JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN.

JOHN C. CALHOUN, occupies a position first in rank among the orators and statesmen of America. He was of Irish extraction, and was born in Abbeville District, South Carolina, on the eighteenth of March, 1782. His grandfather, James Calhoun, the first of his family who emigrated to America, left Ireland in 1733, and settled in Pennsylvania, from whence he removed to western Virginia. His new home being broken up on the defeat of the unfortunate Braddock, he was again obliged to remove; and he established himself in South Carolina, in a district which was afterwards known as the Calhoun Settlement. In this place he experienced the savage hostilities of the Cherokee Indians, and after a desperate struggle with them, in which his wife, his eldest son, and several other members of the family were massacred, he abandoned the settlement, and did not return to it until after the establishment of peace. Patrick Calhoun, a son of the foregoing, and the father of the subject of this sketch, displayed the most indomitable perseverance and courage, in the struggle with the Cherokees, and for his services was appointed to the command of a body of provincial rangers, raised for the defence of the frontier. He was a inan of the most resolute and active character, and not only served with credit and renown against the incursions of the savages, but, later in life, during the war of the Revolution, rendered signal service in the cause of freedom and colonial rights. For many years he followed the profession of a surveyor with skill and success. Although his life was spent in the midst of the turmoil and hardships of border life, he devoted much of his time to study, and became well versed in English literature. During the Revolution he was a member of the South Carolina provincial legislature, and after the termination of the contest, continued in the State legislature for many years. He opposed the Federal Constitution on the ground that it took away the sovereignty of the States. "We have heard his son say," it is recorded in a recent sketch, * "that among his earliest recollections was one of a conversation when he was nine years of age, in which his father maintained that government to be the best which allowed the largest amount of individual liberty compatible with social order and tranquillity, and insisted that the improvements in political science would be found to consist in throwing off many of the retraints then imposed by law, and deemed necessary to an organized society." It may well be supposed that his son John was an attentive and eager auditor, and that such lessons encouraged that spirit of free inquiry for which he was so distinguished during his subsequent career.

The mother of John C. Calhoun, Martha Caldwell, a native of Virginia, was the sister of John Caldwell, who was cruelly killed by the tories during the Revolution, and a niece of the Rev. James Caldwell, a popular preacher, prominent in the history of the revolutionary war, for the zeal and activity he manifested in the defence of the patriot cause. For some time he was a chaplain in the American army, and wielded a great influence over the troops, by whom he was greatly beloved and respected. This circumstance rendered him exceedingly obnoxious to the ministerialists, and many attempts were made to take him prisoner. Unsuccessful in this, the royalists burnt his church, deliberately shot his wife, afterwards burnt his house, and at a

* Sketch of the life of John C. Calhoun, by Parke Godwin, in Homes of American Statesmen; page 399.