For these Scotch-Irishmen, though they are usually very honest
men, and often right in their opinions, are an uninstructable race,
who stick to a prejudice as tenaciously as to a principle, and really
suppose they are battling for right and truth, when they are only
wreaking a private vengeance or aiming at a personal advantage.
Patrick Calhoun was the most radical of Democrats; one of your
despisers of conventionality; an enemy of lawyers, thinking the common
sense of mankind competent to decide what is right without their aid;
a particular opponent of the arrogant pretensions of the low-country
aristocrats. When the up-country people began to claim a voice in the
government, long since due to their numbers, the planters, of course,
opposed their demand. To establish their right to vote, Patrick
Calhoun and a party of his neighbors, armed with rifles, marched
across the State to within twenty-three miles of Charleston, and there
voted in defiance of the plantation lords. Events like this led to the
admission of members from the up-country; and Patrick Calhoun was the
first to represent that section in the Legislature.
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