Chapter 12

Patrick Calhoun was a strong-headed, wrong-headed, very brave, honest, ignorant man. His whole life, almost, was a battle. When the Calhouns had been but five years in their forest home, the Cherokees attacked the settlement, destroyed it utterly, killed one half the men, and drove the rest to the lower country; whence they dared not return till the peace of 1763. Patrick Calhoun was elected to command the mounted rangers raised to protect the frontiers, a duty heroically performed by him. After the peace, the settlement enjoyed several years of tranquillity, during which Patrick Calhoun was married to Martha Caldwell, a native of Virginia, but the daughter of an Irish Presbyterian emigrant. During this peaceful interval, all the family prospered with the settlement which bore its name; and Patrick, who in his childhood had only learned to read and write, availed himself of such leisure as he had to increase his knowledge. Besides reading the books within his reach, which were few, he learned to survey land, and practised that vocation to advantage. He was especially fond of reading history to gather new proofs of the soundness of his political opinions, which were Whig to the uttermost. The war of the Revolution broke in upon the settlement, at length, and made deadly havoc there; for it was warred upon by three foes at once,--the British, the Tories, and the Cherokees. The Tories murdered in cold blood a brother of Patrick Calhoun's wife. Another of her brothers fell at Cowpens under thirty sabre-wounds. Another was taken prisoner and remained for nine months in close confinement at one of the British Andersonvilles of that day. Patrick Calhoun, in many a desperate encounter with the Indians, displayed singular coolness, courage, adroitness, and tenacity. On one memorable occasion, thirteen of his neighbors and himself maintained a forest fight for several hours with a force of Cherokees ten times their number. When seven of the white men had fallen, the rest made their escape. Returning three days after to bury their dead, they found upon the field the bodies of twenty-three Indian warriors. At another time, as his son used to relate, he had a very long combat with a chief noted for the certainty of his aim,--the Indian behind a tree, the white man behind a fallen log. Four times the wily Calhoun drew the Indian's fire by elevating his hat upon his ramrod. The chief, at last, could not refrain from looking to see the effect of his shot; when one of his shoulders was slightly exposed. On the instant, the white man's rifle sent a ball through it; the chief fled into the forest, and Patrick Calhoun. bore off as a trophy of the fight his own hat pierced with four bullets.

This Patrick Calhoun illustrates well the North-of-Ireland character; one peculiarity of which is the possession of _will_ disproportioned to intellect. Hence a man of this race frequently appears to striking advantage in scenes which demand chiefly an exercise of will; while in other spheres, which make larger demands upon the understanding, the same man may be simply mischievous. We see this in the case of Andrew Jackson, who at New Orleans was glorious; at Washington almost wholly pernicious; and in the case of Andrew Johnson, who was eminently useful to his country in 1861, but obstructive and perilous to it in 1866. For these Scotch-Irishmen, though they are usually very honest men, and often right in their opinions, are an uninstructable race, who stick to a prejudice as tenaciously as to a principle, and really suppose they are battling for right and truth, when they are only wreaking a private vengeance or aiming at a personal advantage. Patrick Calhoun was the most radical of Democrats; one of your despisers of conventionality; an enemy of lawyers, thinking the common sense of mankind competent to decide what is right without their aid; a particular opponent of the arrogant pretensions of the low-country aristocrats. When the up-country people began to claim a voice in the government, long since due to their numbers, the planters, of course, opposed their demand. To establish their right to vote, Patrick Calhoun and a party of his neighbors, armed with rifles, marched across the State to within twenty-three miles of Charleston, and there voted in defiance of the plantation lords. Events like this led to the admission of members from the up-country; and Patrick Calhoun was the first to represent that section in the Legislature. It was entirely characteristic of him to vote against the adoption of the Federal Constitution, on the ground that it authorized other people to tax Carolinians; which he said was taxation without' representation. That was just like a narrow, cranky, opinionative, unmanageable Calhoun.

Devoid of imagination and of humor, a hard-headed, eager politician, he brought up his boy upon politics. This was sorry nourishment for a child's mind, but he had little else to give him. Gambling, hunting, whiskey, and politics were all there was to relieve the monotony of life in a Southern back settlement; and the best men naturally threw themselves upon politics. Calhoun told Miss Martineau that he could remember standing between his father's knees, when he was only five years old, and listening to political conversation. He told Duff Green that he had a distinct recollection of hearing his father say, when he was only nine, that that government is best which allows to each individual the largest liberty compatible with order and tranquillity, and that improvements in political science consist in throwing off needless restraints. It was a strange child that could remember such a remark. As Patrick Calhoun died in 1795, when his son was thirteen years old, the boy must have been very young when he heard it, even if he were mistaken as to the time. Whether Patrick Calhoun ever touched upon the subject of slavery in his conversations with his children, is not reported. We only know that, late in the career of Mr. Calhoun, he used to be taunted by his opponents in South Carolina with having once held that slavery was good and justifiable only so far as it was preparatory to freedom. He was accused of having committed the crime of saying, in a public speech, that slavery was like the "scaffolding" of an edifice, which, after having served its temporary purpose, would be taken down, of course. We presume he said this; because _everything_ in his later speeches is flatly contradicted in those of his earlier public life. Patrick Calhoun was a man to give a reason for everything. He was an habitual theorizer and generalize!', without possessing the knowledge requisite for safe generalization. It is very probable that this apology for slavery was part of his son's slender inheritance.

John Caldwell Calhoun--born in 1782, the youngest but one in a family of five children--was eighteen years old before he had a thought of being anything but a farmer. His father had been dead five years. His only sister was married to that famous Mr. Waddell, clergyman and schoolmaster, whose academy in North Carolina was for so many years a great light in a dark place. One of his brothers was a clerk in a mercantile house at Charleston; another was settled on a farm near by; another was still a boy. His mother lived upon the paternal farm; and with her lived her son John, who ploughed, hunted, fished, and rode, in the manner of the farmers' sons in that country. At eighteen he could read, write, and cipher; he had read Rollin, Robertson, Voltaire's Charles XII., Brown's Essays, Captain Cook, and parts of Locke. This, according to his own account, was the sum of his knowledge, except that he had fully imbibed his father's decided republican opinions. He shared to some degree his father's prejudice, and the general prejudice of the upper country, against lawyers; although a cousin, John Ewing Calhoun, had risen high in that profession, had long served in the Legislature of South Carolina, and was about to be elected United States Senator on the Jeffersonian side. As late as May 1800, when he was past eighteen, preference and necessity appeared to fix him In the vocation of farmer. The family had never been rich. Indeed, the great Nullifier himself was a comparatively poor man all his life, the number of his slaves never much exceeding thirty; which is equivalent to a working force of fifteen hands or less.

In May, 1800, Calhoun's elder brother came home from Charleston to spend the summer, bringing with him his city notions. He awoke the dormant ambition of the youth, urged him to go to school and become a professional man. But how could he leave his mother alone on the farm? and how could the money be raised to pay for a seven years' education? His mother and his brother conferred upon these points, and satisfied him upon both; and in June, 1800, he made his way to the academy of his brother-in-law, Waddell, which was then in Columbia County, Georgia, fifty miles from the home of the Calhouns. In two years and a quarter from the day he first opened a Latin grammar, he entered the Junior Class of Yale College. This was quick work. Teachers, however, are aware that late beginners, who have spent their boyhood in _growing_, often stride past students who have passed theirs in stunting the growth of mind and body at school. Calhoun, late in life, often spoke of the immense advantage which Southern boys had over Northern in not going so early to school, and being so much on horseback and out of doors. He said one day, about the year 1845:

"At the North you overvalue intellect; at the South we rely upon character; and if ever there should be a collision that shall test the strength of the two sections, you will find that character is stronger than intellect, and will carry the day."

The prophecy has been fulfilled.

Timothy Dwight, Calvinist and Federalist, was President of Yale College during Calhoun's residence there, and Thomas Jefferson, Democrat and freethinker, was President of the United States. Yale was a stronghold of Federalism. A brother of the President of the College, in his Fourth-of-July oration delivered at New Haven four months after the inauguration of Jefferson and Burr, announced to the students and citizens, that "the great object" of those gentlemen and their adherents was "to destroy every trace of civilization in the world, and to force mankind back into a savage state." He also used the following language:

"We have now reached the consummation of democratic blessedness. We have a country governed by blockheads and knaves; the ties of marriage, with all its felicities, are severed and destroyed; our wives and daughters are thrown into the stews; our children are cast into the world from the breast forgotten; filial piety is extinguished; and our surnames, the only mark of distinction among families, are abolished. Can the imagination paint anything more dreadful this side hell?"

These remarkable statements, so far from surprising the virtuous people of New Haven, were accepted by them, it appears, as facts, and published with general approval. From what we know of President Dwight, we may conclude that he would regard his brother's oration as a pardonable flight of hyperbole, based on truth. He was a Federalist of the deepest dye.

