During his lifetime, John C. Calhoun was a larger-than-life figure; he was held almost in awe by many Americans. In his teens Calhoun displayed a voracious appetite for learning, poring over books and sucking up knowledge from wherever he could acquire it. At age fourteen, he became the manager of his family’s farms and turned around his family’s fortunes by making the farms profitable. Although he was from the backwoods of South Carolina, with little formal education, he earned admission to Yale College, where he cut a striking figure. He was six feet, two inches tall but was so thin that he seemed taller. He did not wear the stylish clothing of his rich classmates, seemingly oblivious to how his sturdy, rustic clothing and boots made him seem out of place. He spoke with a frontier twang that made him sound down-to-earth, a man of the people rather than part of southern aristocracy.