CALHOUN.
In writing the lives of our American Statesmen, we might say of almost any of them, "that he was born in such a year, that he was sent to the common school or to college, that he studied law, that he was chosen, first a member of the State Legislature, and then of the National Congress, that he became successively, a Senator, a foreign Ambassador, a Secretary of State, or a President, and that finally he retired to his paternal acres, to pass a venerable old age, amid the general respect and admiration of the whole country." This would be a true outline in the main, of the practical workings and doings of nine out of ten of them: but in filling in the details of the sketch, in clothing the dry skeleton of facts with the flesh and blood of the living reality, it would be found that this apparent similarity of development had given rise to the utmost diversity and individuality of character, and that scarcely any two of our distinguished men, though born and bred under the same influence, bore even a family resemblance. It is said by the foreign writers, by De Tocqueville especially, that very little originality and independence of mind can be expected in a democracy, where the force of the majority crushes all opinions and characters into a dead and leaden uniformity. But the study of our actual history rather tends to the opposite conclusion, and leads us to believe that the land of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, the Adamses, Clay, Webster and Calhoun, is favorable to the production of distinct, peculiar, and decided natures. At least we may be sure, that our annals are no more wanting than those of other nations, in original, self-formed, and self-dependent men.
Among these, there was no one more peculiar or more unlike any prototype, than John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. In the structure of his mind, in the singular tenacity of his purposes, in the rare dignity and elevation of his character, and in the remarkable political system to which he adhered, he was wholly sui generis, standing out from the number of his forerunners and contemporaries in bold, positive and angular relief. He could only have been what he was, in the country, and during the times, in which he flourished: he was a natural growth of our American society and institutions: had formed himself by no models ancient or modern; and the great leading principles of his thought faithfully rendered in all his conduct, were as much an individual possession as the figure of his body or the features of his face. In seeing him, in hearing him speak, or in reading his books, no one was ever likely to confound him with any second person.
Mr. Calhoun was born in the Abbeville District of South Carolina, on the 18th of March, 1782. His parents on both sides were of Irish extraction, who had first settled in Pennsylvania, and then in Virginia, whence they were driven by the Indians, at the time of Braddock's defeat, to South Carolina. The father appears to have been a man of the most resolute and energetic character, equally ready to defend his home against the incursions of the savages, and his rights as a citizen against legislative encroachments. On one occasion, he and his neighbors went down to within thirty miles of Charleston, armed, to assert a right of suffrage which was then disputed; and he always steadily opposed the Federal Constitution, because it allowed other people than those of South Carolina to tax the people of South Carolina. "We have heard his son say," writes a friend of the latter, "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 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 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 developes its flower and matures its fruit under circumstances apparently the most unpropitious.
"The region 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 region, 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 education. Shortly after, his father died; this was followed by the death of his sister, Mrs. Waddell, within a few weeks, and the academy was then discontinued, which suspended his education before it had fairly commenced. His brother-in-law, with whom he was still left, was absent the greater part 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 portion of the time. A situation apparently so unfavorable to improvement turned out, in his case, to be the reverse. Fortunately for him, there was 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 V., his South America, and Voltaire's Charles XII. After dispatching 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 were absent, to the entire neglect of his education. But the time was not lost. Exercise and rural sports invigorated his frame, while his labors on the farm gave him a taste for agriculture, which he always retained, and in the pursuit of which he finds delightful occupation for his intervals of leisure from public duties."
It is not our purpose, however, to enter into any detail of the life of Mr Calhoun. Suffice it to say that he was educated, under Dr. Dwight, at Yale College, that he studied law at Litchfield in Connecticut, that he was for two sessions a member of the Legislature, that from 1811 to 1817 during the war with Great Britain, and the most trying times that followed it, he was a member of the lower House of Congress. That he was then appointed Secretary of War, under Madison, when he gave a new, thorough, and complete organization to his department. That he was chosen Vice-President in 1825, and subsequently served his country as Senator of the United States, and Secretary of State, until the year 1850, when he died. During the whole of this long period his exertions were constant, and he took a leading part in all the movements of parties. Acting for the most of the time with the Democratic party, he was still never the slave of party, never guilty of the low arts or petty cunning of the mere politician, always fearless in the discharge of his duties, and though ambitious, ever sacrificing his ambition to his clearly discerned and openly expressed principles. Mr. Webster, who, during nearly the whole of his legislative career, and on nearly all questions of public concern, had been an active opponent, in an obituary address to the Senate, bore this testimony to his genius and his greatness.
"Differing widely on many great questions respecting our institutions and the government of the country, those differences never interrupted our personal and social intercourse. I have been present at most of the distinguished instances of the exhibition of his talents in debate. I have always heard him with pleasure, often with much instruction, not unfrequently with the highest degree of admiration.
"Mr. Calhoun was calculated to be a leader in whatsoever association of political friends he was thrown. He was a man of undoubted genius and of commanding talents. All the country and all the world admit that. His mind was both perceptive and vigorous. It was clear, quick, and strong.