States
was strong enough to subdue it.

Posterity, however, will read the speeches of Mr. Clay upon the
various slavery questions agitated from 1835 to 1850 with mingled
feelings of admiration and regret. A man compelled to live in the
midst of slavery must hate it and actively oppose it, or else be, in
some degree, corrupted by it. As Thomas Jefferson came at length to
acquiesce in slavery, and live contentedly with it, so did Henry Clay
lose some of his early horror of the system, and accept it as a
necessity. True, he never lapsed into the imbecility of pretending to
think slavery right or best, but he saw no way of escaping from it;
and when asked his opinion as to the final solution of the problem, he
could only throw it upon Providence. Providence, he said, would remove
the evil in its own good time, and nothing remained for men but to
cease the agitation of the subject. His first efforts, as his last,
were directed to the silencing of both parties, but most especially
the Abolitionists, whose character and aims he misconceived. With John
C. Calhoun sitting near him in the Senate-chamber, and with
fire-eaters swarming at the other end of the Capitol, he could, as
late as 1843, cast the whole blame of the slavery excitement upon the
few individuals at the North who were beginning to discern the
ulterior designs of the Nullifiers. Among his letters of 1843 there is
one addressed to a friend who was about to write a pamphlet against
the Abolitionists. Mr. Clay gave him an outline of what he thought the
pamphlet ought to be.

"The great aim and object of your tract should be to arouse
the laboring classes in the Free States against abolition.
Depict the consequences to them of immediate abolition. The
slaves, being free, would be dispersed throughout the Union;
they would enter into competition with the free laborer,
with the American, the Irish, the German; reduce his wages;
be confounded with him, and affect his moral and social
standing. And as the ultras go for both abolition and
amalgamation, show that their object is to unite in marriage
the laboring white man and the laboring black man, and to
reduce the white laboring man to the despised and degraded
condition of the black man.

"I would show their opposition to colonization. Show its
humane, religious, and patriotic aims; that they are to
separate those whom God has separated. Wh