s ability as a
party leader, in which respect he has had few equals in American
history, and upon his success in proposing compromises. Born in
Virginia, and admitted to the bar in 1797, he moved the same year to
Lexington, Kentucky, where his practice brought him rapid and brilliant
success. His personality, too, won him many friends, and it was so all
his life. "To come within reach of the snare of his speech was to love
him," and even to this day Kentucky believes that no statesman ever
lived who equalled this adopted son of hers, nor doubts the entire
sincerity of his famous boast that he would rather be right than
President.

Of course he got into politics. That was his natural and inevitable
field. As early as 1806 he was sent to the Senate, and afterwards to the
House, of which he was speaker for thirteen years. Three times was he a
candidate for the presidency, defeated once by John Quincy Adams, once
by Andrew Jackson, and once, when victory seemed almost his, by William
Henry Harrison. That other great party leader, James G. Blaine, was to
meet a similar fate years later. Henry Clay lacked the deep foresight,
the prophetic intuition necessary to statesmanship of the first rank,
and some of the achievements which he considered the greatest of his
life were in reality blunders which had afterwards to be corrected. But
as a compromiser, as a rider of troubled waters, and a pilot at a time
when shipwreck seemed imminent and unavoidable, he proved his consummate
ability, and merits the gratitude of his country.

Henry Clay and Daniel Webster were leaders in the same great party, and
were, for the most part, personal friends as well as political allies.
But Webster overshadowed Clay in intellect, however he may have been
outdistanced by him in political astuteness. If Clay were the fox,
Webster was the lion. As a constitutional lawyer, he has never been
excelled; as an orator, no other American has ever equalled him. He had
in supreme degree the orator's equipment of a dominant and impressive
personality, a moving voice, an eloquent countenance, and a command of
words little less than inspired. The last sentences of his reply to
Hayne have come ringing down the years, and stand unequalled as sheer
eloquence:

"When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun
in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored
fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered,