Henry Clay (1777-1852). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05

Henry Clay (1777-1852). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05 Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record Charles Wells Moulton, ed.  Library of Literary Criticism.  1901–05. Henry Clay (1777–1852) Born in Hanover County, near Richmond, Va., April 12, 1777: died at Washington, D.C., June 29, 1852. A celebrated American statesman and orator. He was United States senator from Kentucky 1806–07 and 1810–11; was member of Congress from Kentucky 1811–21 and 1823–25 (serving as speaker 1811–14, 1815–20, and 1823–25); was peace commissioner at Ghent in 1814; was candidate for the Presidency in 1824; was secretary of state 1825–29; was United States senator 1831–42 and 1849–52; was Whig candidate for the Presidency in 1832 and 1844; was the chief designer of the “Missouri Compromise” of 1820, and of the compromise of 1850; and was the author of the compromise tariff of 1833. Complete works, with biography, edited by Colton (1857).—Smith, Benjamin E., 1894–97, ed., The Century Cyclopedia of Names, p. 257.    

1 Personal

  The object of his exertions was, at once, worthy of his power, and adapted to their noblest manifestations. He has been deservedly called “The great commoner.” It is in the defence of popular rights, and the indignant denunciation of aristocratical tyranny, that his eloquence has been most frequently exerted.—Prentice, George Denison, 1831, Life of Henry Clay, p. 23.    

2   Mr. Clay is particularly remarkable, as a politician, for a large and comprehensive scope of mind. He looks at his subject from an elevated point,—takes in at one view all the various considerations that bear upon it, and is thus enabled to give to each its proper relative importance. This faculty is in him the more commendable, inasmuch as it is not the natural result of the professional pursuits to which a large part of his life has been devoted.—Everett, Alexander Hill, 1831, Life of Henry Clay, North American Review, vol. 33, p. 395.    

3   Whatever may be Mr. Clay’s defects, we are happy to be able to state, that they do not grow out of principle, but they are referable to the sanguineous nature of his constitution, rendering him easily excitable and irritable; in other words, his errors are those of feeling, and venial ones, if any are. Our surprise is, not that he occasionally suffered its impetuous tide to control his judgment, momentarily, but our astonishment, on the other hand, is, that this was not borne entirely away by it, and stranded among the quicksands of folly and violence, set upon, as he was, at every stage of his career, by political harpies and vampyres, and bayed by the furious mastiffs of unprincipled and licentious faction, as if he had been a beast of prey, prowling through the land to devour its substance. Fatigued, exhausted, and lacerated, with such a temperament as he possessed, it must have required, if possible, more than the “patience of Job,” to bear in silence the most painful inflictions which the ingenuity of his legion of tormentors could devise.—Mallory, Daniel, 1844, Life of Henry Clay, vol. I, p. 193.    

4   Mr. Clay is now (1848) in his seventy-first year, and, notwithstanding his varied and arduous labors, tasking his mental and physical powers to an extraordinary degree, and the several periods of dangerous illness to which he has been subject, he bears in his personal appearance the promise of a vigorous, healthful, and protracted old age. In stature, he is tall, sinewy, erect, and commanding, with finely-formed limbs, and a frame capable of much endurance. From his features, you might at first infer that he was a hardy backwoodsman, who had been accustomed rather to the privations and trials of a frontier life, than to the arena of debate and the diplomatic table. But when you meet his full, clear gray eye, you see in its flashes the conscious power of a well-trained and panoplied intellect, as well as the glance of an intrepid soul. Its lustre gives animation to the whole countenance, and its varying expression faithfully interprets the emotions and sentiments of the orator. Much of the charm in his speaking lies in his clear, rotund, and indescribably melodious voice, which is of wide compass, and as distinct in its low as in its high tones.—Sargent, Epes, 1848–52, Life of Henry Clay, ed. Greeley, p. 315.    

5   He was indeed eloquent—all the world knows that. He held the keys 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, was 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 his 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.—Seward, William H., 1852, Remarks on the Death of Mr. Clay, United States Senate.    

6   Mr. Clay, born in poverty and obscurity, had not even a common-school education, and had only a few months’ clerkship in a store, with a somewhat longer training in a lawyer’s office, as preparation for his great career. Tall in person, though plain in features, graceful in manner, and at once dignified and affable in bearing, I think his fervid patriotism and thrilling eloquence combined with decided natural abilities and a wide and varied experience to render him the American more fitted to win and enjoy popularity than any other who has lived…. The careless reader of our history in future centuries will scarcely realize the force of his personal magnetism, nor conceive how millions of hearts glowed with sanguine hopes of his election to the Presidency, and bitterly lamented his and their discomfiture.—Greeley, Horace, 1868, Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 168.    

7   Mr. Clay’s complexion was very fair; so fair, indeed, that I had supposed that his hair, when a young man, must have been of a sandy or yellowish tint; and on expressing that opinion to Mrs. Clay several years after his death, I was greatly surprised by her prompt reply, “You were never more mistaken; he had when a young man the whitest head of hair I ever saw.” His eyes were gray, and when excited were full of fire; his forehead high and capacious, with a tendency to baldness; his nose prominent, very slightly arched, and finely formed. His mouth was unusually large without being disfiguring. It, however, was so large as to attract immediate notice; so large, indeed, that, as he said, “he never learned how to spit,” he had learned to snuff and smoke tobacco, and but for his unmanageable mouth he would have learned to chew also. His chief physical peculiarity, however, was in the structure of his nervous system; it was so delicately strung that a word, a touch, a memory would set it in motion. But though his nervous system was thus sensitive, yet his emotions, however greatly excited, were of themselves never strong enough to disturb the self-poise of his deliberate judgment.—Harrison, J. O., 1886, Henry Clay, Century Magazine, vol. 33, p. 179.    

8   “The Apostle of Liberty,” “The Gallant Harry of the West,” “The Great Commoner,” “The Great Pacificator,” “Harry of the West,” “The Judas of the West,” “The Mill-Boy of the Slashes,” “Old Chief,” “The Savior of His Country.”—Frey, Albert R., 1888, Sobriquets and Nicknames, p. 392.    

9   I am fully conscious that critical readers, who are familiar with our parliamentary literature but never heard Clay speak, are ready to ask: “If Henry Clay’s speeches were so very wonderful and captivating, why is it that nobody ever reads any of them now?” The answer to that question is that Henry Clay’s speeches derived their irresistible power from his irresistible personality. It was that—his personality which took people captive. He spoke to an audience very much as an ardent lover speaks to his sweetheart when pleading for her hand. Everybody knows that the more successful a lover’s speech is on such an occasion, the less readable it is when it gets into cold print. The lover speaks for the purpose of carrying his point and winning his cause just then and there, and is content with immediate success. It was the same with Henry Clay. He spoke to win his cause right there and then and gain a favorable verdict on the spot; and no lover was ever more ardent, more vehement, more impassioned, or more successful in his appeal than Clay; and he was content with his immediate success.—Dyer, Oliver, 1889, Great Senators of the United States Forty Years Ago, p. 230.    

10   About this time, Henry Clay, the great Kentucky orator, paid a visit to Rochester. I went to hear him speak at the Court House, the only place of public meeting, besides the church, Rochester could boast of in those days. Such oratory I had never heard before; nor have I met anything to equal it since. His voice had the peculiarly musical tone, at once sweet and sonorous, which proved so effective in the large assembly room in which we were gathered to hear him. That speech of Henry Clay affected me to a singular extent. It may sound a strange statement, but I don’t think I should be talking extravagantly, if I declare that the orator Clay was the direct cause of my taking to the composition of descriptive songs. Certainly, it was his speech … that first put the idea into my head. While reading in my room, at the “Eagle” Hotel that night, I asked myself: Why, if Henry Clay could create such an impression by his distinct enunciation of every word, should it not be possible for me to make music the vehicle of grand thoughts and noble sentiments, to speak to the world through the power of poetry and song! The idea gained upon me. I became more and more fascinated with the thought, not only of trying my fortune as a vocalist, but also of composing my own songs. With me at that time to devise was to act. I commenced there and then to set to music Mackay’s beautiful poem, “Wind of the Winter Night, Whence comest Thou?” All the night through I paced up and down my room arranging the music for the poem, and I remember that the notion uppermost in my mind was to infuse into my music, as it were, the subtle charm of the voice of Henry Clay. It was a quaint idea, but it took entire possession of my mind, and I hope my readers will not laugh at me for saying that I believe it inspired me. A few days later I had my musical rendering of Mackay’s fine verses all ready, and I took the first opportunity of playing it over to some friends. They applauded it, and their praise was emphatic enough to be sincere. This success decided me. From that day, song composing became the serious object of my life.—Russell, Henry, 1895, Cheer! Boys, Cheer! p. 60.    

