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.