eally originated
and carried through Congress. The second compromise had passed
out of general recollection before Mr. Clay's death, though it had
made him a Presidential candidate at forty-three years of age.

The most remarkable fact connected with the excitement over the
Missouri question, which engrossed the country for more than two
years, was the absence of any premonition of its coming. There
had been no severe political struggle in the nation since the
contest between Madison and De Witt Clinton in 1812. Monroe had
been chosen almost without opposition in 1816, and, even while the
Missouri controversy was at its height, he was re-elected in 1820
by a practically unanimous vote, the North and the South being
equally cordial in supporting him. In the House of Representatives,
where the battle was so fierce, and the combatants were so evenly
divided, Mr. Clay had been chosen speaker with only eight adverse
votes, and these were given by men who acted from personal prejudice,
and not from political difference. But the outbreak indicated,
and indeed heralded, the re-forming of old party lines. The apparent
unanimity only concealed a division that was already fatally
developed. The party of Jefferson by its very success involved
itself in ruin. Its ancient foe, the eminent and honorable party
of Federalists, made but a feeble struggle in 1816, and completely
disappeared from the national political field four years later,
and even from State contests after the notable defeat of Harrison
Gray Otis by William Eustis for governor of Massachusetts in 1823.
But no political organization can live without opposition. The
disappearance of the Federalists was the signal for factional
divisions among their opponents; and the old Republican party,
which had overthrown the administration of John Adams in 1800,
which had laid the embargo, and forced a war with England, was now
nearing its end. It divided into four parts in the Presidential
election of 1824, and with its ancient creed and organization never
re-appeared in a national contest. Jefferson had combined and
indeed largely created its elements. He beheld it everywhere
victorious for a quarter of a century, and he lived to see it
shattered into fragments by the jealousy of its new leaders. The
Democratic and Whig parties were constructed upon the ruins of the
old organizations. In each were to be found representatives of
the Republicanism of Jefferson and th