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well, and who was a native of Charlotte county, Virginia. Her father was a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, and was one of the founders of the settlement on Cub Creek.

The elder Mr. Calhoun was an industrious and enter- . prising citizen. To great natural shrewdness he added an inquiring disposition, and a boldness and independence of sentiment that were rarely imitated. He thought, and spoke, and acted for himself. He was a Whig in principle long before the Revolution, and when the crisis. came, he did not hesitate publicly to make profession of "the faith that was in him." He battled manfully against the Tories; he contended with them in speech; and at the head of his rangers aided essentially in putting them down with the strong hand. Both the Caldwells and the Calhouns were active and zealous Whigs. such, they were the peculiar objects of the red man's hate and the Tory's vengeance. Of three of the Caldwells able to bear arms during the revolutionary struggle, one was murdered by the Tories in cold blood, in his own yard, after his house had been set on fire; another fell dead at the battle of the Cowpens, being pierced with thirty sabre wounds; and the third was taken prisoner by the enemy, and confined for nine months in a loathsome dungeon at St. Augustine.

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Nothing but his stout arm and intrepidity of soul, saved Patrick Calhoun from experiencing a similar fate. Upon one occasion," says a memoir of his son, published by his political friends during the presidential canvass of 1843-4,-" with thirteen other whites, he maintained a desperate conflict for hours with the Cherokee Indians, until overwhelmed by superior numbers, he was forced to retreat, leaving seven of his

companions dead upon the field. Three days after, they returned to bury their dead, and found the bodies of twenty-three Indian warriors, who had perished in the same conflict. At another time, he was singled out by an Indian distinguished for his prowess as a chief, and for his skill with the rifle. The Indian taking to a tree, Calhoun secured himself behind a log, from whence he drew the Indian's fire four times by holding a hat on a stick a little above his hiding-place. The Indian at length exhibited a portion of his person in an effort to ascertain the effect of his shot, when he received a ball from his enemy in the shoulder, which forced him to fly. But the hat exhibited the traces of four balls by which it had been perforated. The effect of this mode of life upon a mind naturally strong and inquisitive was to create a certain degree of contempt for the forms of civilized life, and for all that was merely conventional in society. He claimed all the rights which nature and reason seemed to establish, and he acknowledged no obligation which was not supported by the like sanctions. It was under this conviction that, upon one occasion, he and his neighbors went down within twenty-three miles of Charleston, armed with rifles, to exercise a right of suffrage which had been disputed: a contest which ended in electing him to the Legislature of the state, in which body he served for thirty years. Relying upon virtue, reason, and courage, as all that constituted the true moral strength of man, he attached too little importance to mere information, and never feared to encounter an adversary who, in that respect, had the advantage over him: a confidence which many of the events of his life seemed

to justify. Indeed, he once appeared as his own advocate in a case in Virginia, in which he recovered a tract of land in despite of the regularly-trained disputants, who sought to embarrass and defeat him. He opposed the Federal Constitution, because, as he said, it permitted other people than those of South Carolina to tax the people of South Carolina, and thus allowed taxation without representation, which was a violation of the fundamental principle of the revolutionary struggle.

"We have heard his son say, 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 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 restraints 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 such lessons as these must doubtless have served to encourage that free spirit of inquiry, and that intrepid zeal for truth, for which he has been so much distinguished. The mode of thinking which was thus encouraged may, perhaps, have compensated in some degree for the want of those early advantages which are generally deemed indispensable to great intellectual progress. Of these he had comparatively few. But this was compensated by those natural gifts which give great minds the mastery over difficulties which the timid regard as insuperable. Indeed, we have here another of those rare instances in which the hardiness

of natural genius is seen to defy all obstacles, and develops its flower and matures its fruit under circumstances apparently the most unpropitious."

Patrick Calhoun died in 1795. His wife was a woman of rare excellence, whose many virtues endeared ner to all that knew her, and are still held in grateful remembrance by those who witnessed the evidences of her worth and profited by her kindness. They had five children, four sons and a daughter, of whom JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN was the youngest save one. He was born in Abbeville District, South Carolina, at the resi, dence of his father, on the 18th of March, 1782, and was named after his maternal uncle, Major John Caldwell, who was murdered by the Tories.

CHAPTER II.

Early Development of Character-His Education-Enters CollegeGraduates Studies Law-Commences Practice-Professional Reputation-Enters the Arena of Politics-Elected to the State Legislature-Services in that Body-Popularity among his ConstituentsChosen a Member of Congress.

BORN and nurtured amid the closing scenes of the Revolution, and when its dying thunders were still heard faintly echoing in the distance, the stirring incidents of that protracted contest, and the legends and traditions of border warfare, were among the first and earliest recollections of young Calhoun. They were often recounted in his hearing, and left their impress upon his character, in its sternness, and what might almost be called its harshness. He inherited, too, from his father, the active energy, firmness and determination, that characterized him, and from his mother's family, their ardency of feeling, and their high-toned and impulsive enthusiasm, When a lad he was remarked for his thoughtful disposition, his quickness of apprehension, his decision of character, and his steady and untiring perseverance in the accomplishment of any plan he had conceived, or in the pursuit of any object which he desired to secure.

The early trials and struggles, the hopes and disappointments, of those who are successful in life, what

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