Calvin Colton
Calvin Colton (14 September 1789 – 13 March 1857) was an American clergyman, author and one of the leading propagandists and theoreticians of the Whig party.
Biography
Calvin Colton was born in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, the son of Major Luther Colton, a veteran of the American Revolution, and his wife Thankful Woolworth. Colton attended Monson Academy, Yale College, and the Andover Theological Seminary. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1816 and served as pastor of churches in Le Roy and Batavia, New York.
On February 1, 1826 Colton married Abby North Raymond. Later, he became disillusioned with religious revivalism and converted to the Episcopal church. In the early 1830's he debated at length against Lewis Cass, Secretary of War and spokesman for the Jackson administration, in defense of Indian rights.
Colton was sent to Britain in 1831 as correspondent for the New York Observer and spent four years traveling throughout the islands.[1] Back to America, he served for one year as rector of the Church of the Messiah in New York City (1837–1838).
He wrote much under the pen name "Junius" in support of Whig policies, and was editor of the True Whig (1842–1843). In 1844, he became the official biographer of Henry Clay, and editor of his works. In the last years of his life he taught economics at Trinity College in Hartford and produced an elaborate defense of the protective system.[2][3]
Calvin Colton died in Savannah, Georgia.
See also
Works
- Manual for emigrants to America (1832)
- The History and Character of American Revivals of Religion (1832)
- Tour of the American Lakes, and Among the Indians of the North-west Territory, in 1830 (1833)
- The Americans (1833)[4]
- Church and State in America (1834)
- Four years in Great Britain (1835)
- Protestant Jesuitism (1836)
- Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country (1836)[5][6]
- Abolition a Sedition (1839)
- The Test; or, Parties Tried by Their Acts (1843)
- The Junius Tracts (1844)
- The Life and Times of Henry Clay (1845)
- The Rights of Labor (1846)
- Public Economy for the United States (1848)
Notes
- ↑ Lockwood, Allison (1981). Passionate Pilgrims: The American Traveler in Great Britain, 1800-1914. New York: Cornwall Books/Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
- ↑ Davenport, Stewart (2008). Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815-1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- ↑ Calvo, Christopher W. (2020). "An American Political Economy." In: The Emergence of Capitalism in Early America. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, pp. 137–79.
- ↑ A defense of the United States against the criticisms of Basil Hall and Frances Trollope.
- ↑ Anon. (1836). "Colton's Reasons for Preferring Episcopacy," The Biblical Repertory, Vol. VIII, No. 3, pp. 390–414.
- ↑ Anon. (1836). "Colton and Connelly on the Religious State of the Country," The Quarterly Christian Spectator, Vol. VIII, No. 3, pp. 488–504.
References
- Bratt, James D. (2001). "From Revivalism to Anti-Revivalism to Whig Politics: The Strange Career of Calvin Colton," The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. LII, No. 1, pp. 63–82.
- Cave, Alfred A. (1969). An American Conservative in the Age of Jackson: The Political and Social Thought of Calvin Colton. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press.
- Cave, Alfred A. (1972). "Calvin Colton: An Antebellum Disaffection with the Presbyterian Church," Journal of Presbyterian History, Vol. L, No. 1, pp. 39–53.
- Strong, Douglas M. (1999). Perfectionist Politics: Abolitionism and the Religious Tensions of American Democracy. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.
External links
- 1789 births
- 1857 deaths
- 19th-century American male writers
- 19th-century American newspaper editors
- 19th-century pseudonymous writers
- American biographers
- American book editors
- American pamphleteers
- American political journalists
- Massachusetts Whigs
- People from Longmeadow, Massachusetts
- Trinity College (Connecticut) faculty
