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hoped to continue the "Virginia Dynasty." For nearly a quarter of a century Mr. Jefferson's choice had been the choice of the majority.

In 1827, Mr. Crawford was appointed to a vacant circuit judgeship in Georgia, and was subsequently twice elected to the same position. While laboring on his "circuit," he died, of heart disease, September 15, 1834.

As a Southern politician he had no faith in Mr. Adams, although he approved the course of Henry Clay in supporting Adams instead of Jackson in 1825; and could not see, from any point of view, that the motives or act of Mr. Clay contained a shadow of dishonor. Mr. Crawford was led, on two occasions, to resort to the villainous practice of his day and section in two personal disputes. In the first of these duels. he killed Van Allen, and in the other, with General John Clark, he was himself shot in the wrist.

One of his admirers wrote of him that "his tall, commanding person figured conspicuously among the diminutive Frenchmen, whilst his noble features and gallant temper rendered him a great favorite in Parisian society."

Although he partially recovered from his paralyzed condition, he left Washington at the end of Mr. Monroe's Administration pretty thoroughly broken down in body and political fortune. In the "Biography" of W. W. Seaton, one of the editors of the "National Intelligencer," the wife of Mr. Seaton is made to say in a letter in 1823

"I conversed to-day with Dr. Holcombe, from New Jersey, who has been called in to Mr. Crawford, who is extremely low. His general debility has occasioned an affection of the eyes,

exceedingly painful, compelling him to remain with them bandaged in a dark room, which will be an incalculable disadvantage when Congress is becoming impatient for the Treasury Report, and when he will require all his eyes to make no second blunder. William has seen him this morning, and reports his health and constitution as apparently shattered. He has been bled twentythree times, largely, within three weeks. The physicians apprehend total blindness, the confirmation of which fear would be an irremediable misfortune in a President."

Bled twenty-three times, largely, in three weeks! The most wonderful feat of Mr. Crawford's life, perhaps, was his recovery in spite of this treatment. How many enterprising physicians of any school are there at this day who would not say such treatment was unmitigated quackery? How many of them, indeed, can say when the practice of medicine ceased to be mixed with superstition, folly, and quackery, even in very reputable hands?

CHAPTER XVII.

JOHN C. CALHOUN—“OUR FEDERAL UNION: IT MUST BE PRESERVED."

OHN CALDWELL CALHOUN, the seventh Vice

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President of the United States, was born on the

farm of his father, Patrick Calhoun, in Abbeville District, South Carolina, March 18, 1782.

His father was a native of Ireland, but about 1733 emigrated to this country, settling in Pennsylvania. He finally, however, after a residence of several years in Virginia, where he married a Miss Caldwell, a native of that State, but of Irish or Scotch descent, permanently located in that part of South Carolina where his distinguished son was born.

He was a farmer, and in no way distinguished among the interesting race from which he sprang. To hunt for his extraordinary and problematical virtues is a task wholly unsuited to a mere sketch of a son whose reputation could not be affected in the least thereby.

John C. Calhoun was named after his uncle, John Caldwell, and was the only member of a family of five children who arose to any degree of public consequence. He was, perhaps, the only member of his father's family who had any disposition for learning, although his only sister married Waddell, a Presbyterian preacher and school-teacher, a man of some scholarly attainments.

Through the assistance of his brothers, he was enabled to go over into Georgia and prepare himself for college under Waddell. He was ambitious and bright, and in two years, on a meagre foundation with which to begin, he was able to enter Yale College, where he acquired a very flattering reputation, and graduated in 1804. He subsequently attended the law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, but returned to South Carolina to complete his professional preparations. In 1807 he was admitted to the bar, and began at once to practice law in his native county. But, notwithstanding his successful entry into this profession, it was not his ambition to become a great lawyer. The law was the most direct and practicable road to political distinction. He was soon a member of the State Legislature, and in 1810 was elected to the Lower House of Congress.

In the following fall he took his seat in that body, and on the 19th of December delivered his "maiden speech. He was re-elected every other year, and held the place continually until he entered Mr. Monroe's Cabinet as Secretary of War, in 1817. He warmly supported the war measures under President Madison, and favored the establishment of the National or United States Bank. As Secretary of War he stood very high throughout the Nation, and was really one of the most skillful and able of all the War Secretaries. Both his management of the office and his general views and demeanor on national, domestic, and general political affairs, rendered him universally popnlar, North and South.

Before the end of his long term in the War Office he was a candidate for the Presidency, and

to all appearances no man in the country had better prospects.

There were at least three members of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet who wished to succeed him in the Presidency. William H. Crawford would have given his life for this glittering price, and in the South at that time he was the choice, especially among the political managers. There was, however, no disposition to lay Mr. Calhoun aside only till a more convenient occasion. Mr. Calhoun had a national strength, and could wait upon that. This Mr. Crawford never had.

The battle of New Orleans and some other means had brought forward the most formidable character who had yet risen in political affairs, and in view of him the Congressional caucus nominee was not even temporarily satisfactory.

A convention held at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1824, nominated General Jackson for the Presidency, and Mr. Calhoun for the Vice-Presidency. This was supposed to be an extraordinarily strong combination, and one which would meet the popular demand. Mr. Calhoun fell in with the idea of his friends, that he could afford to wait, in view of the grand triumph surely his at no distant day, and acquiesced in the nomination, although many believed that he preferred Mr. Adams for the Presidency. Mr. Calhoun could never have been a warm supporter of General Jackson. Pennsylvania persuaded herself that Jackson was a tariff man, and it was so fully understood that Mr. Calhoun was one, that the course of the Harrisburg convention was received with much favor at the North, where Mr. Calhoun had a wide-spread popularity. Before the meeting of this convention, it was

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