If there be any description of rights, which, more than any
other, should unite all parties in all quarters of the Union, it
is unquestionably the rights of the person. No matter what his
vocation, whether he seeks subsistence amid the dangers of the
sea, or draws it from the bowels of the earth, or from the
humblest occupations of mechanical life--wherever the sacred
rights of an American freeman are assailed, all hearts ought to
unite and every arm be braced to vindicate his cause.
--Henry Clay
[Illustration: HENRY CLAY]
There is a story told of an Irishman and an Englishman who were immigrants
aboard a ship that was coming up New York Harbor. It chanced to be the
fourth day of July, and as a consequence there was a needless waste of
gunpowder going on, and many of the ships were decorated with bunting that
in color was red, white and blue.
"What can all this fuss be about?" asked the Englishman.
"What's it about?" answered Pat. "Why, this is the day we run you out!"
And the moral of the story is that as soon as an Irishman reaches the
Narrows he says "we Americans," while an Englishman will sometimes
continue to say "you Americans" for five years and a day. More than this,
an Irish-American citizen regards an English-American citizen with
suspicion and refers to him as a foreigner, even unto the third and fourth
generation.
No man ever hated England more cordially than did Henry Clay.
The genealogists have put forth heroic efforts to secure for Clay a noble
English ancestry, but with a degree of success that only makes the
unthinking laugh and the judicious grieve.
Had these zealous pedigree-hunters studied the parish registers of County
Derry, Ireland, as lovingly as they have Burke's Peerage, they might have
traced the Clays of America back to the Cleighs, honest farmers
(indifferent honest), of Londonderry.
The character of Henry Clay had in it various traits that were peculiarly
Irish. The Irishman knows because he knows, and that's all there is about
it. He is dramatic, emotional, impulsive, humorous without suspecting it,
and will fight friend or foe on small provocation. Then he is much given
to dealing in that peculiar article known as palaver. The farewell address
of Henry Clay to the Senate, and his return thereto a few years later,
comprise one of the most Irishlike proceedings to be found in history.
There is no finer man on earth than your "thrue Irish gintleman," and
Henry Clay had not only all the highest and most excellent traits of the
"gintleman," but a few also of his worst. Clay made friends as no other
American statesman ever did. "To come within reach of the snare of his
speech was to love him," wrote one man. People loved him because he was
affectionate, for love only goes out to love. And the Irish heart is a
heart of love. Henry Clay called himself a Christian, and yet at times he
was picturesquely profane. We have this on the authority of the "Diary" of
John Quincy Adams, which of course we must believe, for even that other
fighting Irishman, Andrew Jackson, said, "Adams' Diary is probably
correct--damn it!"
Clay was convivial in all the word implies; his losses at cards often put
him in severe financial straits; he stood ready to back his opinion
concerning a Presidential election, a horse-race or a dog-fight, and with
it all he held himself "personally responsible"--having fought two duels
and engaged in various minor "misunderstandings."
And yet he was a great statesman--one of the greatest this country has
produced, and as a patriot no man was ever more loyal. It was America with
him first and always. His reputation, his fortune, his life, his all,
belonged to America.
* * * * *
The city of Lexington contains about twenty-five thousand inhabitants. In
Lexington two distinct forms of civilization meet.
One is the civilization of the F.F.V., converted into that peculiar form
of noblesse known the round world over as the Blue-Grass Aristocracy.
Blue-Grass Society represents leisure and luxury and the generous
hospitality of friendships generations old; it means broad acres, noble
mansions reached by roadways that stray under wide-spreading oaks and elms
where squirrels chatter and mild-eyed cows look at you curiously; it means
apple-orchards, gardens lined with boxwood, capacious stables and long
lines of whitewashed cottages, around which swarm a dark cloud of
dependents who dance and sing and laugh--and work when they have to.
Over against these there are to be seen trolley-cars, electric lights,
smart rows of new brick houses on lots thirty by one hundred, negro
policemen in uniforms patterned after those worn by the Broadway Squad,
streets torn up by sewers and conduits, steam-rollers with an unsavory
smell of tar and asphalt, push-buttons and a Hello-Exchange.
As to which form of civilization is the more desirable is a question that
is usually answered by taste and temperament. One thing sure, and that is,
that a pride which swings to t'other side and becomes vanity is often an
element in both. Each could learn something of the other. Lots that you
can jump across, rented to families of ten, with land a mile away that can
be bought for fifty dollars an acre, are not an ideal condition.
On the other hand, inside the city limits of Lexington are mansions
surrounded by an even hundred acres. But at some of these, gates are off
their hinges, pickets have been borrowed for kindling, creeping vines and
long grass o'ertop the walls of empty stables, and a forest of weeds
insolently invades the spot where once nestled milady's flower-garden.
Slowly but surely the Blue-Grass Aristocracy is giving way to purslane or
asphalt, moving into flats, and allowing the boomer to plat its fair
acres--running excursion-trains to attend auction-sales where all the lots
are corner lots and are to be bought on the installment plan, which plan
is said by a cynic to give the bicycle face.
Just across from Ashland is a beautiful estate, recently sold at a
sacrifice to a man from Massachusetts, by the name of Douglas, who I am
told is bald through lack of hair and makes three-dollar shoes. The
stately old mansion mourns its former masters--all are gone--and a thrifty
German is plowing up the lawn, that the cows of the Douglas (tender and
true) may eat early clover.
But Ashland is there today in all the beauty and loveliness that Henry
Clay knew when he wrote to Benton: "I love old Ashland, and all these
acres with their trees and flowers and growing grain lure me in a way
that ambition never can. No, I remain at Ashland."
The rambling old house is embowered in climbing vines and clambering
rosebushes and is set thick about with cedars, so that you can scarcely
see the chimney-tops above the mass of green. A lane running through
locust-trees planted by Henry Clay's own hands leads you to the
hospitable, wide-open door, where a colored man, whose black face is set
in a frame of wool, smiles a welcome. He relieves you of your baggage and
leads the way to your room.
The summer breeze blows lazily in through the open window, and the only
sound of life and activity about seems to center in two noisy robins which
are making a nest in the eaves, right within reach of your hand. The
colored man apologizes for them, anathematizes them mildly, and proposes
to drive them away, but you restrain him. After the man has gone you
bethink you that the suggestion of driving the birds away was only the
white lie of society (for even black folks tell white lies), and the old
man probably had no more intent of driving the birds away than of going
himself.
On the dresser is a pitcher of freshly clipped roses, the morning dew
still upon them, and you only cease to admire as you espy your mail that
lies there awaiting your hand. News from home and loved ones greets you
before these new-found friends do! You have not seen the good folks who
live here, only the old colored man who pretended that he was going to
kill cock-robin, and didn't. The hospitality is not gushing or
effusive--the place is yours, that's all, and you lean out of the window
and look down at the flowerbeds, and wonder at the silence and the quiet
and peace, and feel sorry for the folks who live in Cincinnati and
Chicago. The soughing of the wind through the pines comes to you like the
murmur of the sea, and breaking in on the stillness you hear the sharp
sound of an ax--some Gladstone chopping, miles and miles away.
Your dreams are broken by a gentle tap at the door and your host has come
to call on you. You know him at once, even though you have never before
met, for men who think alike and feel alike do not have to "get
acquainted." Heart speaks to heart.
He only wishes to say that your coming is a pleasure to all the family at
Ashland, the library is yours as well as the whole place, lunch is at one
o'clock, and George will get you anything you wish. And back in the shadow
of the hallway you catch sight of the old colored man and see him bow low
when his name is mentioned.
Ashland is probably in better condition today than when Henry Clay worked
and planned, and superintended its fair acres. The place has seen
vicissitudes since the body of the man who gave it immortality lay in
state here in July, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-two. But Major McDowell's wife
is the granddaughter of Henry Clay, and it seems meet that the descendants
of the great man should possess Ashland. Major McDowell has means and
taste and the fine pride that would preserve all the traditions of the
former master. The six hundred acres are in a high state of cultivation,
and the cattle and horses are of the kinds that would have gladdened the
heart of Clay.
In the library, halls and dining-room are various portraits of the great
man, and at the turn of the stairs is a fine heroic bust, in bronze, of
that lean face and form. Hundreds of his books are to be seen on the
shelves, all marked and dog-eared and scribbled on, thus disproving much
of that old cry that "Clay was not a student." Some men are students only
in youth, but Clay's best reading was done when he was past fifty. The
book habit grew upon him with the years.
Here are his pistols, spurs, saddle and memorandum-books. Here are
letters, faded and yellow, dusted with black powder on ink that has been
dry a hundred years, asking for office, or words of gracious thanks in
token of benefits not forgot.
Off to the south stretches away a great forest of walnut, oak and chestnut
trees--reminders of the vast forest that Daniel Boone knew. Many of these
trees were here then, and here let them remain, said Henry Clay. And so
today at Ashland, as at Hawarden, no tree is felled until it has been duly
tried by the entire family and all has been said for and against the
sentence of death. I heard Miss McDowell make an eloquent plea for an old
oak that had been rather recklessly harboring mistletoe and many
squirrels, until it was thought probable that, like our first parents, it
might have a fall. It was a plea more eloquent than "O Woodman, spare that
tree." A reprieve for a year was granted; and I thought, as I cast my vote
on the side of mercy, that the jury that could not be won by such a young
woman as that was hopelessly dead at the top and more hollow at the heart
than the old oak under whose boughs we sat.
* * * * *
Ashland is just a mile south of the courthouse. When Henry Clay used to
ride horseback between the town and his farm there were scarce a dozen
houses to pass on the way, but now the street is all built up, and is
smartly paved, and the trolley-line booms a noisy car to the sacred gates
every ten minutes.
Lexington was laid out in the year Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, and the
intention was to name it in honor of Colonel Patterson, the founder, or of
Daniel Boone. But while the surveyors were doing their work, word came of
the battle of some British and certain embattled farmers, and the spirit
of freedom promptly declared that the town should be called Lexington.
Three years after the laying-out of Lexington, Henry Clay was born. He was
the son of a poor and obscure Baptist preacher who lived at "The Slashes,"
in Virginia. The boy never had any vivid recollection of his father, who
passed away when Henry was a mere child.
The mother had a hard time of it with her family of seven children, and if
kind neighbors had not aided, there would have been actual want. And
surely one can not blame the widow for "marrying for a home" when
opportunity offered. Only one out of that first family ever achieved
eminence, and the second brood is actually lost to us in oblivion.
Henry Clay was a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks; he also took
several post-graduate courses at the same institution. Very early in life
we see that he possessed the fine, eager, receptive spirit that absorbs
knowledge through the finger-tips; and the ability to think and to absorb
is all that even college can ever do for a man. I doubt whether college
would have helped Clay, and it might have dimmed the diamond luster of his
mind, and diluted that fine audacity which carried him on his way. In this
capacity to comprehend in the mass, Clay's character was essentially
feminine. We have Thoreau for authority that the intuition and the
sympathy found always in the saviors of the world are purely feminine
attributes--the legacy bequeathed from a mother who thirsted for better
things.
From a clerk in a country store to a bookkeeper, then a copyist for a
lawyer, a writer of letters for the neighborhood, a reader of law, and
next a lawyer, were easy and natural steps for this ambitious boy.
Virginia with its older settlements offered small opportunities, and so we
find young Clay going West, and landing at Lexington when twenty years
old. He requested a license to practise law, but the Bar Association,
which consisted of about a dozen members, decided that no more lawyers
were needed at Lexington. Clay demanded that he should be examined as to
fitness, and the blackberry-bush Blackstones sat upon him, as a coroner
would say, with intent to give him so stiff an examination that he would
be glad to get work as a farmhand.
A dozen questions had been asked, and an attempt had been made to confuse
and browbeat the youth, when the Nestor of the Lexington Bar expectorated
at a fly ten feet away, and remarked, "Oh, the devil! there is no need of
tryin' to keep a boy like this down--he's as fit as we, or fitter!"
And so he was admitted.
From the very first he was a success; he toned up the mental qualities of
the Fayette County Bar, and made the older, easy-going members feel to see
whether their laurel wreaths were in place.
When he was thirty years of age he was chosen by the Legislature of
Kentucky as United States Senator. When his term expired he chose to go to
Congress, probably because it afforded better opportunity for oratory and
leadership. As soon as he appeared upon the floor he was chosen Speaker by
acclamation. So thoroughly American was he, that one of his very first
suggestions was to the effect that every member should clothe himself
wholly in fabrics made in the United States. Humphrey Marshall ridiculed
the proposition and called Clay a demagogue, for which he got himself
straightway challenged. Clay shot a bullet through his English-made
broadcloth coat, and then they shook hands.
When his term as Congressman expired, he again went to the Senate, and
served two years. Then he went back to the House, and through his
influence, and his alone, did we challenge Great Britain, just as he had
challenged Marshall.
England accepted the challenge, and we call it the War of Eighteen Hundred
Twelve.
Very often, indeed, do we hear the rural statesmen at Fourth of July
celebrations exclaim, "We have whipped England twice, and we can do it
again!"
We whipped England once, and it is possible we could do it again, but she
got the best of us in the War of Eighteen Hundred Twelve. Henry Clay
plunged the country into war to redress certain grievances, and as a peace
commissioner he backed out of that war without having a single one of
those grievances indemnified or redressed.
After the treaty of peace had been declared and "the war was over," that
fighting Irishman, Andrew Jackson, Irishlike, gave the British a black eye
at New Orleans, just for luck, and this is the only thing in that whole
misunderstanding of which we should not as a nation be ashamed.
If England had not had Napoleon on her hands at that particular time,
Wellington would probably have made a visit to America, and might have
brought along for us a Waterloo. And these things are fully explained in
the textbooks on history used in the schools of Great Britain, on whose
possessions the sun never sets.
But as Henry Clay had gotten us into war, his diplomacy helped to get us
out, and as it was a peace without dishonor, Clay's reputation did not
materially suffer. In fact, the terms of peace were so ambiguous that
Congress gave out to the world that it was a victory, and the exact facts
were quite lost in the smoke of Jackson's muskets that hovered over the
cotton bales.
Later, when Clay ran against Jackson for the Presidency he found that a
peace-hero has no such place in the hearts of men as a war-hero. Jackson
had not a tithe of Clay's ability, and yet Clay's defeat was overwhelming.
"Peace hath her victories"--yes, but the average voter does not know it.
The only men who have received overwhelming majorities for President have
been war-heroes. Obscure men have crept in several times, but popular
diplomats--never. The fate of such popular men as Clay, Seward and Blaine
is one. And when one considers how strong is this tendency to glorify the
hero of action, and ignore the hero of thought, he wonders how it really
happened that Paul Revere was not made the second President of the United
States instead of John Adams.
Clay was a most eloquent pleader. The grace of his manner, the beauty of
his speech, and the intense earnestness of his nature often convinced men
against their wills.
There was sometimes, however, a suspicion in the air that his best
quotations were inspirations, and that the statistics to which he appealed
were evolved from his inner consciousness. But the man had power and
personality plus. He was a natural leader, and unlike other statesmen we
might name, he always carried his town and district by overwhelming
majorities. And it is well to remember that the first breath of popular
disfavor directed against Henry Clay was because he proposed the abolition
of slavery.
Those who knew him best loved him most, and this was true from the time he
began to practise law in Lexington, when scarcely twenty-one years old, to
his seventy-fifth year, when his worn-out body was brought home to rest.
On that occasion all business in Lexington, and in most of Kentucky,
ceased. Even the farmers quit work, and very many private residences were
draped in mourning. Memorial services were held in hundreds of churches,
the day was given over to mourning, and everywhere men said, "We shall
never look upon his like again."
* * * * *
Before I visited Lexington, my cousin, Little Emily, duly wrote me that on
no account, when I was in Kentucky, must I offer any criticisms on the
character of Henry Clay; for if I grew reckless and compared him with
another to his slightest disadvantage, I should have to fight.
That he was absolutely the greatest statesman America has produced is, to
all Kentuckians, a fact so sure that they doubt the honesty or the sanity
of any one who hints otherwise. He is their ideal, the perfect man, the
model for all youths to imitate, and the standard by which all other
statesmen are gauged. Clay to Kentucky scores one hundred. And as he was
at the last defeated for the highest office, which they say was his
God-given right, there is a flavor of martyrdom in his history that is the
needed crown for every hero.
