_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:

"We have now reached the consummation of democratic
blessedness. We have a country governed by blockheads and
knaves; the ties of marriage, with all its felicities, are
severed and destroyed; our wives and daughters are thrown
into the stews; our children are cast into the world from
the breast forgotten; filial piety is extinguished; and our
surnames, the only mark of distinction among families, are
abolished. Can the imagination paint anything more dreadful
this side hell?"

These remarkable statements, so far from surprising the virtuous
people of New Haven, were accepted by them, it appears, as facts, and
published with general approval. From what we know of President
Dwight, we may conclude that he would regard his brother's oration as
a pardonable flight of hyperbole, based on truth. He was a Federalist
of the deepest dye.

Transferred to a scene where such opinions prevailed, it cost the
young republican no great exertion either of his intellect or his
firmness or his family pride to hold his ground. Of all known men, he
had the most complete confidence in the infallibility of his own mind.
He used to relate, that in