this is largely the case because of our culture’s current belief in race as a defining characteristic, and racial identity as a significant marker in the dominant popular culture. But Calhoun was more than a defender of slavery. He was instrumental in bringing Texas into the Union, and is still regarded as one of the foremost thinkers on our democratic process and minority rights. It is inarguable that he was a consequential figure during what is likely the most significant period to date in our history. While his vigorous support of the “peculiar institution” is aborrehent, it manifestly was not outside the main stream during his lifetime. As others have pointed out, many consequential figures would fail current race/gender/orientation tests. Several even held positions much farther afield from then current cultural norms. Robert Byrd being only the most obvious recent example.
@mastadon - thanks for posting how the houses came about. I would be curious if there were naming rights given to Harkness reps. 11 Million dollars has a current value of 156 million dollars in donation.
"In short: As punishment for losing civil wars go, the South got pretty lucky. It got to honor its military leaders with bronze statues. It got to name its streets and schools after Confederate leaders. It even got to keep symbols of the war, like the suddenly at-issue Confederate flag.
“In the U.S., the southern losers were treated with extraordinary leniency,” said Harry Watson, a history professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill."
That will teach us to be nice. No good deed goes unpunished.
“But Calhoun was more than a defender of slavery. He was instrumental in bringing Texas into the Union,”
Is that something worthy of honoring? Don’t we periodically hear that they want to secede, hoping that the rest of us will be horrified and beg them to stay? Ducking and running …
I think GWTW was such a huge hit in the 1930’s because it showed a woman’s survival, going from wealth to poverty to wealth again so it resonated with many, many people. It was also great escapism when people needed to get their minds off their troubles.
Calhoun wanted Texas in the union as a slave state. Calhoun wanted Texas as a slave state to help preserve slavery and the south’s way of life. Calhoun did not want California in the union because California would enter as a free state.
Calhoun wanted minority rights to protect the south’s way of life which was heavily dependent on slavery. Calhoun did not believe in minority rights for people.
Calhoun demonized groups so he could argue he was taking a morally superior position while exploiting them.
The history is not a secret. Amybody who is interested can read the history.
Gone With The Wind ridiculed Black women.
http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a30109/gone-with-the-wind-racism/
Still thinking about Mastadon’s post:
https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/3456-god-and-white-men-at-yale
I think there are three reasons to name buildings after people or construct monuments. One, you were laudatory. Two, you gave obscene amounts of money. Three, you were consequential. Calhoun certainly fits in the third category. The peculiarity of our time is the debate over whether his position on an issue universally held repugnant today, even though it was not out of the mainstream for his time overrides everything else.
@albert69 , yes, we were all taught that slavery was bad. We are NOT, in general taught about the way in which the slave trade enriched many who founded our institutions, and other such more nuanced topics.
Regarding the naming of Yale’s colleges in the 1930s: they established a Nomenclature Committee which was charged with doing so. There is information about the makeup of the committee and its criteria in one of the links posted earlier. I suppose one could research the members, which, IIRC, included administration, faculty, and alumnae.
Just a slight quibble here - universal in the Western world only. I know this is what you meant, but too often on CC things are taken far out of context on long threads.
Slavery is still common practice in much of Africa, Middle East and just a little less so in Asia proper (China, Philippines, Thailand etc). People are currency used in business bartering more than people know/think.
I cannot tell you how many times when on business our company was offered “people” as payment for services. It was not explicit, since it against US law, but it was done quietly - for example, a company would inform us it cannot pay for X in full, but have Y number of people who would be drivers, maids, cooks, go-fors for our time in country, so we did not have to pay for those services ourselves. None of those people I can tell you were actually paid for their services; they were indentured somehow to the company offering them to us.
(Emphasis mine)
@Ohiodad51 Just to clarify here Calhoun pushed for the annexation of Texas so that the area would be open to slavery, and he argued passionately that slaveholders could take their enslaved people into free states and still own them.
Calhoun’s idea of minority rights (southern slave states rights) was slave states being able to bring their slaves into states that did not allow slavery and STILL OWN THEM!
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/web05/features/bio/B07.html
You know, this is what the Egyptians did to certain Pharohs. Just figuratively and literally rubbed them out … never existed.