Complete success alienates man from his fellows, but suffering makes
kinsmen of us all. So the South loves Henry Clay.
He is so well loved that he is apotheosized, and thus the real man to many
is lost in the clouds. With his name, song and legend have worked their
miracles, and to very many Southern people he is a being separate and
apart, like Hector or Achilles.
With my cousin, Little Emily, I am always very frank--and you can be
honest and frank with so few in this world of expediency, you know! We are
so frank in expression that we usually quarrel very shortly. And so I
explained to Emily just what I have written here, as to the real Henry
Clay being lost.
She contradicted me flatly and said, "To love a person is not to lose
him--you never lose except through indifference or hate!" I started to
explain and had gotten as far as, "It is just like this," when the
conversation was interrupted by the arrival of General Bellicose, who had
come to take us riding behind a spanking pair of geldings, that I was
assured were standard bred.
In Lexington you never use the general term "horse." You speak of a mare,
a gelding, a horse, a four-year-old, a weanling or a sucker. To refer to a
trotter as a thoroughbred is to suffer social ostracism, and to obfuscate
a side-wheeler with a single-footer is proof of degeneracy. This applies
equally to the ethics of the ballroom or the livery-stable. In Kentucky
they read Richard's famous lines thus: "A saddler! a saddler! my kingdom
for a saddler!" So when I complimented General Bellicose on his geldings
and noted that they went square without boots or weights, and that he used
no blinders, it thawed the social ice, and we were as brothers. Then I led
the way cautiously to Henry Clay, and the General assured me that in his
opinion the Henry Clays were even better than the George Wilkes. To be
sure, Wilkes had more in the 'thirty list, but the Clays had brains, and
were cheerful; they neither lugged nor hung back, whereas you always had
to lay whip to a Wilkes in order to get along a bit, or else use a gag
and overcheck.
I pressed Little Emily's hand under the lap-robe and asked her if all
Kentuckians were believers in metempsychosis. "Colonel Littlejourneys is
making fun of you, General," said Little Emily; "the Colonel is talking
about the man, and you are discussing trotters!"
And then I apologized, but the General said it was he who should make the
apology, and raising the carriage-seat brought out a box of genuine Henry
Clay Havanas, in proof of amity.
It's a very foolish thing to smile at a man who rides a hobby. Once there
was a man who rode a hobby all his life, to the great amusement of his
enemies and the mortification of his wife; and when the man was dead they
found it was a real live horse and had carried the man many long miles.
General Bellicose loves a horse; so does Little Emily and so do I. But
Little Emily and the General know history and have sounded politics in a
way that puts me in the kindergarten; and I found before the day was over
that what one did not know about the political history of America the
other did. And mixed up in it all we discussed the merits of the fox-trot
versus the single-foot.
We saw the famous Clay monument, built by the State at a cost of nearly a
hundred thousand dollars, and with uncovered heads gazed through the
gratings into the crypt where lies the dust of the great man. Then we saw
the statue of John C. Breckinridge in the public square, and visited
various old ebb-tide mansions where the "quarters" had fallen into decay,
and the erstwhile inhabitants had moved to the long row of tenements down
by the cotton-mill. My train whistled and we were half a mile from the
station, but the General said we would get there in time--and we did. I
bade my friends good-by and quite forgot to thank them for all their
kindness, although down in my heart I felt that it had been a time rare as
a day in June. I believe they felt my gratitude, too, for where there is
such a feast of wit and flow of soul, such kindness, such generosity, the
spirit understands.
When I arrived home I found a box awaiting me, bearing the express mark of
Lexington, Kentucky. On opening the case I found six quart-bottles of
"Henry Clay--1881"; and a card with the compliments of Little Emily and
General Bellicose. On the outside of the case was neatly stenciled the
legend, "Thackeray, Full sett, 14 vol., half Levant." I do not know why
the box was so marked, but I suppose it was in honor of my literary
proclivities. I went out and blew four merry blasts on a ram's horn, and
the Philistines assembled.