put
off the dreadful issue for eleven years longer. It was the best thing
to do, for the South was in deadly earnest, exceedingly exasperated, and
blinded. A war in 1851 would have had uncertain issues, with such a man
as Fillmore in the presidential chair, to which he had succeeded on the
death of Taylor. He was a most respectable man and of fair abilities,
but not of sufficient force and character to guide the nation. It was
better to submit for a while to the Fugitive Slave Law than drive the
South out of the Union, with the logical consequences of the separation.
But the abolitionists had no idea of submitting to a law which was
inhuman, even to pacify the South, and the law was resisted in Boston,
which again kindled the smothered flames, to the great disappointment
and alarm of Clay, for he thought that his compromise bill had settled
the existing difficulties.

In the meantime the health of the great pacificator began to decline. He
was forced by a threatening and distressing cough to seek the air of
Cuba, which did him no good. He was obliged to decline an invitation of
the citizens of New York to address them on the affairs of the nation,
but wrote a long letter instead, addressed more to the South than to the
North, for he more than any other man, saw the impending dangers.
Although there was a large majority at the South in favor of Union, yet
the minority had become furious, and comprised the ablest leaders,
concerning whose intention such men as Seward and Chase and John P.
Hale were sceptical. In the ferment of excited passions it is not safe
to calculate on men's acting according to reason. It is wiser to predict
that they will act against reason. Here Clay was wiser in his anxiety
than the Northern statesmen generally, who thought there would be peace
because it was reasonable.

Clay did not live to see all compromises thrown to the winds. He died
June 29, 1852, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, at the National
Hotel in Washington. Imposing funeral ceremonies took place amid general
lamentation, and the whole country responded with glowing eulogies.

I have omitted allusion to other speeches which the great statesman made
in his long public career, and have presented only the salient points of
his life, in which his parliamentary eloquence blazed with the greatest
heat; for he was the greatest orator, in general estimation, that this
country has produced, although inferior to Webster in massive po