On Sunday morning last I was watching alone at Mr. Clay’s bedside. For the last hour he had been unusually quiet, and I thought he was sleeping. In that, however, he told me I was mistaken. Opening his eyes and looking at me, he said, ‘Mr. Underwood, there may be some question where my remains shall be buried. Some persons may designate Frankfort. I wish to repose at the cemetery in Lexington, where many of my friends and connections are buried.’ My reply was, ‘I will endeavor to have your wish executed.’
I now ask the senate to have his corpse transmitted to Lexington, Kentucky, for sepulture. Let him sleep with the dead of that city, in and near which his home has been for more than half a century. For the people of Lexington, the living and the dead, he manifested, by the statement made to me, a pure and holy sympathy, and a desire to cleave unto them, as strong as that which bound Ruth to Naomi. It was his anxious wish to return to them before he died, and to realize what the daughter of Moab so strongly felt and beautifully expressed: ‘Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried.’
It is fit that the tomb of Henry Clay should be in the city of Lexington. In our Revolution, liberty’s first libation-blood was poured out in a town of that name in Massachusetts. On hearing it, the pioneers of Kentucky consecrated the name, and applied it to the place where Mr. Clay desired to be buried. The associations connected with the name harmonize with his character; and the monument erected to his memory at the spot selected by him will be visited by the votaries of genius and liberty with that reverence which is inspired at the tomb of Washington. Upon that monument let his epitaph be engraved.
Mr. President, I have availed myself of Doctor Johnson’s paraphrase of the epitaph on Thomas Hanmer, with a few alterations and additions, to express in borrowed verse my admiration for the life and character of Mr. Clay, and with this heart-tribute to the memory of my illustrious colleague I conclude my remarks:
Born when Freedom her stripes and stars unfurl’d,
When Revolution shook the startled world—
Heroes and sages taught his brilliant mind
To know and love the rights of all mankind.
‘In life’s first bloom his public toils began,
At once commenced the senator and man: