USA > Kentucky > Historical sketches of Kentucky : embracing its history, antiquities, and natural curiosities, geographical, statistical, and geological descriptions with anecdotes of pioneer life, and more than one hundred biographical sketches of distinguished pioneers, soldiers, statesmen, jurists, lawyers, divines, etc. > Part 43
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In 1940, General Harrison, the whig candidate for the presidency, was elected by one of those tremendous and irresistible popular movements, which are seen in no other country besides this. During the canvass. Mr. Clay visited Hanover county, the place of his nativity, and while there addressed an assembly of the people. It was one of the ablest speeches of his life, and contained a masterly exposition of the principles and subjects of controversy between the two parties.
After the election of General Harrison, when congress assembled, it set itself to work to repair the ravages made in the prosperity and institutions of the country.
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by twelve years of misgovernment. Unfortunately, however, the work had scarcely commenced before death removed the lamented Harrison from the scene of his usefulness, and Mr. Tyler, the vice-president, succeeded to his place. Then followed, in rapid succession, veto after veto, until all hope of accomplish- ing the objects for which the whigs came into power, were extinct.
During this period, Mr. Clay labored night and day to bring the president into an accommodating temper, but without success. He seemed resolved to sever all connection between himself and the party which brought him into power. He will go down to posterity with the brand of traiter stamped upon his brow, and take his place with the Arnolds of the revolution.
On the 31st of March, 1842, Mr. Clay executed his long and fondly cherished design of retiring to spend the evening of his days amid the tranquil shades of Ashland. He resigned his seat in the senate, and presented to that body the cre- dentials of his friend and successor, Mr. Crittenden. The scene which ensued was indescribably thrilling. Had the guardian genius of congress and the nation been about to take his departure, deeper feeling could hardly have been manifested than when Mr. Clay arose to address, for the last time, his congressional com- peers. All felt that the master spirit was bidding thein adieu; that the pride and ornament of the senate, and the glory of the nation was being removed, and all grieved in view of the void that would be created. When Mr. Clay resumed his seat, the senate unanimously adjourned for the day.
In May, 1844, the national whig convention nominated Mr. Clay as a candi- date for president of the United States. The nominee of the democratic party was Colonel James K. Polk, of Tennessee. The canvass was probably one of the most exciting ever witnessed in this country. In addition to the old issues. a new one was formed on the proposition to annex the republic of Texas to the American union. This question, intimately involving the exciting subject of slavery, gave to the presidential canvass a new character and an unforeseen direc- tion. It would be out of place here, although not without interest and instruc- tion, to trace and analyze the causes which operated to defeat the whigs. Suffice it to say, that Mr. Polk was made president. Texas became one of the United States. War ensued with Mexico; and the annies of the United States swept the fertile provinces of that sister republic from the mouth of the Rio Grande to the western base of the Rocky mountains. Governments were abrogated, and new ones established in their place, by the fiat of subordinate militia officers ; and throughout the whole extent of that rich and beautiful region. scenes were enacted which carry the mind back to the days of romance, and revive the memory of those bloody national tragedies which have crimsoned the pages of European and Asi- atic history.
Since the presidential election of 1814, Mr. Clay has lived in retirement at Ashland, engaged in the practice of his profession. He is now in the seventieth year of his age, and the fall enjoyment of all his faculties. Few men have ever lived who could look back over a career so various, so full of strange vicissitude and stirring incident. And fewer still have lived, who could find in such retro- spect, so little to condemn or regret; so many subjects of pleasing reflection and allowable self-gratulation. May the evening of his days be as bright and tranquil and pleasant, as their meridian has been brilliant, glorious and suc- cessful.
Mr. Clav entered the legislature of Kentucky in 1803. He returned from the senate of the United States in 1812. During a period of forty years, he has min- gled actively and with a controlling influence in the politics of the country. Prob- ably no man has lived during this time, who has made an impression upon louis- lation so deep and enduring, or who has exercised so strong an influence in stap- ing the course of public sentiment. He entered public life when the nation w is yet in its early intancy. Our institutions were new and comparatively untried. Our principles were in a state of formation ; and those gigantic elements of wealth and power, with which providence has blessed this magnificent land. were stil undiscovered and remained to be developed. More than half of the country was covered with an unbroken forest. Those rich and wide spread regions, which. stretching from the Alleghany to the Rocky mountains, and from the head waters of the Mississippi and Missouri to the sands of the Mexican Gulf, are now the Seat of many powerful states and opulent cominunities, then lay dark and silent,
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the home of the panther, the bear, and the prowling savage. Before the public men of that day was spread the grandest field that ever invited the attention or presented a fitting theatre to the genius of a statesman. Those immense resompres were to be developed. and those noble elements combined and moulded into att those fair forms of public prosperity which modern civilization presents for the admiration of the patriot, philanthropist and philosopher. For forty years this great work has been steadily progressing. Those gloomy forests have been sub- dued and converted into the garden spot of the world. Civilization has pene- trated their dark glades, and arts and knowledge have humanized their most savage retreats. Temples to the living God now litt their lofty spires in every direction throughout that smiling region, and splendid cities rear their glittering domes where the sombre forest waved its rustling foliage. Over this region, so late a howling solitude, there is now spread a population of many millions ; active, industrious and intelligent; moral, religious and refined : carrying forward the arts to the highest perfection, and sending forth the products of their industry and ingenuity into every country of the earth.
With the progressive advance of this wonderful development of national greatness. Mr. Clay has been contemporary : and in the wise and judicious legis- lation, under whose fostering care the great work has gone steadily forward, the traces of his powerful hand are to be seen at every step. Endowed by nature with genius of high and commanding attributes-eloquent and brilliant-ardent and ambitious-he possesses all those qualities which, in a democratic country and under popular institutions. confer power and extended influence. From his ear- liest manhood he has been placed in the most responsible stations : and from the control which he has always-exercised over the party with which he was connec- ted, has given a direction to its energies, and communicated the coloring of his own views to its principles and opinions.
The question, then. as to the light in which his character will be estimated by posterity-whether as a true statesman, comprehensive. sagacious and far-sighted -a patriot, pure, and undefiled, exerting his God-given faculties in singleness of heart to build up the fortunes and secure the liberties of his country ; or as a mere intriguing politician, absorbe l in the pursuit of his own selfish ambition. becomes one of great interest and general importance. I cannot be disguised that. if the principles upon which this man's conduct has been founded. are false. and hol- low, and corrupt. there is much of that which is noblest. highest and most excel- lent in our own history, liable to the same reproach. For it is these principles, and the spirit of this man, working out through many obstacles its cherished de- signs, that now stand before the world embodied in the forms of laws, opinions and institutions, which give a character to the age.
In early life Mr. Clay acted with that party which was known as the demo- cratic, and of which Thomas Jefferson was the acknowledged leader and anima- ting spirit. His first public efforts after his arrival in Kentucky were directed against the alien and sedition laws: and upon most subjects he continued to think and act with the democratic party, while it retained an organized prist- ence, and until the party lines were broken up and obliterated under the admin- istration of James Monroe. But, although agreeing in sentiment with bis party upon the majority of those questions which forined the grounds of the controversy between it and its great antagonist. it is due to Mr. Clay to sav that he rever sacrificed the right of private judgment. or yielded up his freedom of aenun. Thus, upon some questions, in which he believed the principles of the party to be inimical to the true interests of the country, he separated without hesitation freut the majority of his political friends.
As a noted example of this perfect way- pendence with which he exercised the right of judging for himself, we may me hi- tion his course in relation to the great subject of internal improvements. It is well known that from his first entrance into the senate of the United States in 1-06, he was an ardent advocate of the policy of extending the patronage and protection of government to works of this kind. And yet. the administraattenset Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, and the majority of the democratic party. w . re hostile to the policy. The power to promote internal improvements was among those implied powers. which the creed of democracy almost utterly disclaimed. On the question of the United States' bank, again, in left. Mr. Clay acted with his party, as he did not believe the necessity for such institution to be such, as
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would justify a resort to implied powers. On this subject, in 1811, he parti- cipated fully in the jealousy with which his party viewed all corporations. Power, in any shape, was the great bugbear of democracy at that day ; and the power which resided in independent corporations of individuals, was honored with a pe- culiar share of aversion. The democrats of 1811 viewed the incorporation of the United States' bank with much the same feeling with which the whigs, at a later day, looked upon the establishment of the sub-treasury.
On the subject of the tariff, Mr. Clay had the happiness to act in concert with his party ; as it is well known that Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, with a ma- jority of their followers, were all friendly to the policy.
When the modern whig and democratic parties were organized, Mr. Clay was found with the whigs. The principles and leading characteristics of this party, cor- responded very closely with those of the old democratic or Jeffersonian party, with such modification as time, experience and the altered circumstances of the coun- try, had inevitably produced. Both were distinguished by the same jealousy of executive power ; which may be said to have formed the basis upon which the organization of each reposed.
Upon the subject of slavery, Mr. Clay has always been a sound conservative. For many years. he acted as president of the American colonization society ; and while deprecating the acknowledged evils of African slavery, and prepared to co- operate in any plan by which it could be gradually and safely banished from the country, he has invariably opposed, with firmness, the wild fanatic schemes of modern abolitionism.
Upon an impartial review of his career as a politician, it may be pronounced that Mr. Clay's principles have approached as near the standard of true democracy, as those of any public man in our history ; equally removed from the fanaticism and radicalism of the demagogue, as from the bigotry of aristocratie prejudice.
The personal characteristics of Mr. Clay are obvious to the most superficial observer. That he is a man of vast powers, has never been contested. As an orator, he has had few equals. As a statesman, he has been remarkable for the enlargement of his views, and for his far sighted sagacity. His political infor- mation is extensive and accurate. He is a man of proud spirit and dauntless courage ; ardent, impetuous, self-willed, and withal ambitious ; a man of intense convictions and burning passions. These qualities have made him as much feared and hated by his adversaries as he is admired and beloved by his friends. It has fallen to the lot of few men to live a life so crowded with incidents, events and passages of stirring interest and deep excitement. From his earliest youth, he has been accustomed to mingle in those scenes which develop the deep- est and strongest freulties of our nature. both of good and evil. And in view of all, it may be said that few men, looking back over the same career, could find so few actions which merit reproach. Posterity, removed by time and distance from the influence of passions and interests which now obscure the judgments of men, will look calmly at the great epic of his life, and with stern impartial- ity award to each particular act the meed of praise or odium of censure, and sum- ming up the events of his varied career, pronounce upon his character, and write his epitaph.
Ashland, the residence of Mr. Clay, comprising the house, grounds and park, is situated a mile and a half south-east of the court-house in Lexington, on the south-west side of the turnpike road leading to Richmond. The whole estate of Ashland consists of five or six hundred acres of the best land in Kentucky. Ashland proper was projected for an elegant country seat. The house is a spa- cious brick mansion, without much architectural pretensions, surrounded by lawns and pleasure grounds. The grounds are interspersed with walks and groves, and planted with almost every variety of American shrubbery and for st trees. As the domicil of the great American statesman, Ashland is one of the household words of the American people.
Mr. Clay is one of the most enterprising and successful farmers in Kentucky, and has contributed much to improve the quality of the stock of the country. Mrs. Clay, we understand, derives from the produce of her dairy alone a very considerable revenue.
Colonel WILLIAM DUDLEY, well known in American history from the bloody
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ASHLAND, RESIDENCE OF HENRY CLAY, KY.
ANCIENT FORT, FAYETTE CO., KY.
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and disastrous defeat sustained by the Kentuckians under his command, at fort Meigs during the late war. was a citizen of Fayette county. He was a native of Spottsylvania county, Virginia, and emigrated to Kentucky at an carly age. He was for many years a leading magistrate of Fayette county, and was much respected by all who knew him. In the north-western campaign of 1813, under General Harrison, he held the command of a colonel in the Kentucky troops, and on the 5th of May was sent, at the head of a detachment, to spike a battery of cannon which had been erected by the British army, at that time besieging fort Meigs. He succeeded in spiking the guns, but attempting to follow up his ad- vantage. by attacking some troops in the vicinity, was surrounded by the Indians and defeated with terrible slaughter. - Colonel Dudley was shot in the body and thigh, and thus disabled. When last seen, he was sitting in the swamp, defend- ing himst If against the Indians, who swarmed around him in great numbers. He was finally killed. and his corpse mutilated in a most shocking manner. He was a brave and accomplished officer, and but for his rashness. a fault too common at that day among Kentuckians, his military character would have stood high.
Among the distinguished men who have inade Fayette county their residence, was the late RICHARD HI. MENIFRE, whose premature death cast a gloom over the whole State. It has been the fortune of but few men. of the same age, to leave behind them a reputation so brilliant. Born in obscurity, and forced to struggle in early life against an array of hostile influences sufficient to have crushed any common spirit, he had. at the period of his early death, attained an eminence which fixed upon him the eyes of all America. as one of our most promising statesmen. He was a native of Bath county, and in early life taught a school to supply himself with the means of obtaining a profession. His success at the bar was rapid and brilliant. He was barely eligible, when he was elected to rep- resent the county of Montgomery in the Kentucky legislature. In this body he established a character for ability which spread his name through the State. At twenty-seven years of age. he was elected to Congress. His efforts on the floor of the house, bearing the impress of high genius and commanding talent, soon placed him in the front rank of debaters, at a time when Congress was remarka- ble for the number of its able men. At the close of his term of service, he re- moved to Lexington, and devoted himself to the practice of his profession. Busi- ness flowed in upon him, and he was rapidly amassing a fortune, which would have enabled him to re-enter public life. and accomplish those ardent desires cherished from his early boyhood, when his career was prematurely checked by death. He died at his residence in Lexington, in 1840, in the thirty-first year of his age.
COL. WILLIAM R. M'KEE was a resident, and Lieutenant Colonel HENRY CLAY, Jun., a native, of Fayette. These officers fell while bravely fighting at the head of the second Kentucky regiment, at Buena Vista, in Mexico.
There are several remains in the northern part of Fayette county, which appear to be vestiges of ancient Indian fortifications. Thirty years ago, there was a small and very intricate one on the plantation of the late Col. William Russell ; but it was examined in the summer of 1816. and found to be nearly obliterated. There are three, two of them still very distinct, near the dividing line between the old military surveys of Dandridge and Meredith, of which a brief descrip- tion may be interesting. The most easterly of those is on the estate of C. C. Moore, Esq. It ison the top of a high bluff. on the west side of North Elkhorn, in the midst of a very thick growth, mostly of sugar trees. The area within a deep and broad circuler ditch, is about a quarter of an acre of ground. The ditch is still deep enough. in some places. to hide a man on horseback. The dirt taken from the ditch, is thrown outward ; and there is a gateway where the ditch was never dng. some ten feet wide, on the north side of the circle. Trees, several hundred years old, are growing on the bank and in the bottom of the ditch, and over the area which it encloses, and the whole region about it. A hundred yards, or there about. from this work. down a gentle slope, and near a large spring branch, there was, about the commencement of this century, a circular ditch enclosing a very small area, probably not above ten feet wide, within the inner margin of the
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CONTEST WITH A WILD CAT.
