sh from Africa. A family party of them
(parents, four sons, and a daughter) emigrated from the North of
Ireland early in the last century, and settled first in Pennsylvania;
then removed to Western Virginia; whence the defeat of Braddock, in
1755, drove them southward, and they found a permanent abode in the
extreme west of South Carolina, then an unbroken wilderness. Of those
four sons, Patrick Calhoun, the father of the Nullifier, was the
youngest. He was six years old when the family left Ireland;
twenty-nine, when they planted the "Calhoun Settlement" in Abbeville
District, South Carolina.

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 maintai