Calhoun County (Alabama)

Calhoun County is a county in the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2010 census, the population was 118,572. Its county seat is Anniston. Its name is in honor of John C. Calhoun, famous member of the United States Senate from South Carolina.Calhoun County is included in the Anniston-Oxford Metropolitan Statistical Area.HistoryBenton County was established on December 18, 1832, named for Thomas Hart Benton, a member of the United States Senate from Missouri, with its county seat at Jacksonville. Benton, a slave owner, was a political ally of John C. Calhoun, another slaveholder and a U.S. senator from South Carolina. Through the 1820s-1840s, however, Benton's and Calhoun's political interests diverged, with Calhoun increasingly using secession as a weapon to maintain and expand slavery throughout the United States. Benton, on the other hand, was slowly coming to the conclusion that slavery was wrong and that preservation of the union was paramount. On January 29, 1858, Alabama supporters of slavery, objecting to Benton's change of heart, renamed Benton County as Calhoun County. In 1870, during widespread terror in the state in the run-up to the 1870 gubernatorial election, four blacks and one white were lynched.