Life of John C. Calhoun, presenting a condensed history of political events from 1811 to 1843.

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Chapter I

Including the Period from his Infancy until he entered Congress.

The object of the present memoir of John Caldwell Calhoun is not to present a biography of the man, but to describe him as a statesman ; to draw and to develop his character in that capacity, and to trace his eminent public services during a long career in one of the most eventful periods of human history. To dwell on a character like his, distinguished by every trait that should win esteem and command admiration, would be to the biographer a most attractive labour ; but the pleasure of depicting a private life elevated by spotless purity and integrity, and a severe simplicity of tastes and habits, must be relinquished — except so far as occasional reference to his early history may become necessary — for the higher duty of portraying his intellectual features, and of explaining his motives and conduct as a public man. It is not our aim to commend him to public affection, or to enlist popular sympathy in his behalf, but rather to show to the world, not for his sake, but for its own instruction, the deep influence of this master-mind upon the great political events of his age. A fair and impartial review of the career of this eminent statesman in connexion with public affairs, is necessary to a thorough understanding of the course of our own government for nearly two thirds of its existence. Such a review, it is believed, would be no unacceptable offering at the present time. ((Throughout the v/hole period from 1811 up to the present time he has served the Union in the various capacities of Representative, Secretary of War, Vice-president, and Senator. ' He has taken a prominent and influential part in all the great questions which have arisen during that long interval ; and, although he has asked a release from farther public service, it is not impossible that he may be destined to close his career as a statesman in another and a higher station. With faculties unclouded, with physical powers unimpaired, wkli a judgment matured by observation and experience, with an intrepidity untamed by the many trying vicissitudes of his extraordinary life, and with an activity whose energies are unabated by time, it is probable thac the American people will not dispense with such services as he might' render in the highest sphere open to American statesmen.

Mr. Calhoun is a native of South Carolina, and was born in Abbeville District on the 18th of March, 1782. His family is Irish on both sides. His father, Patrick Calhoun, was born in Donegal, in Ireland, but the family emigrated when Patrick was a child, first to Pennsylvania, where they remained some, years, and then to the western part of Virginia, from whence they Avere driven by the Indians after Braddock's defeat. They removed finally to South Carolina in 1756, when Patrick settled on the place where the subject of this sketch was born, and which still continues in the family of his younger brother. His mother, whose maiden name was Caldwell, was born in Charlotte County, Virginia. They had five children, one daughter and four sons, of whom John was the youno-est but one. He was called after his maternal uncle, Major John Caldwell, whom the Tories had murdered in cold blood, and in his own yard, after destroying his house by fire. If time permitted, it might be interesting here to trace the effect which the traditions of the stirring scenes of a pioneer's life might have had upon the mind and character of young Calhoun. His paternal and maternal family both being Whig, they were exposed not only to hostile Indian incursions, but also to Tory outrages. They maintained their foothold on the soil despite the conflicts of an almost constant border warfare, and adhered to their country amid the horrors of civil strife and in the face of foreign invaders. But they had need both, of courage and constancy to bear them through the severe trials to which, they were exposed.

Of three maternal uncles able to bear arms, one perished as we have before described, another fell at the battle of Cowpens with thirty sabre wounds, and a third, taken prisoner by the English, was immured for nine months in the dungeons of St. Augustine. Nor was Patrick Calhoun, the father, indebted to anything less than a strong arm and a stout heart for his escape from the perils which surrounded him. Upon one occasion, 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, v/ho 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 his 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 neighbours went down within twenty-three miles of Charleston, armed with rifles, to exercise a right of suflrage which had been disputed : a contest which ended in electing him to the Legislature of the state, in which body h^ served for thirty years. Eelying upon virtue, reason, and courage as all that constituted the true moral strength of man, he attached too little irqportance to mere information, and never feared to encounter an adversary who, in that respect, had the advantage over him : a confidence which mai\y 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 t\\e 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 since so much distinguished. The mode of thinking which was thus encouraged may, perhaps, have compensated in some degree 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 Avhich give great minds the mastery over difiiculties 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. '

The section of the country in which his family resided was then newly settled, and in a rude frontier state. There was not an academy in all the upper part of the state, and none within fifty miles, except one at about that distance in Columbia county, Georgia, which was kept by his brother-in-law, Mr. Waddell, a Presbyterian clergyman. There were but a few scattered schools in the whole of that :|egion, and these were such as are ■usually found on the frontier, in which reading, writing, and arithmetic were imperfectly taught. At the age of thirteen he was placed under the charge of his brother-in-law to receive his educatiOm Shortly after, his father died ; this was followed by the death of his sister, Mrs. Waddell, within a few Aveeks, and the academy was then discontinued, which suspended his education before it had fairly commenced. His brother-inlaw, with whom he was still left, was absent the greater port of the time, attending to his clerical duties, and his pupil thus found himself on a secluded plantation, without any white companion during the greater por tion of the time. > A situation apparently so unfavourable to improvement turned out, in his case, to be the reverse. Fortunately for him, there Avas a small circulating library in the house, of which his brother-in-law was librarian, and, in the absence of all company and amusements, that attracted his attention. His taste, although undirected, led him to history, to the neglect of novels and other lighter reading ; and so deeply was he interested, that in a short time he read the whole of the small stock of historical works contained in the library, consisting of Rollin's Ancient History, Robertson's Charles ^., his South America, and Voltaire's Charles XII. After despatching these, he turned with like eagerness to Cook's Voyages (the large edition), a small volume of Essays by Brown, and Locke on the Understanding, which he read as far as the chapter on Infinity. All this was the work of but fourteen weeks. So intense was his application that his eyes became seriously affected, his countenance pallid, and his frame emaciated. His mother, alarmed at the intelligence of his health, sent for him home, where exercise and amusement soon restored his strength, and he acquired a fondness for hunting, fishing, and other country sports. Four years passed away in these pursuits, and in attention to the business of the farm while his elder brothers Avere absent, to the entire neglect of his education. But the time was not lost. Exercise and rural sports invigorated his frame, while his labours on the farm gave him a taste for agriculture, which he has always retained, and in the pursuit of which he finds delightful occupation for his intervals of leisure from public duties.

About this time an incident occurred upon which turned his after life. His second brother, James, who had been placed at a counting-house m Charleston, retm'ned to spend the summer of 1800 at home. John had determined to become a planter ; but James, objecting to this, strongly urged him to acquire a good education, and pursue one of the learned professions. He replied that he was not averse to the course advised, but there were two difficulties in the way : one was to obtain the assent of his mother, without which he could not think of leaving her, and the other was the want of means. He said his property was small and his resolution fixed : he would far rather be a planter than a half-informed physician or lawyer. With this determination, he could not bring his mind to select either without ample preparation ; but if the consent of their mother should be freely given, and he (James) thought he could so manage his property as to keep him in funds for seven years of study preparatory to entering his profession, he would leave home and commence his education the next week. His mother and brother agreeing to his conditions, he accordingly left home the next week for Dr. Waddell's, who had married again, and resumed his academy in Columbia county, Georgia. This was in June, ' 1800, in the beginning of his 19th year, at which time it may be said he commenced his education, his tuition having been previously very imperfect, and confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic in an ordinary country school. His progress here was so rapid that in two years he entered the junior class of Yale College, and graduated with distinction in 1804, just four years from the time he commenced his Latin grammar. #He was highly esteemed by Dr. Dwight, then the president of the college, although they differed widely in politics, and at a time when political feelings were intensely bitter. TJie doctor was an ardent Federalist, and Mr. Calhoun was one of a very few, in a class of more than seventy, who had the firmness openly to avow and maintain the opinions of the Republican party, and, among others, that the people were the only legitimate source of political power. Dr. Dwight entertained a different opinion. In a recitation during the senior year, on the chapter on Politics in Paley's Moral Philosophy, the doctor, with the intention of eliciting his opinion, propounded to Mr. Calhoun the question, as to the legitimate source of power. He did not decline an open and direct avowal of his opinion. A<discussion ensued between them, which exhausted the time allotted for the recitation, and in which the pupil maintained his opinions with such vigour of argument and success as to elicit from his distinguished teacher the declaration, in speaking of him to a friend, that " the young man had talent enough to be President of the United States," which he accompanied by a prediction that he would one day attain that station.