Transferred to a scene where such opinions prevailed, it cost the young republican no great exertion either of his intellect or his firmness or his family pride to hold his ground. Of all known men, he had the most complete confidence in the infallibility of his own mind. He used to relate, that in the Senior year, when he was one of very few in a class of seventy who maintained republican opinions, President Dwight asked him, "What is the legitimate source of power?" "The people," answered the student. Dr. Dwight combated this opinion; Calhoun replied; and the whole hour of recitation was consumed in the debate. Dr. Dwight was so much struck with the ability displayed by the student, that he remarked to a friend that Calhoun had talent enough to be President of the United States, and that we should see him President in due time. In those innocent days, an observation of that nature was made of every young fellow who showed a little spirit and a turn for debate. Fathers did not _then_ say to their promising offspring, Beware, my son, of self-seeking and shallow speaking, lest you should be consigned to the White House, and be devoured by office-seekers. People then regarded the Presidency as a kind of reward of merit, the first step toward which was to get "up head" in the spelling-class. There is reason to believe that young Calhoun took the prediction of the Doctor very seriously. He took everything seriously. He never made a joke in his life, and was totally destitute of the sense of humor. It is doubtful if he was ever capable of unbending so far as to play a game of football.

The ardent political discussions then in vogue had one effect which the late Mr. Buckle would have pronounced most salutary; they prevented Dr. Dwight's severe theology from taking hold of the minds of many students. Calhoun wholly escaped it. In his speeches we find, of course, the stock allusions of a religious nature with which all politicians essay to flatter their constituents; but he was never interested in matters theological. A century earlier, he might have been the Jonathan Edwards of the South, if there had been a South then. His was just the mind to have revelled in theological subtilties, and to have calmly, closely, unrelentingly argued nearly the whole human race into endless and hopeless perdition. His was just the nature to have contemplated his argument with complacency, and its consequences without emotion.

Graduating with credit in 1804, he repaired to the famous Law School at Litchfield in Connecticut, where he remained a year and a half, and won general esteem. Tradition reports him a diligent student and an admirable debater there. As to his moral conduct, that was always irreproachable. That is to say, he was at every period of his life continent, temperate, orderly, and out of debt. In 1806, being then twenty-four years of age, he returned to South Carolina, and, after studying a short time in a law office at Charleston, he went at last to his native Abbeville to complete his preparation for the bar. He was still a law student at that place when the event occurred which called him into public life.

June 22d, 1807, at noon, the United States frigate Chesapeake, thirty-eight guns, left her anchorage at Hampton Roads, and put to sea, bound for the Mediterranean. The United States being at peace with all the world, the Chesapeake was very far from being in proper man-of-war trim. Her decks were littered with furniture, baggage, stores, cables, and animals. The guns were loaded, but rammers, matches, wadding, cannon-balls, were all out of place, and not immediately accessible. The crew were merchant sailors and landsmen, all undrilled in the duties peculiar to an armed ship. There had been lying for some time at the same anchorage the British frigate Leopard, fifty guns; and this ship also put to sea at noon of the same day. The Leopard being in perfect order, and manned by a veteran crew, took the lead of the Chesapeake, and kept it until three in the afternoon, when she was a mile in advance. Then she wore round, came within speaking distance, lowered a boat, and sent a lieutenant on board the American ship. This officer bore a despatch from the admiral of the station, ordering any captain who should fall in with the Chesapeake to search her for deserters. The American commander replied that he knew of no deserters on board his ship, and could not permit a search to be made, his orders not authorizing the same. The lieutenant returned. As soon as he had got on board, and his boat was stowed away, the Leopard fired a full broadside into the American frigate. The American commodore, being totally unprepared for such an event, could not return the fire; and therefore, when his ship had received twenty-one shot in her hull, when her rigging was much cut up, when three of her crew were killed and eighteen wounded, the commodore himself among the latter, he had no choice but to lower his flag. Then the search was made, and four men, claimed as deserters, were taken; after which the Leopard continued her course, and the crippled Chesapeake returned to Hampton Roads. The American commander was sentenced by a court-martial to five years' suspension for going to sea in such a condition. The English government recalled the admiral who ordered, and deprived of his ship the captain who committed, this unparalleled outrage, but made no other reparation.

