Retrospect of Western Travel, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Harriet Martineau

There can scarcely be a stronger contrast than between the eloquence of Webster and that of Clay. Mr. Clay is now my personal friend; but I have a distinct recollection of my impression of his speaking while he was yet merely an acquaintance. His appearance is plain in the extreme, being that of a mere west-country farmer. He is tall and thin, with a weather-beaten complexion, small gray eyes, which convey an idea of something more than his well-known sagacity, even of slyness. It is only after much intercourse that Mr. Clay's personal appearance can be discovered to do him any justice at all. All attempts to take his likeness have been in vain, though upward of thirty portraits of him, by different artists, were in existence when I was in America. No one has succeeded in catching the subtile expression of placid kindness, mingled with astuteness, which becomes visible to the eyes of those who are in daily intercourse with him. His mode of talking, deliberate and somewhat formal, including sometimes a grave humour and sometimes a gentle sentiment, very touching from the lips of a sagacious man of ambition, has but one fault, its obvious adaptation to the supposed state of mind of the person to whom it is addressed. Mr. Clay is a man of an irritable and impetuous nature, over which he has obtained a truly noble mastery. His moderation is now his most striking characteristic; obtained, no doubt, at the cost of prodigious self-denial on his own part, and on that of his friends of some of the ease, naturalness, and self-forgetfulness of his manners and discourse. But his conversation is rich in information, and full charged with the spirit of justice and kindliness, rising, on occasion, to a moving magnanimity. By chances, of some of which he was totally unaware, I became acquainted with several acts of his life, political and private, which prove that his moderation is not the mere diffusion of oil upon the waves, but the true stilling of the storm of passion and selfishness. The time may come when these acts may be told; but it has not yet arrived.

Mr. Clay is sometimes spoken of as a "disappointed statesman," and he would probably not object to call himself so; for it makes no part of his idea of dignity to pretend to be satisfied when he is sorry, or delighted with what he would fain have prevented; but he suffers only the genuine force of disappointment, without the personal mortification and loss of dignity which are commonly supposed to be included in it. He once held the balance of the Union in his hand, and now belongs to the losing party; he more than once expected to be president, and has now no chance of ever being so. Thus far he is a disappointed statesman; but, at the same time, he is in possession of more than an equivalent for what he has lost, not only in the disciplined moderation of his temper, but in the imperishable reality of great deeds done. No possession of office could now add to his dignity any more than the total neglect of the present generation of the people could detract from it. The fact that Mr. Clay's political opinions are not in accordance with those now held by the great body of the people is no disgrace to him or them, while the dignity of his former services, supported by his present patience and quietness, places him far above compassion, and every feeling but respect and admiration. This admiration is exalted to enthusiasm in those who know how difficult it is to a man of Mr. Clay's nature, who has lived in public all his life, to fall back into obscurity; an obscurity not relieved, alas! by the solace of a cheerful home. Few spectacles can be more noble than he is in that obscurity, discoursing of public men and affairs with a justice which no rivalship can impair, and a hopefulness which no personal disappointment can relax.

Mr. Clay is the son of a respectable clergyman in Virginia, and was born in April, 1777. His father died when he was quite young; and he was, in consequence, left to the common educational chances which befriend all the young citizens of the United States. He studied law after leaving the common school at which his education began, and settled early at Lexington, in Kentucky, where his residence has ever since been fixed. His first important act was labouring diligently in favour of a plan for the gradual abolition of slavery in Kentucky, which was proposed in 1798. His exertions were, however, in vain. In 1803 he entered the legislature of his state, and in 1806 was sent, with the dignity of senator, to Washington, having not quite attained the requisite age. In 1809 he found occasion to advocate the principle of protection to domestic manufactures, which he has since had the very questionable honour of imbodying in his famous American System. In 1811 he became Speaker of the House of Representatives, and for three years exercised in that situation a powerful influence over the affairs of the country. In 1814 he was appointed one of the commissioners who negotiated the treaty of Ghent; and when that business was concluded, he repaired to London with his colleagues, Messrs. Adams and Gallatin, and there concluded the commercial convention which was made the basis of all the subsequent commercial arrangements between the United States and Europe. In 1825 Mr. Clay accepted the appointment of Secretary of State under Mr. Adams, an act for which he is still extensively and vehemently blamed, but with how much or how little reason I do not pretend, from want of knowledge of the party politics of the time, to understand. While in this office he did a great deal in procuring, with much labour and difficulty, a recognition of the independence of the Spanish colonies in South America; a recognition which had the all-important effect of deterring the great European powers from their contemplated intervention on behalf of Spain. Mr. Clay's speeches were read at the head of the armies of the South American republics; and if his name were forgotten everywhere else, it would stand in the history of their independence. Mr. Clay has since been a powerful advocate of internal improvements, and the framer of "the American System;" the founder of the protective policy, which I believe he is more proud of than of any act of his public life, while many others are justly amazed that a man of his sagacity should not see the unsoundness of the principle on which the whole system is based. Much more honour is due to him for the Compromise Bill, by which he virtually surrendered his system, and immediately put an end to the nullification struggle. Mr. Webster victoriously exposed the badness of the nullification principle, and Mr. Clay removed the present cause of its exercise. The one humbled South Carolina to the dust on her nullification ground, the other left her in triumphant possession of her principle of free trade, while disarming her by a wise and well-principled compromise.

