I scarcely know, sir, how far it may be allowable, upon an occasion like this, to refer to party struggles which have left wounds not yet entirely healed. I will venture, however, to suggest, that it should be a source of consolation to his friends that he lived long enough to see the full accomplishment of the last great work of his life, and to witness the total disappearance of that sectional tempest which threatened to whelm the republic in ruins. Both the great parties of the country have agreed to stand upon the platform which he erected, and both of them have solemnly pledged themselves to maintain unimpaired the work of his hands. I doubt not the knowledge of this cheered him in his dying moments, and helped to steal away the pangs of dissolution.
Mr. President, if I knew any thing more that I could say, I would gladly utter it. To me, he was something more than kind, and I am called upon to mingle a private with the public grief. I wish that I could do something to add to his fame. But he built for himself a monument of immortality, and left to his friends no task butthat of soothing their own sorrow for his loss. We pay to him the tribute of our tears. More we have no power to bestow. Patriotism, honour, genius, courage, have all come to strew their garlands about his tomb; and well they may, for he was the peer of them all.
Mr. COOPER.—Mr. President: It is not always by words that the living pay to the dead the sincerest and most eloquent tribute. The tears of a nation, flowing spontaneously over the grave of a public benefactor, is a more eloquent testimonial of his worth and of the affection and veneration of his countrymen, than the most highly-wrought eulogium of the most gifted tongue. The heart is not necessarily the fountain of words, but it is always the source of tears, whether of joy, gratitude, or grief. But sincere, truthful, and eloquent, as they are, they leave no permanent record of the virtues and greatness of him on whose tomb they are shed. As the dews of heaven falling at night are absorbed by the earth, or dried up by the morning sun, so the tears of a people, shed for their benefactor, disappear without leaving a trace to tell to future generations of the services, sacrifices, and virtues of him to whose memory they were a grateful tribute. But as homage paid to virtue is an incentive to it, it is right that the memory of the good, the great, and noble of the earth should be preserved and honored.
The ambition, Mr. President, of the truly great, is more the hope of living in the memory and estimation of future ages than of possessing power in their own. It is this hope that stimulates them to perseverance; that enables them to encounter disappointment, ingratitude, and neglect, and to press on through toils, privations, and perils to the end. It was not the hope of discovering a world, over which he should himself exercise dominion, that sustained Columbus in all his trials. It was not for this he braved danger, disappointment, poverty, and reproach. It was not for this he subdued his native pride, wandered from kingdom to kingdom, kneeling at the feet of princes, a suppliant for means to prosecute his sublime enterprise. It was not for this, after having at last secured the patronage of Isabella, that he put off in his crazy and ill-appointed fleet into unknown seas, to struggle with storms and tempests, and the rage of a mutinous crew. It was another and nobler kind of ambition that stimulated him to contend with terror, superstition, and despair, and to press forward on his perilous course, when the needle in his compass, losing its polarity, seemed to unite with the fury of the elements and the insubordination of his crew in turning him back from his perilous but glorious undertaking. It was the hope which was realized at last, when his ungrateful country was compelled to inscribe, as an epitaph on his tomb, ‘Columbus has given a New World to the Kingdoms of Castile and Leon,’ that enabled him, at first, to brave so many disappointments, and at last, to conquer the multitude of perils that beset his pathway on the deep. This, sir, is the ambition of the truly great—not to achievepresent fame, but future immortality. This being the case, it is befitting here to-day to add to the life of Henry Clay the record of his death, signalized as it is by a nation’s gratitude and grief. It is right that posterity should learn from us, the contemporaries of the illustrious deceased, that his virtues and services were appreciated by his country, and acknowledged by the tears of his countrymen poured out upon his grave.
The career of Henry Clay was a wonderful one. And what an illustration of the excellence of our institutions would a retrospect of his life afford!Born in an humble station, without any of the adventitious aids of fortune by which the obstructions on the road to fame are smoothed, he rose not only to the most exalted eminence of position, but likewise to the highest place in the affections of his countrymen. Taking into view the disadvantages of his early position, disadvantages against which he had always to contend, his career is without a parallel in the history of great men. To have seen him a youth, without friends or fortune, and with but a scanty education, who would have ventured to predict for him a course so brilliant and beneficent, and a fame so well deserved and enduring? Like the pine, which sometimes springs up amidst the rocks on the mountain side, with scarce a crevice in which to fix its roots, or soil to nourish them, but which, nevertheless, overtops all the trees of the surrounding forest, Henry Clay, by his own inherent, self-sustaining energy and genius, rose to an altitude of fame almost unequalled in the age in which he lived. As an orator, legislator, and statesman, he had no superior. All his faculties were remarkable, and in remarkable combination. Possessed of a brilliant genius and fertile imagination, his judgment was sound, discriminating, and eminently practical. Of an ardent and impetuous temperament, he was nevertheless persevering and firm of purpose. Frank, bold, and intrepid, he was cautious in providing against the contingencies and obstacles which might possibly rise up in the road to success. Generous, liberal, and entertaining broad and expanded views of national policy, in his legislative course he never transcended the limits of a wise economy.
But, Mr. President, of all his faculties, that of making friends and attaching them to him was the most remarkable and extraordinary. In this respect, he seemed to possess a sort of fascination, by which all who came into his presence were attracted towards, and bound to him by ties which neither time nor circumstances had power to dissolve or weaken. In the admiration of his friends was the recognition of the divinity of intellect; in their attachment to him a confession of his generous personal qualities and social virtues.
Of the public services of Mr. Clay, the present occasion affords no room for a sketch more extended than that which his respected colleague [Mr. Underwood] has presented. It is, however, sufficient to say, that for more forty years he has been a prominent actor in the drama of American affairs. During the late war with England,his voice was more potent than any other in awakening the spirit of the country, infusing confidence into the people, and rendering available the resources for carrying on the contest. In our domestic controversies, threatening the peace of the country and the integrity of the Union, he has always been first to note danger, as well as to suggest the means of averting it. When the waters of the great political deep were upheaved by the tempest of discord, and the ark of the Union, freighted with the hopes and destinies of freedom, tossing about on the raging billows, and drifting every moment nearer to the vortex which threatened to swallow it up, it was his clarion voice, rising above the storm, that admonished the crew of impending peril, and counselled the way to safety.
But, Mr. President, devotedly as he loved his country, his aspirations were not limited to its welfare alone. Wherever freedom had a votary, that votary had a friend in Henry Clay; and in the struggle of the Spanish colonies for independence he uttered words of encouragement which have become the mottoes on the banners of freedom in every land. But neither the services which he has rendered his own country, nor his wishes for the welfare of others, nor his genius, nor the affection of friends, could turn aside the destroyer. No price could purchase exemption from the common lot of humanity. Henry Clay, the wise, the great, the gifted, had to die; and his history is summed up in the biography which the Russian poet has prepared for all, kings and serfs:
* * * * ‘Born, living, dying,