T is impossible within the necessary limits of this article to give anything like a satisfactory account of the life and services of the “Great Pacificator.” For nearly fifty years he took a prominent part in the discussion of every public question. In a time whose dangers and difficulties were so great that the most far-seeing statesmen almost despaired of the future of our country, it was to Henry Clay that all eyes were turned, and it was to him that we owe the postponement of the great conflict of 1861 almost for a generation.
Clay was a native of Hanover County, Virginia; born in 1777. His father dying when he was four years old, the future statesman lived a life of great hardship, toil and poverty. He had almost no education, and at fourteen he was placed in a drug store in Richmond, where he served for a year as errand boy. His mother having remarried, her husband obtained for Henry a clerkship in the office of the Court of Chancery. While here he studied law, and, believing that his chances of success would be better in the West, he followed his mother and stepfather to Kentucky, and opened an office in Lexington. His success was immediate, and he was soon possessed of a lucrative practice and of a position of great influence.
In 1799 Clay married Miss Lucretia Hart, the daughter of a gentleman of prominent standing in the State. His prosperity rapidly increased, and he was soon able to purchase “Ashland,” an estate of some six hundred acres near Lexington, which afterwards became famous as the home of Henry Clay. In 1806 Mr. Clay was elected to fill a vacancy in the Senate of the United States. Returning to Kentucky, he became a member of the Kentucky Legislature, where he took a leading part. Again, in 1809, he was sent to the United States Senate, but it may be said that his public life properly began in 1811 as a member of the House of Representatives. He was immediately elected Speaker, and so distinguished himself in that office that it is sometimes said that he was the best presiding officer that any deliberative body in America has ever known, even down to the present time. It was to him more than to any other individual that we owe the War of 1812, and when President Madison, discouraged at the failures of the National armies in the first year of that war, was about to appoint Clay commander-in-chief of the land forces, he was persuaded not to do so because he could not be spared from the House of Representatives. In 1814 Mr. Clay was one of the commissioners to arrange the terms of peace with England. Returning from Europe, he remained Speaker of the House of Representatives until 1825, when he became Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams. During this time the great conflict over slavery began. The introduction of the cotton-gin had made slavery profitable, and the sentiment of the South, which at the time of the Revolutionary War had apparently favored the gradual doing away with that system, now insisted upon its extension; but while Southern sentiment had progressed in this way, the feelings of the North had grown in the opposite direction, and the increasing importance of the North and its approaching predominance in the government, made Southern politicians anxious about the future of their peculiar institution. The conflict broke forth in 1818, when Missouri asked to be admitted to the Union. “It was,” said Thomas Jefferson, describing the suddenness with which the danger appeared, “like the ringing of a fire-bell in the night.” It was the most dangerous crisis which had yet occurred in the history of the government. It was to the genius of Henry Clay that the ship of State was successfully steered out of these waters. The famous “Missouri Compromise” admitting one free State—Maine—and one slave State—Missouri—at the same time and enacting that no other slave State should be formed north of latitude thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, which was the southern boundary line of Missouri, seemed likely to solve the difficult question, and certainly postponed the conflict.
The disappointment of Henry Clay’s life was his failure to be elected President. He was a candidate in 1824, but with little hope of success, and when his party, in 1840, found conditions favorable for the election of their candidate, the popularity of General Jackson had convinced the party managers that success demanded a military hero as a candidate, and accordingly General Harrison took the place which belonged by right to Clay. When he was again nominated, 1844, the slavery question had again assumed so dangerous a form that it prevented his election. He was a slave-holder, and so could not receive the votes of the Liberty Party; he was opposed to the extension of slavery, and, therefore, not satisfactory to the South. Although the situation was evident to the party managers, a large majority of the people expected Clay to be elected, and when the news of his defeat came the public sorrow was greater than has ever been manifested for such a cause.
Returning to the Senate, Mr. Clay completed his public services by accomplishing the famous “Compromise of 1850,” which is believed to have postponed for ten years the Civil War. He was now an old man, but his labors for the preservation of the Union were untiring. On the morning when he began the great speech of that session, he was so weak that he had to be assisted to climb the steps of the Capitol. He was aware that the exertion would probably shorten his life; but under the fear that if he did not complete the speech at that time he would never be able to resume it, he determined to continue. He spoke for two days with the force, pathos and the grandeur possible only to the greatest orators. The underlying thought of his speech was the unity of the nation and the paramount allegiance owed by her citizens, not to a single State; but to the country. Although he lived two years longer, he never recovered from the effort.
Probably no man was ever more fondly loved, probably no man was so nearly worshipped. An Englishwoman, traveling in America, in 1844, wrote that three-quarters of all the boys born in that year must have been named Henry Clay. “Whatever Clay’s weakness of character and errors in statesmanship may have been,” says Carl Schurz, “almost everything he said or did was illumined by a grand conception of the destinies of his country, a glowing national spirit, a lofty patriotism.” It was a just judgment which he pronounced upon himself when he wrote, “If anyone desires to know the leading and paramount object of my public life, the preservation of the Union will furnish him the key.”
DEFENCE OF JEFFERSON, 1813.
EXT to the notice which the opposition has found itself called upon to bestow upon the French emperor, a distinguished citizen of Virginia, formerly President of the United States, has never for a moment failed to receive their kindest and most respectful attention. An honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, of whom I am sorry to say, it becomes necessary for me, in the course of my remarks, to take some notice, has alluded to him in a remarkable manner. Neither his retirement from public office, his eminent services, nor his advanced age, can exempt this patriot from the coarse assaults of party malevolence. No, sir! In 1801, he snatched from the rude hand of usurpation the violated Constitution of his country,—and that is his crime. He preserved that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit, a precious inheritance for generations to come, and for this he can never be forgiven. How vain and impotent is party rage, directed against such a man! He is not more elevated by his lofty residence, upon the summit of his own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, by the serenity of his mind and the consciousness of a well-spent life, above the malignant passions and bitter feelings of the day. No! his own beloved Monticello is not less moved by the storms that beat against its sides, than is this illustrious man, by the howlings of the whole British pack, let loose from the Essex kennel. When the gentleman to whom I have been compelled to allude shall have mingled his dust with that of his abused ancestors,—when he shall have been consigned to oblivion, or, if he lives at all, shall live only in the treasonable annals of a certain junto,—the name of Jefferson will be hailed with gratitude, his memory honored and cherished as the second founder of the liberties of the people, and the period of his administration will be looked back to as one of the happiest and brightest epochs in American history!