iAn English oration was assigned to Mr. Calhoim at the Commencement. He selected for his thesis, " The qualifications necessary to constitute a perfect >. statesman," and prepared his oi-ation, but was prevented from delivering it by a '^Vere indisposition. After graduating, he commenced the study of the law, and. devoted three years to that and miscellaneous reading, eighteen months of which were spent at Litchfield, Connecticut, where a celebrated law-school was kept at that time by Judge Reeves and Mr. Gould. He acquired great distinction at the school. It was there that he successfully cultivated, in a debating society, his talents for Extemporary speaking. The residue of the time was spent in the offices of Mr. De Saussure, of Charleston (afterward chancellor), and of Mr. George Bowie, of Abbeville. Having spent seven years in preparation, according to his determination when he commenced his education, and having passed his examination for admission to the bar, he began the practice of law in his native district. He rose at once into full practice, taking a stand with the oldest and ablest lawyers on the circuit,

He continued but a short time at the bar. While he was yet a student, after his return from Litchfield to Abbeville, an incident occurred which agitated the whole Union, and contributed to give to Mr. Calhoun's life, at that early period, the political direction which it has ever since kept — the attack of the English frigate Leopard on the American frigate Chesapeake. It led to public meetings all over the Union, in which resolutions were passed expressive of the indignation of the people, and their firm resolve to stand by the government in whatever measure it might think proper to adopt to redress the outrage. At that called in his native district, he was appointed one of the committee to prepare a report and resolutions to be presented to a meeting to be convened to receive them on an appointed day. Mr. Calhoun was requested by the committee to prepare them, which he. did so much to their satisfaction, that he was appointed to address the meeting on the occasion before the vote was taken on the resolutions. The meeting was large, and it was the first time he had ever appeared before the public. He acquitted himself with such success that his name was presented as a candidate for the state Legislature at the next election. He was elected at the head of the ticket, and at a time when the prejudice against lawyers was so strong in the district that no one of the profession who had offered ^or many years previously had ever succeeded. This was the commencement of his political life, and the first evidence he ever received of the confidence of the people of the state — a confidence which has continued ever since constantly increasing, without interruption or reaction, for the third of a century ; and w^hich, for its duration, universality, and strength, may be said to be without a parallel in any other state, or in the case of any other public man.

He served two sessions in the state Legislature. It was not long after he took his seat before he distinguished himself. Early in the session an informal meeting of the Republican portion of the members was called to nominate candidates for the places of President and Vice-president of the United States. Mr. Madison was nominated for the presidency without opposition: When the nomination for the vice-presidency was presented, Mr. Calhoun embraced the occasion to present his opinion in reference to coming events, as bearing on the nomination. He reviewed the state of the relations between the United States and Great Britain and France, the two great belligerents which were then struggling for mastery, and in iheir stmggle trampling on the rights of neutrals, and especially ours ; he touched on the restrictive system which had been resorted to by the government to protect our rights, and expressed his doubt of its efficacy, and the conviction that a war with Great Britain would be unavoidable. " It was," be said, " in this state of things, of the utmost importance that the ranks of the Republican party should be preserved undisturbed and unbroken by faction or discord." He then adverted to the fact, that a discontented portion of the party had given unequivocal evidence of rallying round the name of the venerable vice-president, George Clinton (whose re-nomination was proposed), and of whom he spoke highly ; but he gave it as his opinion, that should he be nominated and re-elected, he would become the nucleus of all the discontented portion of the party, and thus make a formidable division in its ranks should the country be forced into war. These persons, he predicted, would ultimately rally under De Witt Clinton, the nephew^ whom he described as a man of distinguished talents and aspiring disposition. To avoid the danger, he suggested for nomination the name of John Langdon, of New-Hampshire, of whom he spoke highly both as to talents and patriotism.

It was Mr. Calhoun's first effort in a public capacity. The manner and matter excited great applause ; and when it is recollected that these remarks preceded the declaration of war more than three years, and how events happened according to his anticipations, it affords a striking proof of that sagacity, at so early a period, for which he has since been so much distinguished. It at once gave him a stand among the most distinguished members of the Legislature.

LIFE OF JOHN C. CALHOUN.

During the short period he remained a member, he originated and carried through several measures, which proved in practice to be salutary, and have become a permanent portion of the legislation of the state.

Chapter II

Including the period from his entering Congress until his appointment as Secretary of War.

In the mean time, the growing difficulties in our foreign relations, especially with Great Britain, impressed the community at large with the belief that war with that formidable power was approaching. The impression naturally turned the attention of the people, in selecting candidates for Congress, to those whom they believed to be the most competent to serve them at so trying a period. The eyes of the congressional district in which Mr. Calhoun resided wereturned towards him, and he was elected by an overwhelming majority over his opponent. This was in the fall of 1810, and he took his seat in the councils of the nation a year afterward, in the first session of the twelfth Congress,.* known as the war session, with his two distinguished colleagues, Mr. Cheves and Mr. Lowndes, who, like himself, had been elected in reference to the critical condition of the country. His reputation had preceded him, and he was placed second on the Committee of Foreign Relations, which, in the existing state of our relations with the two great belligerents, was regarded as the most important of the committees, and Avas, accordingly, filled by members selected in reference to the magnitude of its duties. The other distinguished individuals who composed it were Peter B. Porter, the chairman, and Felix Grundy, of Tennessee, on the Republican side, and John Randolph and Philip Barton Key on the other. It was, indeed, an eventful period of our history, and the duties which it imposed on the committee were of the most difficult and responsible character.

It is not easy, at this day, to estimate the magnitude of the crisis. Our present government had its origin just preceding the commencement of the great Revolution in France, which, in its progress, involved her in a war without example or parallel in the history of the world, taking into estimate its cause, extent, duration, the immensity of force brought into conflict, the skill which directed it, the variety and magnitude of its incidents, and the importance of the stake at issue. England Avas the great antagonist power to France in this mighty struggle, whose shocks reached even our distant shores. From the beginning, our mutual rights were invaded by both sides, and our peace endangered ; but so recently had our government been established, so hazardous was it to put it to the test of war, and especially in such a struggle, and so advantageous to our commerce and prosperity Avas our position as a neutral power, while all Europe was at Avar, that it became the fixed policy of the government to preserve peace and bear wrongs, so long as the one could be preserved and the other endured without sacrificing the honour and independence of the country. This pacific and wise policy Avas, with some slight exceptions, steadily pursued for more than fifteen years. At length came the Berlin and Milan Decrees on the part of France, and the hostile orders in council on the part of England, which forced on our government the embargo and other restrictive measures, adopted from an anxious desire of preserving peace, and in the hope of obtaining respect for our rights from one or other of the two belligerents. Experience soon proved hovir impotent these measures Avere, and how fallacious was our hope. The encroachments on our rights and independence continued to advance, till England at length pushed her aggressions so far that our commerce was reduced to a state of dependance as complete as when we were her colonies, and our ships were converted, at the same time, into a recruiting-ground tl to man her na\y. Not a A'essel of ours was permitted to reach Em-ope but through her ports, and more than 3000 of our hardy seamen were impressed into her service, to fight battles in which they had no interest. Our independence, as far as the ocean was concerned, had become an empty name ; but so hazardous was it to take up arms in the imprepared state of the country, and to be drawn into a struggle apparently so fearful and interminable between the two Srst powers on earth, that the stoutest and boldest might well have paused at taking the step.

It was in such a crisis of our affairs that Mr. Calhoun took his seat in Congress. To him it was not unexpected. He had little confidence from the beginning in the peaceful measures resorted to for the redress of our wrongs, and saw beforehand that the final alternatives would be war or submission, and had deliberately made up his mind, that to lose independence, and to sink down into a state of acknowledged inferiority, depending for security on forbearance, and KOt on our capacity and disposition to defend ourselves, would be the worst calamity which could befall the country. According to his opinion, the ability of the government to defend the country against external danger, and to cause its rights to be respected from without, was as essential as protection against violence within, and that, if it should prove incompetent to meet successfully the hazard of a just and necessary war, it would fail in one of the two great objects for which it was instituted, and that the sooner it was known the better. With these fixed opinions, his voice, on taking his seat, was for the most decisive course.

