Homes of American Statesmen Part 16

An octogenarian British Earl, who had retired from public life because of his years, but who still cherished a natural interest in public men and measures, being struck by the impression made in the aristocratic circles of London by the American Commissioners, then on their way home from Ghent, requested a friend to bring them to see him at his house, to which his growing infirmities confined him. The visit was promptly and cheerfully paid, and the obliging friend afterwards inquired of the old Lord as to the impression the Americans had made upon him. "Ah!" said the veteran, with the "light of other days" gleaming from his eyes, "I liked them all, but _I liked the Kentucky man best_." It was so every where.

One specimen has been preserved of Mr. Clay's felicity of repartee and charm of conversation, as exhibited while in Paris, immediately after the conclusion of Peace at Ghent. He was there introduced to the famous Madame de Stael, who cordially addressed him with--"Ah, Mr. Clay! I have been in England, and have been battling your cause for you there." "I know it, madame; we heard of your powerful interposition, and are grateful and thankful for it." "They were much enraged against you,"

said she: "so much so, that they at one time thought seriously of sending the Duke of Wellington to command their armies against you!" "I am very sorry, madame," replied Mr. Clay, "that they did not send his Grace." "Why?" asked she, surprised. "Because, madame, if he had beaten us, we should have been in the condition of Europe, without disgrace.

But, if we had been so fortunate as to defeat him, we should have greatly added to the renown of our arms."

At his next meeting with "Corinne," at her own house, Mr. Clay was introduced by her to the conqueror at Waterloo, when she related the above conversation. The Duke promptly responded that, had it been his fortune to serve against the Americans, and to triumph over them, he should indeed have regarded that triumph as the proudest of his achievements.

Mr. Clay was in London when the tidings of Waterloo arrived, and set the British frantic with exultation. He was dining one day at Lord Castlereagh's, while Bonaparte's position was still uncertain, as he had disappeared from Paris, and fled none knew whither. The most probable conjecture was that he had embarked at some little port for the United States, and would probably make his way thither, as he was always lucky on water. "If he reaches your sh.o.r.es, Mr. Clay," gravely inquired Lord Liverpool (one of the Ministers), "will he not give you a great deal of trouble?" "Not the least," was the prompt reply of the Kentuckian; "we shall be very glad to receive him; to treat him with all hospitality, and very soon make him a good democrat." A general laugh here restored the hilarity of the party.

The magnetism of Mr. Clay's manner and conversation have perhaps received no stronger testimony than that of Gen. Glasc.o.c.k, a political antagonist, who came into Congress from Georgia, during the fierce struggle which followed the removal of the Deposits. "Gen. Glasc.o.c.k,"

said a mutual friend, at a party one evening, "shall I make you acquainted with Mr. Clay?" "No, Sir!" was the prompt and stern response; "I choose not to be fascinated and moulded by him, as friend and foe appear to be, and I shall therefore decline his acquaintance."

Mr. Clay had a natural repugnance to caucuses, conventions, and the kindred contrivances whereby great men are elaborated out of very small materials, and was uniformly a candidate for Congress "on his own hook,"

with no fence between him and his const.i.tuents. Only once in the course of his long Representative career was he obliged to canva.s.s for his election, and he was never defeated, nor ever could be, before a public that he could personally meet and address. The one searching ordeal to which he was subjected, followed the pa.s.sage of the "Compensation Act"

of 1816, whereby Congress subst.i.tuted for its own per diem a fixed salary of $1,500 to each Member. This act raised a storm throughout the country, which prostrated most of its supporters. The hostility excited was especially strong in the West, then very poor, especially in money: $1,500 then, being equal to $4000 at present. John Pope (afterward Gen.

Jackson's Governor of Arkansas), one of the ablest men in Kentucky, a federalist of the old school, and a personal antagonist of Mr. Clay, took the stump as his compet.i.tor for the seat, and gave him enough to do through the canva.s.s. They met in discussion at several local a.s.semblages, and finally in a pitched battle at Higbie; a place central to the three counties composing the district, where the whole people collected to hear them. Pope had the district with him in his denunciation of the Compensation Bill, while Clay retorted with effect, by pressing home on his antagonist the embittered and not very consistent hostility of the latter to the war with Great Britain, recently concluded, which uniformly had been very popular in Kentucky.

The result was decisive: Mr. Clay was re-elected by about six hundred majority.

That excited canva.s.s was fruitful of characteristic incidents like the following:

While traversing the district, Mr. Clay encountered an old hunter, who had always before been his warm friend, but was now opposed to his re-election on account of the Compensation Bill. "Have you a good rifle, my friend?" asked Mr. Clay. "Yes." "Did it ever flash?" "Once only," he replied. "What did you do with it--throw it away?" "No, I picked the flint, tried it again, and brought down the game." "Have _I_ ever flashed but upon the Compensation Bill?" "No!" "Will you throw me away?"

"No, no!" exclaimed the hunter with enthusiasm, nearly overpowered by his feelings; "I will pick the flint, and try you again!" He was afterward a warm supporter of Mr. Clay.

An Irish barber in Lexington, Jerry Murphy by name, who had always before been a zealous admirer and active supporter of Mr. Clay, was observed during this canva.s.s to maintain a studied silence. That silence was ominous, especially as he was known to be under personal obligation to Mr. Clay for legal a.s.sistance to rescue him from various difficulties in which his hasty temper had involved him. At length, an active and prominent partisan of the speaker called on the barber, with whom he had great influence, and pressed him to dispel the doubt that hung over his intentions by a frank declaration in favor of his old favorite. Looking his canva.s.ser in the eye, with equal earnestness and shrewdness, Murphy responded; "I tell you what, docthur; I mane to vote for the man _that can put but one hand into the Treasury_." (Mr. Pope had lost one of his arms in early life, and the humor of Pat's allusion to this circ.u.mstance, in connection with Mr. Clay's support of the Compensation Bill, was inimitable.)

Mr. Clay was confessedly the best presiding officer that any deliberative body in America has ever known, and none was ever more severely tried. The intensity and bitterness of party feeling during the earlier portion of his Speakers.h.i.+p cannot now be realized except by the few who remember those days. It was common at that time in New England town-meetings, for the rival parties to take opposite sides of the broad aisle in the meeting-house, and thus remain, hardly speaking across the line separation, from morning till night. Hon. Josiah Quincy, the Representative of Boston, was distinguished in Congress for the ferocity of his a.s.saults on the policy of Jefferson and Madison; and between him and Mr. Clay there were frequent and sharp encounters, barely kept within the limits prescribed by parliamentary decorum. At a later period, the eccentric and distinguished John Randolph, the master of satire and invective; and who, though not avowedly a Federalist, opposed nearly every act of the Democrat Administrations of 1801-16, and was the unfailing antagonist of every measure proposed or supported by Mr. Clay, was a thorn in the side of the Speaker for years. Many were the pa.s.sages between them in which blows were given and taken, whereof the gloves of parliamentary etiquette could not break the force: the War, the Tariff, the early recognition of Greek and South American Independence, the Missouri Compromise, &c. &c., being strenuously advocated by Mr. Clay and opposed by Mr. Randolph. But of these this is no place to speak.

Innumerable appeals from Mr. Clay's decisions, as Speaker, were made by the orator of Roanoke, but no one of them was ever sustained by the House. At length, after Mr. Clay had left Congress, and Mr. Randolph been transferred to the Senate, a bloodless duel between them grew out of the Virginian's unmeasured abuse of the Kentuckian's agency in electing J.Q. Adams to the Presidency; a duel which seems to have had the effect of softening, if not dissipating Randolph's rancor against Mr. Clay. Though evermore a political antagonist, his personal antipathy was no longer manifested; and one of the last visits of Randolph to the Capitol, when dying of consumption, was made for the avowed purpose of hearing in the Senate the well-known voice of the eloquent Sage of Ashland.

On the floor of the House, Mr. Clay was often impetuous in discussion, and delighted to relieve the tedium of debate, and modify the sternness of antagonism by a sportive jest or lively repartee. On one occasion, Gen. Alexander Smythe of Virginia, who often afflicted the House by the verbosity of his harangues and the multiplicity of his dry citations, had paused in the middle of a speech which seemed likely to endure for ever, to send to the library for a book from which he wished to note a pa.s.sage. Fixing his eye on Mr. Clay, who sat near him, he observed the Kentuckian writhing in his seat as if his patience had already been exhausted. "You, sir," remarked Smythe addressing the Speaker, "speak for the present generation; but I speak for posterity." "Yes," said Mr.

Clay, "and you seem resolved to speak until the arrival of _your_ auditory."

Revolutionary pensions were a source of frequent pa.s.sages between eastern and western members; the greater portion of those pensions being payable to eastern survivors of the struggle. On one occasion when a Pension Bill was under discussion, Hon. Enoch Lincoln (afterwards Governor of Maine) was dilating on the services and sufferings of these veterans, and closed with the patriotic adjuration, "Soldiers of the Revolution! live for ever!" Mr. Clay followed, counselling moderation in the grant of pensions, that the country might not be overloaded and rendered restive by their burden, and turning to Mr. Lincoln with a smile, observed--"I hope my worthy friend will not insist on the very great duration of these pensions which he has suggested. Will he not consent, by way of a compromise, to a term of nine hundred and ninety-nine years instead of eternity?"

A few sentences culled from the remarks in Congress elicited by his death, will fitly close this hasty daguerreotype of the man Henry Clay.

Mr. Underwood (his colleague) observed in Senate that "his physical and mental organization eminently qualified him to become a great and impressive orator. His person was tall, slender and commanding. His temperament, ardent, fearless, and full of hope. His countenance, clear, expressive, and variable--indicating the emotion which predominated at the moment with exact similitude. His voice, cultivated and modulated in harmony with the sentiment he desired to express, fell upon the ear with the melody of enrapturing music. His eye beaming with intelligence and flas.h.i.+ng with coruscations of genius. His gestures and att.i.tudes graceful and natural. These personal advantages won the prepossessions of an audience even before his intellectual powers began to move his hearers; and when his strong common sense, his profound reasoning, his clear conceptions of his subject in all its bearings, and his striking and beautiful ill.u.s.trations, united with such personal qualities, were brought to the discussion of any question, his audience was enraptured, convinced and led by the orator as if enchanted by the lyre of Orpheus.

"No man was ever blessed by his Creator with faculties of a higher order than Mr. Clay. In the quickness of his perceptions, and the rapidity with which his conclusions were formed, he had few equals and no superiors. He was eminently endowed with a nice discriminating taste for order, symmetry, and beauty. He detected in a moment every thing out of place or deficient in his room, upon his farm, in his own or the dress of others. He was a skilful judge of the form and qualities of his domestic animals, which he delighted to raise on his farm. I could give you instances of the quickness and minuteness of his keen faculty of observation, which never overlooked any thing. A want of neatness and order was offensive to him. He was particular and neat in his handwriting and his apparel. A slovenly blot or negligence of any sort met his condemnation; while he was so organized that he attended to, and arranged little things to please and gratify his natural love for neatness, order, and beauty, his great intellectual faculties grasped all the subjects of jurisprudence and politics with a facility amounting almost to intuition. As a lawyer, he stood at the head of his profession. As a statesman, his stand at the head of the Republican Whig party for nearly half a century, establishes his t.i.tle to pre-eminence among his ill.u.s.trious a.s.sociates.

"Mr. Clay was deeply versed in all the springs of human action. He had read and studied biography and history. Shortly after I left college, I had occasion to call on him in Frankfort, where he was attending court, and well I remember to have found him with Plutarch's Lives in his hands. No one better than he knew how to avail himself of human motives, and all the circ.u.mstances which surrounded a subject, or could present themselves with more force and skill to accomplish the object of an argument.

"Bold and determined as Mr. Clay was in all his actions, he was, nevertheless, conciliating. He did not obstinately adhere to things impracticable. If he could not accomplish the best, he contented himself with the nighest approach to it. He has been the great compromiser of those political agitations and opposing opinions which have, in the belief of thousands, at different times, endangered the perpetuity of our Federal Government and Union.

"Mr. Clay was no less remarkable for his admirable social qualities, than for his intellectual abilities. As a companion, he was the delight of his friends; and no man ever had better or truer. No guest ever thence departed, without feeling happier for his visit."

Mr. Hunter of Virginia (a political antagonist) following, observed: "It may be truly said of Mr. Clay, that he was no exaggerator. He looked at events through neither end of the telescope, but surveyed them with the natural and the naked eye. He had the capacity of seeing things as the people saw them, and of feeling things as the people felt them. He had, sir, beyond any other man whom I have ever seen, the true mesmeric touch of the orator,--the rare art of transferring his impulses to others.

Thoughts, feelings, emotions, came from the ready mould of his genius, radiant and glowing, and communicated their own warmth to every heart which received them. His, too, was the power of wielding the higher and intenser forms of pa.s.sion, with a majesty and an ease, which none but the great masters of the human heart can ever employ."

Mr. Seward of New-York, said: "He was indeed eloquent--all the world knows that. He held the key to the hearts of his countrymen, and he turned the wards within them with a skill attained by no other master.

"But eloquence was nevertheless only an instrument, and one of many, that he used. His conversation, his gestures, his very look, were magisterial, persuasive, seductive, irresistible. And his appliance of all these was courteous, patient, and indefatigable. Defeat only inspired him with new resolution. He divided opposition by the a.s.siduity of address, while he rallied and strengthened his own bands of supporters by the confidence of success, which, feeling himself, he easily inspired among his followers. His affections were high, and pure, and generous; and the chiefest among them was that one which the great Italian poet designated as the charity of native land. In him, that charity was an enduring and overpowering enthusiasm, and it influenced all his sentiments and conduct, rendering him more impartial between conflicting interests and sections, than any other statesman who has lived since the Revolution. Thus, with great versatility of talent, and the most catholic equality of favor, he identified every question, whether of domestic administration or foreign policy, with his own great name, and so became a perpetual Tribune of the People. He needed only to p.r.o.nounce in favor of a measure or against it, here, and immediately popular enthusiasm, excited as by a magic wand, was felt, overcoming and dissolving all opposition in the Senate Chamber."

In the House, about the same time, Mr. Breckenridge of Kentucky (democrat), spoke as follows:

"The life of Mr. Clay, sir, is a striking example of the abiding fame which surely awaits the direct and candid statesman. The entire absence of equivocation or disguise in all his acts, was his master-key to the popular heart; for while the people will forgive the errors of a bold and open nature, he sins past forgiveness who deliberately deceives them. Hence Mr. Clay, though often defeated in his measures of policy, always secured the respect of his opponents without losing the confidence of his friends. He never paltered in a double sense. The country never was in doubt as to his opinions or his purposes. In all the contests of his time, his position on great public questions was as clear as the sun in the cloudless sky. Sir, standing by the grave of this great man, and considering these things, how contemptible does appear the mere legerdemain of politics! What a reproach is his life on that false policy which would trifle with a great and upright people! If I were to write his epitaph, I would inscribe as the highest eulogy, on the stone which shall mark his resting-place, 'Here lies a man who was in the public service for fifty years, and never attempted to deceive his countrymen.'"

Let me close this too hasty and superficial sketch, with a brief citation from Rev. C.M. Butler, Chaplain of the Senate, who, in his funeral discourse in the Senate Chamber, said:

"A great mind, a great heart, a great orator, a great career, have been consigned to history. She will record his rare gifts of deep insight, keen discrimination, clear statement, rapid combination, plain, direct, and convincing logic. She will love to dwell on that large, generous, magnanimous, open, forgiving heart. She will linger with fond delight on the recorded or traditional stories of an eloquence that was so masterful and stirring, because it was but himself struggling to come forth on the living words--because, though the words were brave and strong, and beautiful and melodious, it was felt that, behind them, there was a soul braver, stronger, more beautiful, and more melodious, than language could express."

Such was the master of Ashland, the man Henry Clay!

After this article was in type, we received from a Western paper the following notice of the sale of the Ashland estate.

"We are glad to learn that Ashland, the home of Henry Clay, which was sold September 20th, at public auction, was purchased by James B. Clay, eldest son of the deceased statesman. The Ashland homestead contained about 337 acres. It lies just without the limits of the city of Lexington. The country immediately surrounding it, is justly regarded as the garden spot of the West, and Ashland, above all others, as the most beautiful place in the world. The a.s.sociations about it are of the most interesting character. When Kentucky was, in fact, the 'dark and b.l.o.o.d.y ground,' the country around Lexington was the only oasis--every where else, the tomahawk and the rifle were more potent than laws. How many incidents of these terrible days are garnered in the minds of the descendants of the old families of Kentucky! In those thrilling days, Ashland belonged to Daniel Boone, whose name is connected with many of the daring tragedies enacted in the then Far West. It pa.s.sed from his hands into those of Nathaniel Hart, who fell, gloriously fighting, in the battle at the River Raisin, where so many Kentuckians offered up their lives in defence of their country. Henry Clay married Lucretia Hart, to whom the demesne of Ashland descended.

"There is so much of the Arab in the habits of the Americans,--there is so much migratoriness, and so little love for old homesteads,--we were afraid the children of Henry Clay would allow cla.s.sic Ashland to pa.s.s into other and alien hands. But our fears are to gladness changed; and Ashland is still the dwelling-place of the Clays.

"Mr. Clay was thoroughly versed in agricultural matters, and was never better contented (as the editor of the Ohio Journal truly remarks), than when surrounded by his neighbors, many of whom knew and loved him when he was quite young and obscure, and afterwards rejoiced at his fame, and followed his fortunes through every phase of a long and eventful career.

The residence does not present any imposing appearance, but is of a plain, neat, and rather antique architectural character, and the grounds immediately surrounding it are beautifully adorned, and traversed by walks; not in accordance with the foolish and fastidious taste of the present day, for this, in every thing connected with the place has been neglected, and the only end seems to have been to represent Nature in its proudest and most imposing grandeur. Many of the walks are retired, and are of a serpentine character, with here and there, in some secluded spot along their windings, a rude and unpolished bench upon which to recline. The trees are mostly pines of a large growth, and stand close together, casting a deep and sombre shade on every surrounding object.

The reflections of one on visiting Ashland are of the most interesting character. Every object seems invested with an interest, and although the spirit with whose memory they are a.s.sociated, has fled, one cannot repel the conviction, that while reposing under its silent and sequestered shades, he is still surrounded by something sublime and great. Old memories of the past come back upon him, and a thousand scenes connected with the life and history of Henry Clay, will force themselves upon you. The great monarchs of the forest that now stretch their limbs aloft in proud and peerless majesty, have all, or nearly all been planted by his hand, and are now not unfit emblems of the towering greatness of him who planted them.

"The walks, the flowers, the garden and the groves, all, all are consecrated, and have all been witnesses of his presence and his care.

In the groves through which you wander, were nursed the mighty schemes of Statesmans.h.i.+p, which have astonished the world and terrified the tyrant, beat back the evil counsels for his country's ruin, and bound and fettered his countrymen in one common and indissoluble bond of UNION."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Clay's Birth-place]

FOOTNOTES:

[19] See vignette t.i.tle-page to this volume.

=Calhoun.=

[Ill.u.s.tration: Calhoun fac-simile of letter]

CALHOUN.

In writing the lives of our American Statesmen, we might say of almost any of them, "that he was born in such a year, that he was sent to the common school or to college, that he studied law, that he was chosen, first a member of the State Legislature, and then of the National Congress, that he became successively, a Senator, a foreign Amba.s.sador, a Secretary of State, or a President, and that finally he retired to his paternal acres, to pa.s.s a venerable old age, amid the general respect and admiration of the whole country." This would be a true outline in the main, of the practical workings and doings of nine out of ten of them: but in filling in the details of the sketch, in clothing the dry skeleton of facts with the flesh and blood of the living reality, it would be found that this apparent similarity of development had given rise to the utmost diversity and individuality of character, and that scarcely any two of our distinguished men, though born and bred under the same influence, bore even a family resemblance. It is said by the foreign writers, by De Tocqueville especially, that very little originality and independence of mind can be expected in a democracy, where the force of the majority crushes all opinions and characters into a dead and leaden uniformity. But the study of our actual history rather tends to the opposite conclusion, and leads us to believe that the land of Was.h.i.+ngton, Franklin, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, the Adamses, Clay, Webster and Calhoun, is favorable to the production of distinct, peculiar, and decided natures. At least we may be sure, that our annals are no more wanting than those of other nations, in original, self-formed, and self-dependent men.

Among these, there was no one more peculiar or more unlike any prototype, than John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. In the structure of his mind, in the singular tenacity of his purposes, in the rare dignity and elevation of his character, and in the remarkable political system to which he adhered, he was wholly _sui generis_, standing out from the number of his forerunners and contemporaries in bold, positive and angular relief. He could only have been what he was, in the country, and during the times, in which he flourished: he was a natural growth of our American society and inst.i.tutions: had formed himself by no models ancient or modern; and the great leading principles of his thought faithfully rendered in all his conduct, were as much an individual possession as the figure of his body or the features of his face. In seeing him, in hearing him speak, or in reading his books, no one was ever likely to confound him with any second person.