It is now high time that each section turn resolutely away from these fanatics, and the literature which they have made or informed, to seek right instruction as to slavery, the struggle over it, the characters of the masses on each side and of their leaders, and all other belonging details, in the real facts. Especially must we understand the internecine duel between free labor and slavery, and what was the purpose of the directors of evolution placing the fanatical abolitionist and the fire-eater upon the stage. When we grasp that purpose clearly, how pretentious do we understand their claims and self-laudation to be, and how clearly we see that they are like the fly on the cart-wheel that became so vain of the great dust it was raising, and also like the little fice egging on the big dogs to do their fighting. I have still vivid recollections of hearing in amicable interviews of hostile pickets these characters denounced for keeping out of the war which, as was then said, they had caused,--the fanatical abolitionists denounced by the federals, the fire-eaters, original secessionists, the blue cockade wearers, by the confederates. CHAPTER VII CALHOUN After John Caldwell Calhoun, who was born March 18, 1782, the birth-year of Webster, had become large enough to go to the field, the most of his time until he was eighteen was spent in work on the plantation. His father had never had but six months' schooling. There were no schools in that region except a few "old field" ones, where the three R's only were taught. To one of these John went for a few months. The boy learned to read, and manifestly he had acquired some habit of reading. In his thirteenth year he was sent to school to his brother-in-law, Moses Waddell, who was an unusually good teacher. He found a circulating library in the house. This was his first access to books. He read old Rollin, and he probably moused about in Robertson's History of America and Life of Charles V, and Voltaire's Charles XII. Having laid Rollin aside, he assailed Locke's famous Essay; but when he got to the chapter on Infinity his health had become bad, doubtless due to his change from active to sedentary habits and from physical to mental activity. So he was taken back to his work at home. His father had died in the meanwhile, and his mother, who had great business talent, taught him, as we are told, "how to administer the affairs of a plantation."[41] It will appear in the sequel that he was superbly trained.[42] When he attained the age of eighteen the family had become convinced that he ought to be got ready for a profession. John, knowing himself to be the mainstay of his mother, and having resolved to be a planter, at first would not hear to this. But the family persisted. This doubtless influenced him to turn the subject carefully over in his mind; and the decision which he made showed an understanding of his own peculiar talents and needs, and also a prescience