^This has happened in history. There have been, more or less, successful efforts to erase history. I made a point to qualify my comments in an earlier post, but was trying not to get (too far 
) off topic.
In the USA, at this point in time, this will not be the result of renaming buildings or removing monuments from public spaces. If newly published history books no longer mention Calhoun, it will still be possible to successfully research him for anyone interested. Erasing history is different than interpreting history. imho.
I am trying to research racism in the USA in the 1930s. Perhaps I will have to do some serious digging. Very little history of this period has been “erased” though I am pretty sure some has been to suit a particular narrative. But overall, we aren’t erasing history in our country. imho. ymmv.
For some reason I can’t extract it, but here is a note in a text citing a Yale academic journal. It appears that Yale was involved in trying to figure out how to solve “the Negro problem in the United States” .
Here is some more from the Popular Science Article on immigration relating to solving the Negro problem (via elimination). Note that Alleman does not appear to be associated with Yale.
@runswimyoga, Calhoun’s concept of minority rights (called a concurrent majority) was understood until very recently to be about more than the ownership of slaves. His Disquisition on Government (I think that is the title) was widely taught in government classes up until at least the 1980s. My assumption, that I hope is wrong, is that it is no longer taught. While it was certainly studied in the context of Calhoun’s position vis slavery, the work and the ideas therin were taken and taught on their own merits, as a theory of how to avoid the tyranny of the masses, and protect certain minority rights while still maintaining a democratic tradition.
Currently, and certainly on this thread, every single thing in our history and particularly in the period between say 1800 and the beginning of the civil war is defined solely in terms of whether someone was an abolitionist/Northerner (which are taken to be the same thing) or a southerner/slave holder. But for most of our history things were not viewed so simplisticly. The issues the South had with westward expansion, as an example, were not solely about the numerical tabulating of which states would enter the union as free or slave. There were significant differences north and south over the merits of expansion, and the costs therof, that had nothing or little to do with the ownership of slaves per se. That is leaving aside taxation issues, tariffs, etc. etc. It has always been illuminating to me to remember that throughout the course of the civil war, the north still constructed the transcontinental railroad and passed the homestead act. Westward expansion continued during the civil war at the same if not a greater pace than in the first 60 years of the century. All this was occurring while hundreds of thousands were dying in Virginia and Tennessee.
The civil war, in its pre 1863 incarnation, was both all about and had nothing to do with slavery (to quote someone I can’t recall). Certainly slavery of itself was the driver for many individuals, likely moreso in New England pariticularly than other places, but it was by no means the only issue. Many North and South were concerned with manifest destiny, economic opportunity and the idea that either the United State collectively or one’s own state individually were worth fighting for. A shining example of Abraham Lincoln’s singular genius was the issuance of the emancipation proclimation in January 1863, because it really fixed, for the first time, the idea in the larger body politic that slavery was at the core of the struggle.
In any event, I disagree that we should wipe out whatever John Calhoun did because he happened to be an effective advocate for slavery, in a time when many, many people in this country did not find slavery as aboherrant as we do today. Some of you need to recall the context of the times under discussion. Realize that Uncle Tom’s cabin, widely lauded as bringing the truth about slavery into the homes of thousands, and really changing the mood of large parts of the country, was not published until a couple years after Calhoun’s death. Much of the consequential work he did was accomplised decades before the civil war even erupted.
And if we wipe Calhoun, then where does it stop? The largest civil insurrection in the United States outside of the civil war itself took place in NYC in 1863 (the draft riots). Some of that was about the draft, but a whole lot was about immigrants, particularly the Irish, being afraid that freed blacks would swarm into the factories of the northeast and take their jobs. Are we prepared to call those idividuals racist? How about George McClellan? Democratic candidate for President in 1864, former commanding general (twice) in the Army of the Potomac. Little Mac campaigned exclusevly on a peace platform, which would have meant the destruction of the union and the continuation of slavery. Should he be condemned as well? Samuel Clemons served (albeit briefly) in the confederate army. Racist? No more Mark Twain memorials? How about Robert E Lee? Why does he get a pass? Or do we go back to Washington University?