The crowning triumph of a long life of great achievements was his great
compromise measures of 1850. These, with their predecessors of 1821 and
1833, have caused some writers to speak of Clay as a man of compromising
nature. The reverse is true. Bold, aggressive, uncompromising, and often
dictatorial by nature, he favored compromise when convinced that only by
such means could civil war or a disruption of the Union be averted. And
he was right. He averted a conflict or separation from the Union when
the relative strength of the South was such as to have rendered
impossible the preservation of the Union by force. The Constitution was
a compromise, without which there would have been no union of States.
That the compromise did not long survive him was no fault of Clay's, but
chargeable to the agitators of both sections, who cared less for the
Union than for their pet theories or selfish interests.
Two years after his death the compromise measures were repealed, and the
most destructive civil war of modern times and a long list of resultant
evils are the result. Those who knew Henry Clay and had felt his
wonderful power as a leader, are firm in the belief that had he been
alive and in the possession of his faculties in 1861, the Civil War
would have been averted. His name and the memory of his love for the
Union restrained his adopted State from joining the South.
The struggle over the passage of the compromise measures, lasting for
seven months, was one of the most memorable parliamentary struggles on
record. The old hero, Henry Clay, broken in health, with the stamp of
death upon him, for six weary months led the fight with much of his
old-time fire and ability. Sustained by indomitable will and supreme
love of country, "I am here," he said, "expecting soon to go hence, and
owing no responsibility but to my own conscience and to God."