that ever sat in that body of legislators. All that could
then be said of him was that he made a good impression in the debates
and on the committees, and was a man of great promise, a favorite in
society, attending all parties of pleasure, and never at home in the
evening. On his return to Kentucky he was again elected as a member of
the lower House in the State legislature, and chosen Speaker,--an
excellent training for the larger place he was to fill. In the winter of
1809-10 he was a second time sent to the United States Senate, for two
years, to fill the unexpired term of Buckner Thurston, where he made
speeches in favor of encouraging American manufacturing industries, not
to the extent of exportation,--which he thought should be confined to
surplus farm-produce,--but enough to supply the people with clothing and
to make them independent of foreign countries for many things
unnecessarily imported. He also made himself felt on many other
important topics, and was recognized as a rising man.

When his term had expired in the Senate, he was chosen a member of the
House of Representatives at Washington,--a more agreeable field to him
than the Senate, as giving him greater scope for his peculiar eloquence.
He was promptly elected Speaker, which position, however, did not
interfere with his speech-making whenever the House went into Committee
of the Whole. It was as Speaker of the House of Representatives that
Clay drew upon himself the eyes of the nation; and his truly great
congressional career began in 1811, on the eve of the war with Great
Britain in Madison's administration.

Clay was now the most influential, and certainly the most popular man in
public life, in the whole country, which was very remarkable,
considering that he was only thirty-seven years of age. Daniel Webster
was then practising law in Portsmouth, N.H., two years before his
election to Congress, and John C. Calhoun had not yet entered the
Senate, but was chairman of the Committee of Foreign Relations in the
House of Representatives, and a warm friend of the Speaker.

The absorbing subject of national interest at that time was the
threatened war with England, which Clay did his best to bring about, and
Webster to prevent. It was Webster's Fourth-of-July Oration at
Portsmouth, in 1812, which led to his election to Congress as a
Federalist, in which oration he deprecated war. The West generally was
in favor of it, having not much to lose or to fea