The one act of Mr. Clay's public life for which he must be held to require pardon from posterity, is that by which he secured the continuance of slavery in Missouri, and, in consequence, its establishment in Arkansas and Florida; the one an admitted state, the other a territory destined to be so. Mr. Clay is not an advocate of slavery, though, instead of being a friend to abolition, he is a dupe of colonization. When he held the destinies of American slavery in his hand, he had, unhappily, more regard for precedent in human arrangements than for the spirit of the divine laws in the light of which such arrangements should be ever regarded. He acted to avert the conflict which cannot be averted. It was still to take place; it is now taking place, under less favourable circumstances; and his measure of expediency is already meeting with the retribution which ever follows upon the subordination of a higher principle to a lower. For many of his public acts Mr. Clay will be permanently honoured; with regard to others, the honour will be mingled with allowance for error in philosophy; for this one he will have to be forgiven.

Mr. Clay married an excellent woman, who is still living, the surviver of six daughters, taken away, some of them in the bloom of promise, and one in the maturity of virtue. The great stateman's house is very desolate. He must seek in his own strength of soul, and in the love and honour with which his friends regard him, that good which has been denied to him in the latter days of his political and domestic life.

His recollections of Europe are very vivid and pleasurable. We spent many an hour of my visit to him in Kentucky in talking over our mutual English friends, till we forgot the time and space we had both traversed since we parted from them, and looked up surprised to find ourselves, not at a London dinner-table, but in the wild woods of the West. Mr. Clay has not kept up his knowledge of British life and politics so accurately as some of his brother-statesmen; but he is still full of the sayings of Castlereagh and Canning, of Lords Eldon and Stowell, of Mackintosh and Sydney Smith.

The finest speech I heard from Mr. Clay in the Senate was on the sad subject of the injuries of the Indians. He exposed the facts of the treatment of the Cherokees by Georgia. He told how the lands in Georgia, guaranteed by solemn treaties to the Cherokees, had been surveyed and partitioned off to white citizens of the state; that, though there is a nominal right of appeal awarded to the complainants, this is a mere mockery, as an acknowledgment of the right of Georgia to divide the lands is made a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the right; in other words, the Indians must lay down their claims on the threshold of the courts which they enter for the purpose of enforcing these claims! The object of Mr. Clay's plea was to have the Supreme Court open to the Cherokees, their case being, he contended, contemplated by the Constitution. A minor proposition was that Congress should assist, with territory and appliances, a body of Cherokees who desired to emigrate beyond the Mississippi.

