This conversation was repeated to the Duke, who at once remarked that he would have regarded a victory over the Americans as a greater honor than any which he had ever achieved. He also praised the American Peace Commissioners as having shown more ability than those of England.
Henceforth, Mr. Clay remained in his own country. Mr. Madison tendered him the mission to Russia but he declined. He then offered him the portfolio of the War Department. But Mr. Clay chose rather to return to the House of Representatives and was again elected Speaker.
He was now himself a leader; the men who had been at the head of the Republican Party from the time of Washington, were passing from supremacy. The war had developed new necessities and new views of political subjects, and new men were taking hold of public service. What had been denounced in 1810 became the policy of 1816; the Federal party passed away, for its leaders had offended the nation, and the new Republicans had adopted their principal measures. We now find Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun still hand in hand, with Daniel Webster the Union-lover and John Randolph the Union-hater in opposition, and the President still holding the old traditions.
The conditions of affairs in South America was the occasion of a bill for more strict enforcing of neutrality. Mr. Clay dissented from the measure. The ignorance and superstition imputed to the people of the Spanish provinces, he insisted, was due to the tyranny and oppression, hierarchic and political, under which they groaned. Their independence was the first step toward improving their condition. “Let them have free government if they are capable of enjoying it,” said he; “but let them, at all events, have independence. I may be accused of an imprudent utterance of my feelings on this occasion. I care not. When the independence, the happiness, the liberty of a whole people is at stake, and that people our neighbors, occupy a portion of the same continent, imitating our example and participating of the same sympathies with ourselves, I will boldly avow my feelings and my wishes in their behalf, even at the hazard of such an imputation.”
He had exulted at the victory of New Orleans by a Western General in a Western State. But when General Jackson in the Seminole War, enlisted volunteers again without civil authority, invaded Florida, decoyed Indian Chiefs into his camp by a flag of truce and put them to death, besides executing two British subjects, Mr. Clay denounced his acts as a disregard of every principle of honor, humanity and justice. He was, however, again in advance of popular sentiment.
The proposed admission of Missouri to the Union as a Slave State became an issue for several years. It was a question whether there should continue as before an equal number of Free and Slave States, so as to assure the latter a safeguard in the Senate. It was interest on one side and sentiment on the other. The excitement was so intense as to threaten the Union itself. Dissolution was actually considered. The matter was finally determined by a vote to admit Missouri but to exclude slavery from all the region west of it and north of its southern boundary line. In this controversy Mr. Clay acted with the Southern Congressmen, and by his sagacity as Speaker, the measure was made sure: the conflict, however, to be again renewed a third of a century later, transforming the politics of a Nation.
None of Mr. Clay’s speeches on this question were published. He had been constrained by the voice of his State and fears for the safety of the Union, but he was not willing to appear before his countrymen and posterity in the lurid light of sustaining slavery.
The revolt in Greece enlisted the sympathy of all America. Meetings were held to declare the prevailing sentiment. Albert Gallatin even proposed to aid with a naval force. Mr. Webster offered a resolution in Congress authorizing a Commissioner to be sent to that country. Mr. Clay supported the motion in his Demosthenean style. After portraying the situation, he added the challenge: “Go home if you can; go home if you dare, to your constituents, and tell them that you voted this proposition down; meet if you can, the appalling countenances of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your own sentiments; that you can not tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, drove you away from your purpose; that the spectres of cimiters, and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you and alarmed you; and that you suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity.”
Mr. Clay had been already placed in the field as a candidate for President, and this temerity astonished his supporters. He had enemies, likewise, to take advantage of his excitable temper, to irritate him to personal altercation. John Randolph was conspicuous. He taunted Mr. Clay for his defective education. “I know my deficiencies,” Mr. Clay replied. “I was born to no patrimonial estate; from my father I inherited only infancy, ignorance and indigence. I feel my defects; but so far as my situation in early life is concerned, I may without presumption say they are more my misfortune than my fault.”
There were no political parties in 1824; all were Republicans, and the contest was simply between men. Mr. Clay was approached with propositions such as would now be considered legitimate. He refused to enter into any arrangements or make any promise or pledge. There was no choice effected by the Electors. In the Legislature of Louisiana, advantage was taken of the absence of members to deprive him of the vote of that State. He was thus deprived of the opportunity of an election by the House of Representatives. It so happened, however, that the decision was in his hands, and he gave his vote to John Quincy Adams. The two had differed widely and with temper, but of Mr. Adams’ superior fitness there was no possible question. In political matters he never rewarded a friend nor punished an adversary. He administered every trust conscientiously. Mr. Clay became his Secretary of State. It was an administration which the Nation would like to witness again. The honor of the Nation was sustained; the country was prosperous beyond former periods. What may now appear incredible, there were twenty-four states in the Union, yet the public expenditures barely exceeded eleven million dollars a year.