ention, held in
December of that year, and nominated William Henry Harrison. The result
threw Clay into paroxysms of rage, and he violently complained that his
friends always used him as their candidate when he was sure to be
defeated, and betrayed him when he or any one could have been elected.
In 1844 he was nominated by the Whigs against James K. Polk, the
Democratic candidate. By an audacious fraud that represented him as an
enemy, and Polk as a friend of protection, Clay lost the vote of
Pennsylvania; and he lost the vote of New York by his own letter abating
the force of his previous opposition to the annexation of Texas. Even
his enemies felt that his defeat by Polk was almost a national calamity.
In 1848, Zachary Taylor, a Mexican War hero, and hardly even a convert
to the Whig party, defeated Clay for the nomination, Kentucky herself
deserting her "favourite son."

Clay's quick intelligence and sympathy, and his irreproachable conduct
in youth, explain his precocious prominence in public affairs. In his
persuasiveness as an orator and his charming personality lay the secret
of his power. He had early trained himself in the art of speech-making,
in the forest, the field and even the barn, with horse and ox for
audience. By contemporaries his voice was declared to be the finest
musical instrument that they ever heard. His eloquence was in turn
majestic, fierce, playful, insinuating; his gesticulation natural,
vivid, large, powerful. In public he was of magnificent bearing,
possessing the true oratorical temperament, the nervous exaltation that
makes the orator feel and appear a superior being, transfusing his
thought, passion and will into the mind and heart of the listener; but
his imagination frequently ran away with his understanding, while his
imperious temper and ardent combativeness hurried him and his party into
disadvantageous positions. The ease, too, with which he outshone men of
vastly greater learning lured him from the task of intense and arduous
study. His speeches were characterized by skill of statement, ingenious
grouping of facts, fervent diction, and ardent patriotism; sometimes by
biting sarcasm, but also by superficial research, half-knowledge and an
unwillingness to reason a proposition to its logical results. In
private, his never-failing courtesy, his agreeable manners and a noble
and generous heart for all who needed protection against the powerful or
the lawless, endeared him to hosts of