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David R. Atchison, of. Missouri, president pro tem of the United States Senate and President of the United States for one day, March 4. 1849; Benjamin Gratz Brown, United States senator from Missouri and governor ; George W. Jones, United States senator from Iowa; Josiah S. Johnston, United States senator from Louisiana; Benton McMillin, governor of Tennessee; Samuel McRoberts, United States senator from Illinois; M. A. Smith, United States senator from Arizona; Wm. Allen Trimble, United States senator from Ohio; Wmn. A. Rich- ardson, United States senator from Illinois; George G. Vest, United States senator from Missouri; Lewis V. Bagby, United States senator from Missouri; Champ Clark, representative in Congress from Missouri, Speaker National House of Representatives and candidate for President ; James Brown, United States senator from Louisiana and minister to France; Jefferson Davis, United States senator from Mississippi, Secre- tary of War and President Confederate States of America ; Albert Sidney Johnston, major General Confederate Army ; Benjamin W. Dudley, noted surgeon ; Edward A. Hannegan, United States senator from Indiana, minister to Prussia; John Marshall Harlan, justice Supreme Court of the United States; Richard M. Johnson, hero of battle of the Thames. United States senator from Kentucky and Vice President; Dr. Joseph Singer Halstead, Henry Clay's physician; Cassius M. Clay, major-gen- eral, United States Army, minister to Russia; James Lane Allen, nov- elist : James B. Beck, United States senator from Kentucky; George M. Bibb, Chief Justice Kentucky Court of Appeals, United States senator, Secretary of Treasury; William T. Barry, United States senator from Kentucky, Postmaster General, minister to Spain; John Fox, Jr., novel- ist ; John Rowan, United States senator from Kentucky; James Speed. attorney-general in Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet; Joseph R. Anderson. United States senator from Kentucky; Dr. Virgil P. Gibney, eminent surgeon, first president New York Academy of Medicine; Gen. Robert
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B. McAfee, famous soldier; Thomas Metcalfe, United States senator from Kentucky; Richard H. Menifee and W. C. P. Breckinridge, Ken- tucky orators and statesmen; John Cabell Breckinridge, Vice President United States, candidate for President against Abraham Lincoln, United States senator from Kentucky, major-general Confederate Army, and Secretary of War in Cabinet of Jefferson Davis.
Indeed, in the words of Governor Charles S. Morehead, himself a distinguished son of Transylvania, it has been "An institution which has nursed to maturity the intellect of the Commonwealth, having filled her Assemblies with law givers. her Cabinets with statesmen, her Judicial Tribunals with ministers of justice, her pulpits with divines, and crowded the professional ranks at home and abroad with ornaments and benefac- tors to their country."
W. H. TOWNSEND.
CHAPTER LXXI
THE INFLUENCE OF HENRY CLAY ON POLITICAL OPINION IN KENTUCKY
Henry Clay has been dead three score and ten years. For fifty-five years he was a citizen of the state. He settled at Lexington in 1797. Political conditions in Kentucky at the time of his arrival were critical. Much ill feeling had been caused by the Spanish Conspiracy. Its sores were long in healing. The first constitution was in disfavor, and there existed a general clamor in favor of calling a new convention. The environment into which young Clay transferred himself from Virginia was entirely different from that in which he had been reared. The rela- tion which Kentucky bore to the Union was different from that of the colonies that had formed the new Government. It was the first of the transmontane states. Cut off from Virginia though it was, it was yet not Virginia. A new order of society had grown into being as the result of a long and arduous struggle to subdue the country and make it habit- able and safe. While the Federalist and Anti-Federalist controversies had crossed the mountains, and taken possession of their respective ad- herents, there was yet a local condition that was just as important to the Kentuckians as any issues that existed in the conduct of the National Government.
Toryism never crossed the mountains. Kentucky was peopled by a class of citizens that was decidedly anti-British. Nor was there any strong leaning towards Federalism, and such as there was gradually abated. Notwithstanding the fact that a Federal administration was in power at Washington, the trend of opinion in Kentucky was decidedly towards the Jeffersonian school of thought. A few prominent Feder- alists, such as Humphrey Marshall, John Pope and Joseph Hamilton Daviess, had, through a feeling of admiration which all felt for Wash- ington, organized a pretty formidable following, but the events of the Adams administration soon dissipated any strength which it might other- wise have attained. Unified government, as taught by Hamilton, did not harmonize with the Kentucky spirit of that time.
The Kentuckian that greeted Clay was essentially an individualist. He hated restraint. Out of pioneer life had grown into being a race of people that was strongly self-reliant. Federalism, therefore, was not popular with the masses because it looked towards centralization of power and minimized popular responsibility. Social order meant more to the Kentuckian than political order. They had learned the strength of individualism in the blockhouse. They had been schooled in the democracy of the fort where they met as equals. The common enemy had been expelled and the country settled without aid from the Govern- ment. The people that had borne the burden of pioneer hardships felt the Government needed Kentucky as much as Kentucky needed the Gov- ernment. Her attitude towards the National Government from the out- set was one of independence. It had not joined the Union for individual protection and it wanted the Union to know that fact. Having erected an independent sovereignty through their own self-sacrificing efforts they felt abundantly able to defend the work of their own hands.
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HENRY CLAY
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Into this environment Henry Clay came at the age of twenty. The whole country had grown restive under the administration of affairs at Washington. In the struggle between Jefferson and Hamilton the former was easily the favorite. John Breckinridge, the personal representative of Jefferson in Kentucky, was extremely popular. George Nicholas, who had been her constitutional mentor, threw all the weight of his strong personality in favor of popular government. The right of a state to determine for itself the validity of an act of Congress, and to accept or reject it as it chose, particularly if it invaded those rights which were expressly reserved to the states, and of that the states were to be the judge, took stronger hold in Kentucky than in other state, Virginia and South Carolina not excepted. The Kentucky Resolutions, submitted to the Legislature by John Breckinridge, and adopted by an overwhelming vote, presented fairly Kentucky's interpretation of the Constitution with reference to the relation of the State and National Governments, and in the spirit of this interpretation Kentucky entered the Union. The aver- age Kentuckian of that period put Civil Liberty, Political Liberty and Religious Liberty in the scale against Individual Liberty. He never permitted the one class to absorb the other. The Age of Reason and the Rights of Man had left their imprint. Democracy and the Natural Rights of man were one and the same. It was an era of enthusiasm. To use the thought of Wordsworth, the poet,
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven."
Henry Clay entered public life a pronounced Anti-Federalist, or republican. There has come down to us no reliable data with reference to his attitude towards the Breckinridge Resolutions, though his attitude of mind in later years is well known. There are, however, certain cir- cumstances and outcroppings of events that warrant the conclusion that he entirely concurred in the sentiments of those resolves. Returning to Lexington in 1851, broken in health and weighted with care, his fellow citizens and neighbors, irrespective of party ties, gave him a public reception in appreciation of the great work he had accomplished in the struggle growing out of the Omnibus Bill, his last contribution to his country. The meeting was presided over by John C. Breckinridge, "the young lion of Democracy," and in response to the very cordial intro- duction which he gave Mr. Clay, the latter responded, with great feeling that he had known the father of the young man as neighbor and friend, and his grandfather and himself had fought together in the early days of the Commonwealth. From this it may be inferred that they did not then hold inimical convictions. He was at one with Breckinridge and Nicholas in their denunciation of the Alien and Sedition laws. He gained his first substantial reputation as an orator in speaking from the same platform with Nicholas in opposition to these laws. As parties divided at the time of Clay's introduction to political life in Kentucky, he may readily be assigned a place with the followers of Jefferson. Some differ- ence in opinion may have existed between him and some of the members of his party on the subject of slavery. Nor was he alone in his views on this subject ; nor were his views wrong, as subsequent events proved. With the old Greek orator. Alcidamas, he did not believe that God ever made any one a slave, and that when the Declaration of Independence said that "All men are born free and equal," it was equivalent to saying involuntary servitude had no place in a nation of freemen. He believed that liberty was a primordial right, without regard to station, and that one man had no right to enslave another. On one occasion, when acting as prosecuting attorney under a temporary assignment, he was placed in a position where he was compelled to tell the jury in a case where a
Vol. 11-32
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negro man had killed a white man in self-defense, that a slave could not defend himself against his taskmaster, and that while it would have been justifiable homicide if the case had been reversed, it was murder as against the slave. When the negro was convicted and hanged it made such an impression on Clay he never again engaged in a similar prosecu- tion. More than three score years thereafter the late Colonel Breckin- ridge was defeated for the office of Commonwealth's attorney because he advocated the granting to the freed-men under the Emancipation Proclamation the right to testify in the courts. In the end the views of each prevailed.
So much of the Federalist party in Kentucky as survived the Adams Administration existed only in a fragmentary way. Although Pope became a Federalist senator, and colleague of Clay, it is noteworthy that in later years Pope became a democrat and Clay a whig. In Kentucky, more than in the Atlantic States, party differences, to a great extent, grew up around the likes and dislikes which the people entertained for France and England. In most quarters a Jacobin would have received
HOME OF HENRY CLAY, NEAR LEXINGTON
a warm welcome, but a Tory would have stood no more chance in Ken- tucky than a witchi in Salem. Clay, in his early life, bore an inveterate hatred towards England. The impressions of early childhood could not be effaced. The love of Jefferson for France dominated Kentucky sen- timent. Opposition to the Jay treaty only served to make more enthu- siastic that sentiment. Clay unhesitatingly placed himself in the fore-front of his admirers. Feeling against the Adams administration of both foreign and domestic affairs became a consuming flame. "The Whiskey Rebellion" in Pennsylvania was fanned into a rumor that troops would be sent to Kentucky. Men of such prominence as Harry Innes, Caleb Wallace, Isaac Shelby and George Nicholas held to this view. James Morrison, the attached friend of Clay, made affidavit that the reason the Federal Government was not notified of the Spanish Conspiracy was through no sense of guilt but for fear that the Government would send troops into the state. The local sentiment is somewhat glimpsed by the action of a mob which assembled on the public square, and put into circulation ten flaming resolves, one of which read as follows :
"Resolved, that thar es sufishment resen to beleev, and we doe beleev, that our leeberte es in daingur, and we plege owrselves too eche othur,
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and too ower country, that wee wiel defende um aginst ene unconsta- tushonal ataks that ma bee made upon umn."
These were times when public opinion in Kentucky was in a state of transition. The election of Jefferson, however, had a tendency to pro- duce a more substantial state of quietude. James Morrison wrote to John Breckinridge, then a senator in Congress: "Times are greatly changed and I am glad of it." For eight years the rule of Jefferson in Kentucky was supreme. Clay was outspoken in his praise of Jefferson for having secured the Louisiana territory, and could see no violation of the Constitution in that transaction. Writing to Breckinridge he said he thought the support which Kentucky had given to that act would raise the state in the estimation of the East, where Kentucky loyalty had been seriously questioned. In 1808 Clay introduced into the Kentucky Legis- lature a series of resolutions to the effect that the administration of Jef- ferson "Had been wise, dignified, and patriotic, and merits the approba- tion of the country." A contrary resolution introduced by Humphrey Marshall received only one vote. Another resolution was also intro- duced by Clay, and carried by an almost unanimous vote, thanking Jef- ferson for his wise administration of foreign affairs, and the passage of the "Embargo Act." It would scarcely be termed a violent presump- tion if it be presumed that Clay in after life regretted this act of blind fealty.
The political situation in Kentucky at time of the arrival of Clay, and for several years thereafter has been thus sketched for the purpose of showing the early political convictions of the man that in after years was to change practically every conviction he announced in early life, and whose influence was so great he was able to carry with him, even though at times reluctantly, a majority of the voters of the state. No Kentuckian ever got closer to the people than Clay. It has often been remarked that John C. Breckinridge was his rival in this regard, but it must be remembered that Breckinridge rode on the crest of popular opinion while Clay had to stem the tide.
The close of the Jefferson administration found Clay the leader of democracy in the West. In 1810 he resigned from the Senate, and an- nounced himself a candidate for the House of Representatives, his announcement containing this popular appeal :
"In presenting myself to your notice, I conform to sentiments I have invariably felt, in favor of the station of an immediate representative of the people."
With Jefferson in retirement, as Speaker of the House, Clay stepped at once from state to a national leader. Firm in his early convictions he carried the Madison administration into a second war with England. In that humiliating struggle Kentucky was the first to respond to the call for volunteers. However unpopular was this war with New Eng- land, Kentucky never wavered. Although the flower of her young man- hood had fallen in many of the ill-timed combats into which they were led, Clay remained the popular idol. At no time in his life, perhaps, did his transcendental influence over men show a greater advantage than it did in the long struggle that ensued in Congress during this war. But for Clay it must have been lost at the outset, and but for his continued support it must have been lost in the end.
The close of the war with England found Clay as staunch a demo- crat as he had been before. For Jefferson he held that same worshipful esteem that he had held from boyhood. One of the most eloquent pas- sages that has come down to us from the Clay of this period, was made in defense of Jefferson against the aspersions cast upon him by the Fed- eralists, particularly the attack of Josiah Quincy. For many years it was a favorite piece of declamation in the schools of Kentucky. Turn-
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ing from a vehement attack on Napoleon he addressed his remarks to Quincy with equal fervor, as he recounted the services of Jefferson to his country :
"Neither his retirement from public office, nor his eminent services, nor his advanced age, can exempt this patriot from the coarse assaults of party malevolence. Sir, in 1801 he snatched from the rude hand of usurpation the violated Constitution of his country, and that is his crime. He preserved that instrument in form, and substance, and spirit, a precious inheritance for generations to come ; and for this he can never be forgiven. How vain and impotent is party rage directed against such a man. He is not more elevated by his lofty residence upon the summit of his favorite mountain than he is lifted, by the serenity of his mind, and the consciousness of a well-spent life, above the malignant passions and bitter feelings of the day."
Now the undisputed leader in Kentucky, the intimate associate and friend of John C. Calhoun, and, so far as we may judge, holding no animosity against Jackson, there was found necessary but little effort on his part to hold Kentucky in the hollow of his hand. Although the era of good feeling was everywhere recognized, it is none the less true that beneath the surface there were currents and cross currents being formed that must ultimately reverse the whole course of Clay's life. There were not wanting straws that indicated the wind was shifting from the South to the North so far as he was concerned. There were signs which indicated that his early conceptions and convictions con- cerning decentralization were gradually undergoing a change. An inti- mate association with national affairs, coupled with the more assertive attitude of the South, were gradually, perhaps unconsciously, leading him towards the Hamiltonian theory of government. Whether because Monroe had rejected him for Secretary of State, and substituted Adams instead may not be pinioned as a point where the Monroe-Clay-Adams break began, but it is certain it was the attitude of Monroe towards Internal Improvements that brought into being the militant Clay of the next thirty years. The Monroe administration brought to the surface three subjects that were dear to Clay, and for those three subjects he was ready to wage battle to the end-Internal Improvements, Protection of American Industries and the Preservation of the Union. Jefferson favored protection to American industries; Isaac Shelby had put him- self on record in favor of protection. In some respects it was a demo- cratic conception. Internal Improvements was regarded as unconsti- tutional, and, therefore, smacked more of Federalism than Democracy. In his great speech in Congress in opposition to the Monroe position on Internal Improvements, a new Clay was transfigured before the Amer- ican people, a Clay whose whole life was to be spent in compromise, if needs be, if he might preserve the Union. He had reached the cross- roads of public life, and the road he chose is thus indicated :
"No man deprecates more than I do the idea of consolidation, yet between separation and consolidation, painful as would be the alterna- tive. I should greatly prefer the latter.
With the delivery of this speech the Clay of decentralization died. Having put his hand to the plow he never looked backward. For twenty years he had encountered no lines of resistance in Kentucky. Would Kentucky follow the new Clay; or would she remain bound to the democ- racy of Jefferson? Although yet a democrat in name, it was evident a new leaven was at work. For one man to reverse the convictions of a lifetime was not impossible, but for him to carry with him a whole commonwealth seemed improbable. To follow blindly is one thing, to require a torch to light the way is quite another. The national road was vital to Kentucky. Protection was no less vital to the hemp and flax
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producers. The attitude of Monroe threatened both of these. Ere dis- covered Kentucky was in a state of political transition. Self-interest may have wrought an unconscious influence, but none the less Clay was their champion. Without markets and the facilities for transportation financial disaster seemed certain. In the public mind there was a gen- eral shifting of positions. Webster had turned from free trade to pro- tection, and Calhoun must needs in the exigencies of the times turn from Internal Improvements, and repudiate a tariff measure as unconstitu- tional and worthy of nullification. New alignments were being made everywhere, and new parties must soon result. From the outset it was apparent that Clay would carry the state with him, not without oppo- sition, as in the old days, but as a militant leader. With the new Clay was born the Clay of history.
Pascal said "to foresee is to rule." Reviewing the lives of Clay's contemporaries, after the lapse of nearly a century, the impartial critic finds much to support the conclusion that he was endowed with a greater vision than any of those who fought with or fought against him. He will never be numbered among the great constructive statesmen, letting judgment be confined to the times in which he lived, but viewed in the light of development no public man of the ante-bellum period favored more measures that have been incorporated into the permanent policies of the nation than did he. The period of the Missouri Compromise found the life-long friends of Clay, gradually leaning toward the per- petuation of slavery in the state. For Clay to combat opposition from his old friends, and institute an entirely new national policy at the same time, was an undertaking of no mean proportions. If he could not main- tain the loyal support of his own state, surely he must disappear as a national figure. The future course of the idol of Kentucky was one of the most daring in the history of American politics. That he had been discredited by the Adams alliance none knew better than Clay. Although Jackson had lost many friends in Kentucky on account of the charges he had laid against the Kentucky soldiers at New Orleans, he had, as all recognized, a large and enthusiastic following in the state. The Jack- son adherents were early in the field for his nomination in 1828. Ken- tucky was among the first to join in the movement. A convention of Jackson followers, presided over by Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, in a state convention assembled to nominate William T. Barry for governor, succeeded in passing a resolution directing the Kentucky delegates at the forthcoming national convention to vote for Jackson as the demo- cratic nominee. In this action, many of the leaders in which had been his personal friends, Clay recognized a direct challenge for supremacy in the state. Barry had been his personal friend, and had been turned against him by the "bargain and corruption" propaganda. The attitude of Breckinridge gave him no little concern. The campaign that followed was one of hard-hitting on both sides. Barry was defeated by a small vote, but the fact that a whig candidate had been successful in a state where there had been practically no opposition before gave to Clay a new place in the affection of his followers. The congressional elections of the next year, however, were disappointing. Out of a total of twelve, ten were for Jackson and two for Clay. In the election of 1831, how- ever, there were eight Jackson adherents and four Clay, with a majority of twelve in favor of Clay in the General Assembly of the state. Thus it will be seen the disasters of the Adams administration, and Clay's connection therewith, his general change of policy, while it had placed him in a position of embarrassment, only served to demonstrate the great hold he had on Kentucky opinion, and when, in 1832, he carried the state by 7,000 over Jackson, he resumed his old position of leader.
Out of the Jackson administration a new issue engaged the support
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of Clay. Jackson was an inveterate foe of the Bank of the United States. As Jackson was absolutely devoid of economic sagacity, it may be inferred that his opposition was founded more in prejudice than rea- son. Clay's position in Kentucky, however, had become supreme, and was never to be again shaken during his public career. Notwithstanding the fact that Barry was appointed postmaster general by Jackson because he opposed Clay, and Richard M. Johnson, the hero of the Tecumseh myth, was nominated for Vice President with Van Buren, at the instance of Jackson, Kentucky could not be drawn away from Clay. The attitude of Crittenden in 1848, poignant as was the resentment which it occa- sioned the enfeebled old man, was the result of expediency rather than a decline in affection on the part of Crittenden. And as if in resentment of what seemed to be a betrayal in the convention which nominated Tay- lor, Kentucky returned Clay to the Senate as the last hope of a despair- ing nation, bent on self-destruction.
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