The President's Message, at the opening of the session, was, in its general features, warlike, and yet there were expressions of an ambiguous character, • which led many to doubt what course of policy was really intended by the administration. The portion which related to our affairs with other powers was referred to the Committee of Foreign Relations. The excitement in the country was intense, and party spirit never ran higher. All eyes were turned on the proceedings of the committee. They reported, at an early period of the session, resolutions strongly recommending immediate and extensive preparations to defend our rights and redress our wrongs by an appeal to arms. The debate was opened by the chairman, Mr. Porter, and he was followed on the same side by Mr. Grundy. It was allotted to Mr. Calhoun to follow Mr. Randolph, Avho, on the opposite side, succeeded Mr. Grundy in^an able and eloquent speech. The discussion from the beginning excited profound interest, both in the body and the crowded audience daily assembled in the lobby and galleries, and this interest had increased as the discussion advanced. It was Mr. Calhoun's first speech in Congress, except a few brief remarks on the Apportionment Bill. The trial was a severe one ; expectation was high. The question was of the greatest magnitude, and he to whom he had to reply, a veteran statesman of unsurpassed eloquence. How he acquitted himself, the papers of the day will best attest. The remarks of the Richmond Enquirer, then, as now, a leading journal on the Republican side, may be taken as an example. Mr. Ritchie, in his remarks on the speeches, after characterizing Mr. Randolph's, said : " Mr. Calhoun is clear and precise in his reasoning, marching up directly to the object of his attack, and felling down the errors of his opponent with the club of Hercules ; not eloquent in his tropes and figures, but, like Fox, in the moral elevation of his sentiments ; free from personality, yet full of those fine touches of indignation, which are the severest cut to the man of feeling. His speech, like a fine drawing, abounds in those lights and shades which set off each other : the cause of his country is robed in light, while her opponents are wrapped in darkness. It were a contracted wish that Mr. Calhoun were a Virginian ; though, after the quota she has furnished with opposition talents, such a wish might be forgiven us. We beg leave to participate, as Americans and friends of our country, in the honours of South Carolina. We hail this young

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Carolinian as one of the master-spirits who stamp their names upon the age in which they live."

When Mr. Calhoun sat down, he was greeted by the great body of the party for his successful effort, and thenceforward took rank with the ablest and most influential members of the body. But, as clear as it appeared to him that the period had arrived when a resort to arms could no longer be avoided "without sacrificing the honour and interest of the country, such was far from being the feeling of many, even of the Republican members of the body. Many, who saw the necessity, hesitated ; some from the great hazard of war, others from the want of preparation, or the difficulty of selecting between the belligerents, when both had so grossly violated our rights ; and not a few from a lingering confidence in the Non-importation Act, and other restrictive measures, as the means of redressing our wrongs. Mr. Calhoun, although he approved of the motive which had led to a resort to those measures in the first instance, and regarded them as wise temporary expedients, never had any confidence in. them as instruments of avenging or redressing the wrongs of the country. Believing that they had accomplished all they ever could, and that a latent attachment to them was one of the principal impediments to a resort to arms, he did not hesitate to attack the whole system.

To realize the boldness and hazard of such a step, it must be borne in mind that the support or opposition to the system had been for many years the main test of party fidelity, and that party spirit was never higher than, at the time. But as strongly as he was attached to the administration, to the Republican party, and their general policy, and opposed as he was to the Federalists, he did not hesitate, young as he was, when he believed duty and the interest of the country required it, to place himself above all party considerations, and to expose manfully the defects of a system which had been so long cherished and defended by the party to which he belonged. The following extracts from a ■speech delivered against it will give in his own language some of the most prominent objections which he urged against the system, and afford, at the same time, a fair specimen of his powers of reasoning and eloquence at that early period, and of the lofty and patriotic sentiments which actuated him in the line of policy that he advocated.