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: