In his study The Calhoun Family and Thomas Green Clemson: The Decline of a Southern Patriarchy (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983), historian Ernest McPherson Lander Jr. offers interesting notes about the contrast between James Edward and his brother John Ewing Colhoun, who inherited their father’s Keowee Heights plantation. Whereas John was “undependable, preferring gambling, drinking, and gadding about to devoting the necessary attention for the successful operation of his vast plantation,” Lander describes James Edward as follows (p. 13):

James Edward was generous, dependable, and trustworthy, and he was an entertaining conversationalist with his world travels and broad knowledge. He took special interest in his nieces and nephews and was ever ready to counsel them about their deportment and studies.