ditch, which was broad. flat, and obscure at that time; at present it is hardly vis- ible. This is also on Mr. Moore's estate. Going still westward from this spot, you cross a branch, ascend a sharp slope, and come upon an elevated and beanil- ful forest along the old military line spoken of above; and at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the work first described. is a work of considerable extent. It commences on the Meredith estate, and runs over on the Cabell's Dale estate (the Breckinridge property ). and contains perhaps ten acres of land. The shape of the area is not unlike that of the moon, when about two-thirds full. The dirt from the ditch enclosing this area, is thrown sometimes out, sometimes in, and sometimes both ways. There is no water within a hundred yards of this work ; but there are several very fine springs a few hundred yards off; and North Elk- horn is within that distance in a north-eastern direction. An ash tree was cut down in the summer of 1$15, which stood on the bank of this ditch, which, upon being examined, proved to be four hundred years old. The ditch is still perfectly distinct throughout its whole extent, and in some places is so deep and steep as to be dangerous to pass with a carriage. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to as- certain when, by whom, or for what purpose, these works were made. Many of them seem wholly incapable of military use of any kind ; and it is probable they may have been connected with the national religion, or possibly the national shows and sports of the original makers of them. In one of the fields of the Cabell Dale estate, an immense mass, perhaps several bushels, of flint arrow heads, have been picked up within the last half century, over an area of an acre or two of ground ; and on the same estate, in a southerly direction from the work first described, are several ancient tumuli of considerable extent.
SINGULAR INCIDENT .- Mr. McClung, in his " Sketches of Western Adventure," relates the following incident, which, from its singularity, will doubtless be read with interest :
" In 1781, Lexington was only a cluster of cabins, one of which, near the spot where the court house now stands, was used as a school house. One morning in Mav. McKinlev. the teacher, was sitting alone at his desk, busily engaged in writing, when hearing a slight noise at the door, he turned his head, and beheld, what do you suppose, reader ? A tall Indian in his war paint, brandishing his tomahawk or handling his knife ? No! an enormous cat. with her fore-fert upon the step of the door, her tail curled over her back. her bristles erect, and her eyes glancing rapidly through the room, as if in search of a mouse.
MeKinley's position at first completely concealed him, but a slight and involuntary mo- tion of his chair, at sight of this shaggy iuhabitant of the forest, attracted puss's attentem, and their eyes met. MeKinley having heard much of the powers of " the human faire di- vine," in quelling the audacity of will animals, attempted to disconcert the intruder by a frown. But puss was not to be bullied. Her eyes flashed fire, her tail waved angrily, and she began to gnash her teeth, evidently bent upon serious hostility. Seeing his danger, Me- Kinley hastily arose and attempted to snatch a cylindrical rule from a table which stood within reach, but the cat was too quick for him. .
" Darting upon him with the proverbial activity of her tribe, she fastened upon his side with her teeth, and begin to rend and tear with her claws like a fury. Mckinley's clothes were in an instant torn from his side, and his flesh dreadfuliv mangled by the enrazed am mal. whose strength and ferocity filled him with astonishment. He in vain attempted to cista se her from hus side. Her long sharp teeth were fastened between his ribs, and his efforts sensed but to enrage her the more. Seeing his blood flow very copiously from the numerous wound. in his side, he became seriously alarmed, and not knowing what rise to do, he threw len .. upon the edge of the table, and pressed her against the sharp corner with the whole weight of his body.
" The cat now began to utter the most wild and discordant cries, and MeKinley, at thee w. time, fitting up his voice in concert, the two together sent forth notes so doleful as to imun the whole town. Women who are always the first in hearing or spreading news, were i. W the first to come to Mekinley's assistance. But so strange and unearthly was the loomony within the school house, that they hesitated long before they ventured to enter. At ichth the bobest of them rushed in, and seeing Mckinley bending over the corner of the tide, and writhing his body as if in great pain, she at first supposed that he was laboring kinder a severe fit of the color: Fut quickly perceiving the cat, which was now in the agols of death, she screamed out. " why good heaven! Mr. Mckinley, what is the matter !
" I have caught a cat, madam !" replied he, gravely turning round, while the sweat stressed from his face under the mingled operation of fright, and fatigue, and agony. Most of the neighbors had now arrived, and attempted to disengage the dead cat from her antagonist ;
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but, so firmly were her tusks locked between his ribs, that this was a work of no small diffi- culty. Scarcely had it been effected, when Mckinley became very sick, and was compelled to go to bed. In a few days, however, he had entirely recovered, and so late as 1890, was alive, and a resident of Bourbon county, Kentucky, where he has often been heard to affirm, that he, at any time, had rather fight two Indians than one wild cat."
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