It was known that Mr. Clay would probably bring forward his great topic that day. Some of the foreign ambassadors might be seen leaning against the pillars behind the chair, and many members of the other house appeared behind and in the passages; and one sat on the steps of the platform, his hands clasped, and his eyes fixed on Mr. Clay, as if life hung upon his words. As many as could crowd into the gallery leaned over the balustrade; and the lower circle was thronged with ladies and gentlemen, in the centre of whom stood a group of Cherokee chiefs, listening immoveably. I never saw so deep a moral impression produced by a speech. The best testimony to this was the disgust excited by the empty and abusive reply of the senator from Georgia, who, by-the-way, might be judged from his accent to have been about three months from the Green Island. This gentleman's speech, however, showed us one good thing, that Mr. Clay is as excellent in reply as in proposition; prompt, earnest, temperate, and graceful. The chief characteristic of his eloquence is its earnestness. Every tone of his voice, every fibre of his frame bears testimony to this. His attitudes are, from the beginning to the close, very graceful. His first sentences are homely, and given with a little hesitation and repetition, and with an agitation shown by a frequent putting on and taking off of the spectacles, and a trembling of the hands among the documents on the desk. Then, as the speaker becomes possessed with his subject, the agitation changes its character, but does not subside. His utterance is still deliberate, but his voice becomes deliciously winning. Its higher tones disappointed me at first; but the lower ones, trembling with emotion, swelling and falling with the earnestness of the speaker, are very moving, and his whole manner becomes irresistibly persuasive. I saw tears, of which I am sure he was wholly unconscious, falling on his papers as he vividly described the woes and injuries of the aborigines. I saw Webster draw his hand across his eyes; I saw every one deeply moved except two persons, the vice-president, who yawned somewhat ostentatiously, and the Georgian senator, who was busy brewing his storm. I was amazed at the daring of this gentleman; at the audacity which could break up such a moral impression as this Cherokee tale, so told, had produced, by accusing Mr. Clay of securing an interest in opposition to Georgia "by stage starts and theatric gesticulations." The audience were visibly displeased at having their feelings thus treated, in the presence even of the Cherokee chiefs; but Mr. Clay's replies both to argument and abuse were so happy, and the Georgian's rejoinder was so outrageous, that the business ended with a general burst of laughter. The propositions were to lie over till the next day; and, as I soon after left Washington, I never learned their ultimate fate.

The American Senate is a most imposing assemblage. When I first entered it I thought I never saw a finer set of heads than the forty-six before my eyes: two only being absent, and the Union then consisting of twenty-four states. Mr. Calhoun's countenance first fixed my attention; the splendid eye, the straight forehead, surmounted by a load of stiff, upright, dark hair; the stern brow; the inflexible mouth; it is one of the most remarkable heads in the country. Next him sat his colleague, Mr. Preston, in singular contrast; stout in person, with a round, ruddy, good-humoured face, large blue eyes, and a wig, orange to-day, brown yesterday, and golden to-morrow. Near them sat Colonel Benton, a temporary people's man, remarkable chiefly for his pomposity. He sat swelling amid his piles of papers and books, looking like a being designed by nature to be a good-humoured barber or innkeeper, but forced by fate to make himself into a mock-heroic senator. Opposite sat the transcendant Webster, with his square forehead and cavernous eyes; and behind him the homely Clay, with the face and figure of a farmer, but something of the air of a divine, from his hair being combed straight back from his temples. Near them sat Southard and Porter; the former astute and rapid in countenance and gesture; the latter strangely mingling a boyish fun and lightness of manner and glance with the sobriety suitable to the judge and the senator. His keen eye takes in everything that passes; his extraordinary mouth, with its overhanging upper lip, has but to unfold into a smile to win laughter from the sourest official or demagogue. Then there was the bright bonhommie of Ewing of Ohio, the most primitive-looking of senators; and the benign, religious gravity of Frelinghuysen; the gentlemanly air of Buchanan; the shrewdness of Poindexter; the somewhat melancholy simplicity of Silsbee; all these and many others were striking, and for nothing more that for their total unlikeness to each other. No English person who has not travelled over half the world can form an idea of such differences among men forming one assembly for the same purposes, and speaking the same language. Some were descended from Dutch farmers, some from French Huguenots, some from Scotch Puritans, some from English cavaliers, some from Irish chieftains. They were brought together out of law-courts, sugar-fields, merchants' stores, mountain farms, forests, and prairies. The stamp of originality was impressed upon every one, and inspired a deep, involuntary respect. I have seen no assembly of chosen men, and no company of the highborn, invested with the antique dignities of an antique realm, half so imposing to the imagination as this collection of stout-souled, full-grown, original men, brought together on the ground of their supposed sufficiency, to work out the will of their diverse constituencies.

In this splendid chamber, thus splendidly inhabited, we spent many hours of many weeks. Here I was able to gain no little knowledge of the state, political and other, of various parts of the country, from my large acquaintance among the members of the Senate. When dull official reports were read, and uninteresting local matters were discussed, or when the one interminable speaker, Benton, was on his legs, one member or another of the body would come and talk with us. I have heard certain of the members, stalking from their seats towards those of the ladies, compared to cranes in search of fish. The comparison is not a bad one.