No words of ours could convey any adequate idea of the rage which this event excited in the people of the United States. For a time, the Federalists themselves were ready for war. There were meetings everywhere to denounce it, and especially in the Southern States, always more disposed than the Northern to begin the shedding of blood, and already the main reliance of the Republican party. Remote and rustic Abbeville, a very Republican district, was not silent on this occasion; and who so proper to draw and support the denunciatory resolutions as young Calhoun, the son of valiant Patrick, fresh from college, though now in his twenty-sixth year? The student performed this duty, as requested, and spoke so well that his neighbors at once concluded that he was the very man, lawyer as he was, to represent them in the Legislature, where for nearly thirty years his father had served them. At the next election, in a district noted for its aversion to lawyers, wherein no lawyer had ever been chosen to the Legislature, though many had been candidates, he was elected at the head of his ticket. His triumph was doubtless owing in a great degree to the paramount influence of his family. Still, even we, who knew him only in his gaunt and sad decline, can easily imagine that at twenty-six he must have been an engaging, attractive man. Like most of his race, he was rather slender, but very erect, with a good deal of dignity and some grace in his carriage and demeanor. His eyes were always remarkably fine and brilliant. He had a well-developed and strongly set nose, cheek-bones high, and cheeks rather sunken. His mouth was large, and could never have been a comely feature. His early portraits show his hair erect on his forehead, as we all remember it, unlike Jackson, whose hair at forty still fell low over his forehead. His voice could never have been melodious, but it was always powerful. At every period of his life, his manners, when in company with his inferiors in age or standing, were extremely agreeable, even fascinating. We have heard a well-known editor, who began life as a "page" in the Senate-chamber, say that there was no Senator whom the pages took such delight in serving as Mr. Calhoun. "Why?"--"Because he was so democratic."--"How democratic?"--"He was as polite to a page as to the President of the Senate, and as considerate of his feelings." We have heard another member of the press, whose first employment was to report the speeches of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, bear similar testimony to the frank, engaging courtesy of his intercourse with the corps of reporters. It is fair, therefore, to conclude that his early popularity at home was due as much to his character and manners as to his father's name and the influence of his relatives.

He served two years in the Legislature, and in the intervals between the sessions practised law at Abbeville. At once he took a leading position in the Legislature. He had been in his seat but a few days when the Republican members, as the custom then was, met in caucus to nominate a President and Vice-President of the United States. For Mr. Madison the caucus was unanimous, but there was a difference with regard to the Vice-Presidency, then filled by the aged George Clinton of New York, who represented the anti-Virginian wing of the party in power. Mr. Calhoun, in a set speech, opposed the renomination of Governor Clinton, on the ground that in the imminency of a war with England the Republican party ought to present an unbroken front. He suggested the nomination of John Langdon of New Hampshire for the second office. At this late day we cannot determine whether this suggestion was original with Mr. Calhoun. We only know that the caucus affirmed it, and that the nomination was afterwards tendered to Mr. Langdon by the Republican party, and declined by him. Mr. Calhoun's speech on this occasion was the expression of Southern opinions as to the foreign policy of the country. The South was then nearly ready for war with England, while Northern Republicans still favored Mr. Jefferson's non-intercourse policy. In this instance, as in so many others, we find the Slave States, which used to plume themselves upon being the conservative element in an else unrestrainable democracy, ready for war first, though far from being the worst sufferers from England's piracy's. We should have had _no_ war from 1782 to 1865, but for them. We also find Mr. Calhoun, in this his first utterance as a public man, the mouthpiece of his "section." He has been styled the most inconsistent of our statesmen; but beneath the palpable contradictions of his speeches, there is to be noticed a deeper consistency. Whatever opinion, whatever policy, he may have advocated, he always spoke the sense of what Mr. Sumner used to call the Southern oligarchy. If _it_ changed, _he_ changed. If he appeared sometimes to lead it, it was by leading it in the direction in which it wanted to go. He was doubtless as sincere in this as any great special pleader is in a cause in which all his powers are enlisted. Calhoun's mind was narrow and provincial. He could not have been the citizen of a large place. As a statesman he was naturally the advocate of something special and sectional, something not the whole.

Distinguished in the Legislature, he was elected, late in 1810, by a very great majority, to represent his district in Congress. In May, 1811, he was married to a second-cousin, Floride Calhoun, who brought a considerable accession to his slender estate. November 4, 1811, he took his seat in the House of Representatives. Thus, at the early age of twenty-nine, he was fairly launched into public life, with the advantage, usually enjoyed then by Southern members, of being independent in his circumstances. Though unknown to the country, his fame had preceded him to Washington; and the Speaker, Mr. Clay, gave him a place on the Committee on Foreign Relations. This Committee, considering that Congress had been summoned a month earlier than usual for the express purpose of dealing with foreign relations, was at once the most important and the most conspicuous committee of the House.

Mr. Calhoun's first session gave him national reputation, and made him a leader of the war party in Congress. We could perhaps say _the_ leader, since Mr. Clay was not upon the floor. After surveying the novel scene around him for six weeks, he delivered his maiden speech,--a plain, forcible, not extraordinary argument in favor of preparing for war. It was prodigiously successful, so far as the reputation of the speaker was concerned. Members gathered round to congratulate the young orator; and Father Ritchie (if he was a father then) "hailed this young Carolinian as one of the master spirits who stamp their names upon the age in which they live." This speech contains one passage which savors of the "chivalric" taint, and indicates the provincial mind. In replying to the objection founded on the expenses of a war, he said: