The Dryads are plainly no American divinities. A reverence for trees and
groves, for woods and forests, is not an American passion. As our
fathers and many of ourselves have spent the best of our strength in
wrestling with, prostrating, using up the leaf-crowned monarchs, gray
with the moss of age ere Columbus set foot on Cat Island, to expect us
to love and honor their quiet majesty, their stately grace, were like
asking Natty Bumpo or Leather-stocking to bow down to and worship
Pontiac or Brandt, as the highest ideal of Manhood. An uncouth
backwoodsman lately stated our difficulty with immediate reference to
another case, but the principle is identical: "When I was a boy," said
he, plaintively, "it was the rule to love rum, and hate niggers; now
they want us to hate rum, and love niggers: For my part, I stick to the
old discipline." And so it were unreasonable to expect the mass of
Americans now living, to go into heroics over the prospect of a comely
and comfortable mansion, surrounded by a spacious lawn or "opening" of
luxuriant grass, embracing the roots and lightly shaded by the foliage
of thrifty and shapely trees.
Why is it, then, that the American's pulse beats quicker, and his heart
throbs more proudly as, walking slowly and thoughtfully up a noble
avenue that leads easterly from Lexington,--once the capital and still
the most important inland town in Kentucky,--he finds the road
terminating abruptly in front of a modest, spacious, agreeable mansion,
only two stories in height, and of no great architectural pretensions,
and remembers who caused its erection, and was for many years its owner
and master?
That house, that lawn, with the ample and fertile farm stretching a mile
or more in the distance behind them, are hallowed to the hearts of his
countrymen by the fact, that here lived and loved, enjoyed and suffered,
aspired and endured, the Orator, the Patriot, the Statesman, the
illustrious, the gifted, the fiercely slandered, the fondly idolized
Henry Clay.
A friend who visited Ashland as a stranger in May, 1845, thus writes of
the place and its master:
"I have at last realized one of my dearest wishes, that of seeing Mr.
Clay at Ashland. I called on him with a friend this morning, but he was
absent on his farm, and Charles, his freed slave, told us he would not
be at home till afternoon; so we returned to Lexington, and, at five
P.M., we retraced our steps to Ashland. Mr. Clay had returned; and
meeting us at the door, took hold of our hands before I could even
present a letter of introduction, and made us welcome to his home. His
manners completely overcame all the ceremonies of speech I had prepared.
We were soon perfectly at home, as every one must be with Henry Clay, and
in half an hour's time we had talked about the various sections of the
country I had visited the past year, Mr. Clay occasionally giving us
incidents and recollections of his own life; and I felt as though I had
known him personally for years.
"Mr. Clay has lived at Ashland forty years. The place bore the name when
he came to it, as he says, probably on account of the ash timber, with
which it abounds; and he has made it the most delightful retreat in all
the West. The estate is about six hundred acres large, all under the
highest cultivation, except some two hundred acres of park, which is
entirely cleared of underbrush and small trees, and is, to use the words
of Lord Morpeth, who staid at Ashland nearly a week, the nearest
approach to an English park of any in this country. It serves for a
noble pasture, and here I saw some of Mr. Clay's fine horses and Durham
cattle. He is said to have some of the finest in America; and if I am
able to judge I confirm that report. The larger part of his farm is
devoted to wheat, rye, hemp, &c., and his crops look most splendidly. He
has also paid great attention to ornamenting his land with beautiful
shade trees, shrubs, flowers, and fruit orchards. From the road which
passes his place on the northwest side, a carriage-road leads up to the
house, lined with locust, cypress, cedar, and other rare trees, and the
rose, jasmine, and ivy, were clambering about them, and peeping through
the grass and the boughs, like so many twinkling fairies, as we drove
up. Mr Clay's mansion is nearly hidden from the road by the trees
surrounding it, and is as quiet and secluded, save to the throng of
pilgrims continually pouring up there to greet its more than royal
possessor, as though it were in the wilderness."
Here let the house, the lawn, the wood, the farm, pass, if they will,
from the mind. They are all well in their way, and were doubtless well
adapted in his time to smooth the care-worn brow, and soothe the
care-fraught breast of the lofty, gallant, frank, winning statesman, who
gave and still gives them all their interest. Be our thoughts
concentrated on him who still lives, and speaks, and sways, though the
clay which enrobed him has been hid from our sight for ever, rather than
on the physical accessories which, but for him, though living to the
corporal sense, are dead to the informing soul.
For it was not here, in this comfortable mansion, beneath those
graceful, hospitable, swaying trees, that THE GREAT COMMONER was born
and reared; but in a rude, homely farm-house,[19] which had any man
given five hundred dollars for, he would have been enormously swindled,
unless he paid in Continental money,--in a primitive, rural, thinly
peopled section of Hanover County (near Richmond), Virginia; where his
father, Rev. John Clay, a poor Baptist preacher, lived, and struggled,
and finally died, leaving a widow and seven young children, with no
reliance but the mother's energies and the benignant care of the widow's
and orphan's God. This was in 1782, near the close of the Revolutionary
War, when so much of the country as had not been ravaged by the enemy's
forces, had been nearly exhausted by our own, and by the incessant
exactions of a protracted, harassing, desolating, industry-paralyzing
civil war. The fifth of these seven children was Henry, born on the 12th
of April, 1777, who remained in that humble home until fourteen years of
age, when his mother, who had married a second time, being about to
remove to Kentucky, placed him in a store at Richmond, under the eye of
his oldest brother, then nearly or quite of age, but who died very soon
afterwards, leaving Henry an orphan indeed. He was thus thrown
completely on his own exertions, when still but a child, and without
having enjoyed any other educational advantages than such as were
fitfully afforded by occasional private schools, in operation perhaps
two or three months in a year, and kept by teachers somewhat ruder than
the log tenement which circumscribed their labors. Such was all the
"schooling" ever enjoyed by the ragged urchin, whose bright summer days
were necessarily given to ploughing and hoeing in the corn-fields,
barefoot, bareheaded, and clad in coarse trowsers and shirt, and whose
daily tasks were diversified by frequent rides of two or three miles to
the nearest grist-mill, on a sorry cob, bestrode with no other saddle
than the grain-bag; whence many of his childhood's neighbors,
contrasting, long afterward, the figure he cut in Congress, at Ghent, in
Paris or London, with that which they had seen so often pass in scanty
garb, but jocund spirits, on these family errands, recalled him to mind
in his primitive occupation as _The Mill-Boy of the Slashes_, by which
_sobriquet_ he was fondly hailed by thousands in the pride of his
ripened renown.
Forty-five years after his childish farewell to it, Henry Clay stood
once more (in 1840), and for the last time, in the humble home of his
fathers, and was rejoiced to find the house where he was born and
reared, still essentially unchanged. Venerable grandames, who were
blooming matrons in his infancy, had long since indicated to their sons
and daughters the room wherein he was born; and the spring whence the
family had drawn their supplies of water wore a familiar aspect, though
the hickory which formerly shaded it, and was noted for the excellence
of its nuts, had passed away. Over the graves of his father and
grandparents the plough had passed and repassed for years, and he only
fixed their position by the decaying stump of a pear-tree, which had
flourished in his childhood, and often ministered to his gratification.
Beyond these, nothing answered to the picture in his memory, and he
would not have recognized the spot, had he awoke there unconscious of
the preceding journey. Familiar groves and orchards had passed away,
while pines which he left shrubs, just dotting with perennial green the
surface of the exhausted "old fields," unhappily too common throughout
the Southern States, had grown up into dense and towering forests, which
waved him a stately adieu, as he turned back refreshed and calmed, to
the heated and dusty highway of public life.
The boy Henry, spent five years in Richmond,--only the first in the
store where his mother had placed him; three of the others in the office
of Mr. Clerk-in-Chancery Peter Tinsley; the last in that of
Attorney-General Brooke. From Mr. Tinsley, he learned to write a
remarkably plain, neat, and elegant hand,--more like a schoolmistress's
best, than a great lawyer and politician, and this characteristic it
retained to the last. From Mr. Tinsley, Mr. Brooke, and perhaps still
more from the illustrious Chancellor Wythe, who employed him as his
amanuensis, and repaid him with his friendship and counsel, young Clay
derived his knowledge of the principles of Common Law, whereof he was,
all his life, a devoted champion. At length, in November, 1797, when
still lacking some months of his legal majority, he left Richmond and
Virginia, for the location he had chosen--namely, the thriving village
of Lexington, in the then rapidly growing Territory of Kentucky--the
home of his eventful adult life of more than half a century. How he here
was early recognized and honored as a Man of the People, and rapidly
chosen (1803) member of the Legislature, once (1806) appointed to fill a
vacancy in the United States Senate, and soon after (1809) elected out
of, and by the legislature, to fill another and longer vacancy in that
same dignified body; chosen in 1811 a Member of the more popular branch
of Congress, and, immediately on his appearance on its floor, elected
its Speaker--probably the highest compliment ever paid to a public man
in this country--appointed thence (1814) a Plenipotentiary to Goettingen
(afterwards changed to Ghent), to negotiate a Treaty of Peace with Great
Britain, which was signed near the close of that year; re-elected,
immediately on his return, to a seat in the House, and to the
Speakership, which he retained thenceforth (except during a temporary
retirement from public life, rendered necessary by heavy pecuniary
losses as an indorser), down to March 3d, 1825, when he finally retired
from the House on being appointed Secretary of State by President John
Q. Adams; quitting this station for private life on the Inauguration of
President Jackson in 1829, returning to the Senate in 1831, and
continuing one of its most eminent and influential members till 1842,
when he retired, as he supposed for ever; but was returned, by an
unanimous vote of the Legislature, in 1849, and dying a Senator in
Washington on the 29th of June, 1852, aged more than seventy-five years,
of which more than half had been spent in the public service, and nearly
all, since his majority, in active, ardent, anxious familiarity with
public men and public measures,--this is no place to set forth in
detail. The merest glance is all we can give to the public, official
career of Henry Clay.
For our business is not here with Tariffs, Banks, Vetoes, and
Presidential contests or aspirations. Our theme is the _man_ Henry
Clay,--what he was intrinsically, and in his daily dealings with, and
deportment toward, his fellow-beings. If there be a better mode of
developing his character than Plutarch's, we have not now time to
ascertain and employ it, so we must e'en be content with that.
A tall, plain, poor, friendless youth, was young Henry, when he set up
his Ebenezer in Lexington, and, after a few months' preliminary study,
announced himself a candidate for practice as an attorney. He had not
even the means of paying his weekly board. "I remember," he observed in
his Lexington speech of 1842, "how comfortable I thought I should be, if
I could make L100 Virginia money, per year; and with what delight I
received my first fifteen shilling fee. My hopes were more than
realized. I immediately rushed into a lucrative practice."
Local tradition affirms that the Bar of Lexington, being unusually
strong when Mr. Clay first appeared thereat, an understanding had grown
up among the seniors, that they would systematically discountenance the
advent of any new aspirants, so as to keep the business remunerating,
and preserve each other from the peril of being starved out. It was some
time, therefore, before young Clay obtained a case to manage in Court;
and when he did appear there, the old heads greeted the outset of his
argument with winks, and nods, and meaning smiles, and titters, intended
to disconcert and embarrass him. So they did for a few minutes; but they
soon exasperated and roused him. His eyes flashed, and sentence after
sentence came pouring rapidly out, replete with the fire of eloquence
and genius. At length, one of the old heads leaned across the table and
whispered to another, "_I think we must let this young man pass._" Of
course they must!--the case was as plain as the portliest of noses on
the most rubicund of faces. Henry Clay passed, _nem. con._, and his
position and success at that Bar were never more disputed nor doubted.
General Cass, in his remarks in the Senate on the occasion of Mr. Clay's
death, has the following interesting reminiscence:
"It is almost half a century since he passed through Chilicothe, then
the seat of government of Ohio, where I was a member of the Legislature,
on his way to take his place in this very body, which is now listening
to this reminiscence, and to a feeble tribute of regard from one who
then saw him for the first time, but who can never forget the impression
he produced by the charms of his conversation, the frankness of his
manner, and the high qualities with which he was endowed."
That an untaught, portionless rustic, reared not only in one of the
rudest localities, but in the most troublous and critical era of our
country, when the general poverty and insecurity rendered any attention
to personal culture difficult, almost impossible, and graduating from a
log school-house, should have been celebrated for the union in his
manners, of grace with frankness, ease with fascination, is not unworthy
of remark. Of the fact, those who never knew Mr. Clay personally, may
have abundant attestations, which none others will need.
While in Europe as a negotiator for Peace with Great Britain, Mr. Clay
was brought into immediate and familiar contact, not only with his
associates, the urbane and cultivated John Quincy Adams, whose life had
been divided between seminaries and courts; the philosophic Gallatin and
the chivalric Bayard, but also with the noble and aristocratic
Commissioners of Great Britain, and with many others of like breeding
and position, to whom the importance of their mission, its protracted
labors and its successful result, commended our Plenipotentiaries. A
single anecdote will illustrate the impression he every where produced.
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 shores, 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. Glascock, a political
antagonist, who came into Congress from Georgia, during the fierce
struggle which followed the removal of the Deposits. "Gen. Glascock,"
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 constituents. Only once in the course
of his long Representative career was he obliged to canvass 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 passage of the "Compensation Act"
of 1816, whereby Congress substituted 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 competitor for the seat, and gave him enough to do
through the canvass. They met in discussion at several local
assemblages, 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 canvass 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 canvass to maintain a studied silence. That silence
was ominous, especially as he was known to be under personal obligation
to Mr. Clay for legal assistance 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 canvasser 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
circumstance, 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 Speakership 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 assaults 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 passages
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
passage. 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 passages 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
flashing with coruscations of genius. His gestures and attitudes
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 illustrations, 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 title to pre-eminence
among his illustrious associates.
"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 circumstances 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 passion, 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 assiduity
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
pronounce 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 associations about it are of the most
interesting character. When Kentucky was, in fact, the 'dark and bloody
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 passed 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 classic Ashland to pass
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 associated, 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 Statesmanship, 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."
[Illustration: Clay's Birth-place]