ely "for what there is
in it"--was unknown. As stepping-stones to local offices and even
to Congress, the caucus and convention were yet to come. Aspirants
to public place presented their claims directly to the people, and
the personal popularity of the candidate was an important factor
in achieving success. Bribery at elections was rarely heard of.
The saying of the great bard,

"If money go before,
All ways do open lie,"

awaited its verification in a later and more civilized period. As
late even as 1858, when Lincoln and Douglas were rival aspirants
to the Senate, when every voter in the State was a partisan of one
or the other candidate, and the excitement was for many months
intense, there was never, from either side, an intimation of the
corrupt use of a farthing to influence the result.

No period of our history has witnessed more intense devotion to
great party leaders than that of which we write. Of eminent
statesmen, whose names were still invoked, none had filled larger space
than did Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson. The former was the
early political idol of Mr. Lincoln; the latter, of Mr. Douglas.
Possibly, since the foundation of the Government, no statesman has
been so completely idolized by his friends and party as was
Henry Clay. Words are meaningless when the attempt is made to
express the idolatry of the Whigs of his own State for their great
chieftain. For a lifetime he knew no rival. His wish was law
to his followers. In the realm of party leadership a greater than
he hath not appeared. At his last defeat for the Presidency strong
men wept bitter tears. When his star set, it was felt to be the
signal for the dissolution of the great party of which he was
the founder. In words worthy to be recalled, "when the tidings
came like wailing over the State that Harry Percy's spur was cold,
the chivalrous felt somehow the world had grown commonplace."

The following incident, along the line indicated, may be considered
characteristic. While Mr. Clay was a Senator, a resolution, in
accordance with a sometime custom, was introduced into the Kentucky
House of Representatives instructing the Senators from that State to
vote in favor of a certain bill then pending in Congress. The
resolution was in the act of passing without opposition, when a
hitherto silent member from one of the mountain counties, springing
to his feet, exclaimed: "Mr. Speaker, am I to understand that this
Legislature