11 Oratory

  In the entire roll of distinguished orators, British and American, there is hardly one whose printed speeches give so inadequate an idea of his powers as do those of Henry Clay. His eloquence was generally of a warm and popular rather than of a strictly argumentative cast, and abound in just those excellencies which lose their interest when divorced from the orator’s manner and from the occasion that produced them, and in those faults that escape censure, only when it can be pleaded for them that they are the inevitable overflow of a mind too vividly at work to restrain the abundance of its current…. Probably no orator ever lived who, when speaking on a great occasion, was more completely absorbed in his theme.—Mathews, William, 1878, Oratory and Orators, pp. 315, 319.    

12   Clay was perhaps the first consummate party leader of the Congressional and platform type, Jefferson having worked, not on the platform, but in the closet and through the press. He was a paragon of the personal fascination now styled magnetism. Magnetic, indeed, his manner and voice must have been if they could make the speeches that he has left us pass for the most cogent reasoning and the highest eloquence. Yet multitudes came from distances, in those days immense, to hear him. A cynical critic said that Clay could get more people to listen to him and fewer people to vote for him than any other man in the Union. He however did get many votes though never quite enough. His power of winning the hearts of men was unique. When at last he missed his prize by losing the election for the Presidency his partisans wept like children; one of them is said to have died of grief. He was as ardently patriotic, after the war-hawk fashion, but the Presidency was always in his thoughts and its attraction accounts for the perturbations of his political orbit. He said that he would rather be right than be President; but it has been too truly remarked that even at the moment of that memorable utterance he was thinking more of being President than of being right. His policy and sentiments were intensely American, and by the cosmopolitans would now be designated as jingo. He was a protectionist on what he deemed patriotic grounds, and the chief author of a system to which Hamilton had only moderately inclined.—Smith, Goldwin, 1893, The United States, an Outline of Political History, 1492–1871, p. 179.    

13   His honest convictions underlay his best eloquence. To express these was always the purpose of his speaking. Grand as was his utterance the thought behind it was broader and deeper than his expression of it, and his sincerity added weight to both. Bold and frank in his nature he had no inclination to palter in a double sense, and no wavering in his opinions and purposes. He could not be eloquent off the line of his strong convictions. On that line he was ardent, fearless and full of hope, with the rare power of inspiring others with his own sentiments and his own expectations. And those who could not be swayed from their personal beliefs and interests paid tribute to the honesty and sincerity of his straightforward words…. He was an eloquent man in an age of eloquence and a statesman in an age of statesmanship. If he had not been more than a mere orator he would not have been an eminent one in such an age. If he had not had êthos which the ancients counted so highly, a devotion to that which is right and honorable; in a word if he had not been a greater man he could not in the judgment of his own time have been so great an orator.—Sears, Lorenzo, 1896, The History of Oratory.    

14 General

  In the speeches of Henry Clay there is a chivalric freshness which readily explains his great popularity as a man; not so profound as Webster, he is far more rhetorical and equally patriotic.—Tuckerman, Henry Theodore, 1852, A Sketch of American Literature.    

15   His speeches are sincere and impassioned, qualities which distinguished the man, and which are among the chief causes of the great personal popularity which he enjoyed. Full, flowing, sensuous, his style of oratory was modulated by a voice of sustained power and sweetness, and a heart of chivalrous courtesy.—Duyckinck, Evert A. and George L., 1855–65–75, Cyclopædia of American Literature, ed. Simons, vol. I, p. 682.    

16   The rare brightness of his intellect and his fertile fancy served, indeed, to make himself and others forget his lack of accurate knowledge and studious thought; but these brilliant qualities could not compensate for his deficiency in that prudence and forecast which are required for the successful direction of political forces. His impulses were vehement and his mind not well fitted for the patient analysis of complicated problems and of difficult political situations. His imagination frequently ran away with his understanding. His statesmanship had occasionally something of the oratorical character. Now and then he appeared to consider it as important whether a conception or a measure would sound well, as whether, if put into practice, it would work well.—Schurz, Carl, 1887, Life of Henry Clay (American Statesmen), vol. II, p. 409.    

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