Origins and Early Life
Calhoun was born in 1782, the fourth child of Patrick Calhoun and his wife Martha Caldwell in Abbeville District, SC. His father had joined the Scotch Irish immigration from County Donegal to the backcountry of South Carolina.
When his father became ill, 17-year-old John Calhoun quit school to work on the family farm. With his brothers' financial support, he later returned to his studies, earning a degree from Yale College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1804. After studying law at the Tapping Reeve Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut, he was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1807.
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