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 ye