CHAPTER III.

HENRY CLAY,

THE POLITICIAN.

THE facts and events which mark the career of Mr. Clay have frequently been portrayed. Some of the most important of these it will be necessary to recite at the outset; though biographical detail forms but quite a subordinate element of our present design.

The father of our orator was a very respectable Baptist preacher, in the County of Hanover, Virginia, commonly known as "The Slashes," where, on the 12th of April, 1777, his fifth child, Henry, was born. At an early age, he was left without father or fortune to buffet adverse storms, and to become inured to manual toil. At the age of fourteen he entered a small drug store in Richmond, Virginia, kept by Mr. Richard Denny. His stay there was short, and at the commencement of 1792 he entered the office of Mr. Peter Tinsley, clerk of the High Court of Chancery. In this situation he, of course, came into personal contact with the most distinguished men in the State, and attracted their attention so strongly by his talents and amiable qualities, that some of them, particularly Chancellor Wythe and

Governor Brooke, persuaded him, at the age of nineteen, to undertake the study of the law. The state of society, and of the bar rules at this period, afforded great facilities for entering on the profession, and Mr. Clay, after a year's study, was admitted to practice at the age of twenty. He removed soon after to Lexington, Kentucky, where he has since resided. He continued his studies at this place about a year longer, and during this period exercised himself in speaking at the meetings of the Debating Society. At his first attempt he exhibited the fluency and fervor, which have since formed the character of his maturer eloquence. "He rose," says Mr. Prentice, "under some embarrassment, and addressed the President of the Society by the title of Gentlemen of the Jury, but he gradually gained confidence from his own efforts, and, finally, concentrating all his powers upon the subject in debate, he surprised his audience with a beauty and compass of voice, an exuberance of eloquence, and a force of argument well worthy of a veteran orator. A gentleman who heard this speech has assured us, that it would hardly suffer in comparison with the most brilliant efforts made by its author in after life. His reputation as a speaker was of course established, and he became immediately a leading champion in all the debates of the Society."

Mr. Clay entered on the duties of his profession at Lexington, under not the most flattering auspices, as appears from his speech of June, 1842, made at the same place. In this, he says he "was without patrons, without friends, and destitute of the means of paying his weekly board. I remember how comfortable I

thought I should be, if I could make £100, Virginia money, per annum, and with what delight I received the first fifteen shilling fee. My hopes were more than realized; I immediately rushed into a lucrative practice."

Mr. Clay's political career began as early as 1797, when he openly portrayed the evils of domestic slavery. His youthful ardor resisted every restraint upon freedom, as was manifest in the manner of his resistance to the odious Alien and Sedition laws, enacted in 1798-9. In 1803, he was elected to the Legislature of Kentucky, and almost immediately on entering upon the functions of this, his first political office, he won no little notoriety in a severe and successful conflict with Felix Grundy, a forensic antagonist of great force and skill. In 1806, General Adair, one of the Senators of the State in Congress, having resigned his place, Mr. Clay was elected to occupy it for the remainder of the term, which was only one year. It was in this capacity that he first appeared at Washington. At the moment of his arrival, the Senate was engaged in a debate respecting the expediency of authorizing the construction of a bridge over the Potomac, into which discussion Mr. Clay immediately entered and made a very effective speech. On returning to Kentucky, after the expiration of his term in the Senate, he was immediately re-elected to the State Legislature, and at the opening of the next session was chosen speaker of the General Assembly, which office he held for several successive years. In 1809, Mr. Thurston, another Senator in Congress, having resigned his place, Mr. Clay was called upon to

occupy it for the remainder of his term, which was two years, and took his seat accordingly in the Senate, at the close of that year. The leading questions of the two sessions of 1810, and 1811, were the occupation of West Florida, and the renewal of the charter of the Bank. On these, and other topics which came before the Senate, Mr. Clay distinguished himself as one of the ablest champions of the party then in power. On the expiration of his term of service in the Senate in 1811, he returned to Kentucky, and was immediately after elected a member of the House of Representatives of the United States, where he took his seat in the winter of the same year. "Mr. Clay was at this time about thirty-five years of age, a period of life when the intellectual powers of most men have just attained their full maturity, and are beginning to mark out for them the place which they are to occupy in the opinion of the world. So much, however, had Mr. Clay anticipated the usual progress, and such already was the extent of his influence, not merely in his own State, but on the wider theatre of national politics, that, on his first appearance as a new member in the House of Representatives, he was chosen Speaker by a vote of nearly two to one over two opposing candidates. No mark of respect and confidence at all equal to this has ever been bestowed by the House of Representatives upon any other person, and the best proof that it was not the result of any combination of accidental circumstances or momentary caprice, is to be found in the fact, that the confidence thus bestowed, was never afterwards withdrawn or shaken. During the long period of Mr. Clay's congres

sional career, which lasted, with two short intervals, from this time till his entrance into the Department of State, in 1825, he was regularly elected Speaker of each successive House of Representatives, we believe, without opposition. It is admitted, in fact, by all, that in discharging the arduous and honorable duties of this place, he was singularly successful. Though eminently prompt, firm, and decisive, the frankness and urbanity of his manner prevented any one from taking offence, and rendered him a general favorite." At the beginning of the year 1814, he was appointed one of the Commissioners to treat for peace with Great Britain, and having accepted the rust, retired, of course, from the Speaker's chair. The circumstances attending his resignation, which are stated in the following extract from one of his biographers, strongly evince the extent of his influence over his political associates, and his general popularity with the members of all parties:

"The official duties which now devolved upon Mr. Clay, required him to resign the Speaker's chair. At this time, his influence in the House of Representatives was equal to that which he had exercised, some years before, in the Legislature of his adopted State. His friends and his enemies agree in the remark, that his power was almost unlimited. His party was a majority in the House, and, so unbounded was the confidence which its members reposed in his wisdom and integrity, that he could sway them by a motion of his hand. Whenever the course of a discussion failed to meet his approbation, he descended from the chair, and, by ningling in the debate, gave, at once, a new character to