The compromise bill finally was adopted in the house, by a vote of one hundred and twenty to eighty-four, and in the senate, by a vote of twenty-nine to sixteen, and received the president’s signature, in March, 1833. And thus the country once more breathed freely; the good and benevolent, who had clad themselves in sackcloth, and, in a posture of the deepest humiliation and grief, sat supplicating a kind Providence to shield her, in this her hour of imminent peril, and guide her safely through it, arose and poured out to Him the libations of their gratitude. Neither did they forget the instrument which he had deigned to employ in accomplishing her deliverance. Both friends and foes acknowledged his agency in this. As in the settlement of the Missouri question, so in this, he was hailed as the liberator of a nation from the jaws of impending danger, and perhaps of ruin. The tide of popular praise and profound regard set towards him from all parts of it, like the streams of gravitation towards the centre of the earth. Men of all parties contributed to swell this. Those who rarely spoke of him, except in detracting terms, now joined heartily in the popular cry of approval. President Tyler was heard to say, several years subsequent to the passage of Mr. Clay’s bill, in view of his agency in carrying it through congress, ‘in my deliberate opinion, there was but one man who could have arrested the then course of things (the tendency of nullification to dissolve the union), and that man was _Henry Clay_. It rarely happens to the most gifted and talented and patriotic, to record their names upon the page of history, in characters indelible and enduring. But if to have rescued his country from civil war――if to have preserved the constitution and union from hazard and total wreck――constitute any ground for an immortal and undying name among men, _then do I believe that he has won for himself that high renown_. I speak what I do know, for I was an actor in the scenes of that perilous period. When he rose in the senate chamber, and held in his hand the olive branch of peace, I, who had not known what envy was before, _envied him_. I was proud of him as my fellow countryman, and still prouder that the _slashes of Hanover_, within the limit of my old district, gave him birth.’