A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky: Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.
History
A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky: Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.
Clay, Henry, 1777-1852; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
message of 1833, he distinctly avowed, that he urged the removal of the
public money.
Mr. Clay introduced resolutions to the senate, calling for a copy
of the documents in which the secretary pretended to find precedents,
justifying the course he had pursued, which passed the senate, and,
on the thirteenth of December, Mr. Taney placed in the hands of that
body, a communication, which contained, however, nothing satisfactory,
or contemplated by the resolutions. Mr. Clay declared the ground which
the secretary assumed, untenable, and, on the twenty-sixth of December,
introduced resolutions to the senate, pronouncing his reasons for
removing the deposits, as communicated to congress, unsatisfactory
and insufficient, and that the president, in dismissing the secretary
of the treasury because he would not, in violation of his sense of
duty, remove, as directed, the public money, had assumed the exercise
of a power over the treasury of the United States, not granted by the
constitution and laws, and dangerous to the liberties of the people.
In defence of these, Mr. Clay made one of his ablest speeches, and
forcibly demonstrated the unconstitutionality and illegality of the
procedure of the president and secretary. He foretold, with prophetic
accuracy, the fatal consequences which would flow from it, and depicted
in glowing colors the dangers that threatened the best interests of the
nation. These resolutions passed the senate, and, on the seventeenth
of April, 1833, the president communicated to the senate his celebrated
protest――a document perfectly characteristic of him, replete with
the most arrogant assumptions and declarations. This led to a warm
and protracted debate, in which Messrs. Clay, Poindexter, Sprague,
Frelinghuysen, and Southard, joined, whose powerful arguments drove
the president from the last vestige of the fallacious grounds he had
assumed, and scattered the doctrines of his protest to the winds.
The senate, by a vote of twenty-seven to sixteen, excluded it from
the journals, and maintained that the president possessed no right
to protest against any of its proceedings. During the discussion,
Mr. Leigh, of Virginia, paid Mr. Clay a rich and merited compliment,
for his services in allaying the spirit of nullification at the south,
in 1832 and 1833. ‘I cannot but remember,’ said he, ‘when all men
were trembling under the apprehension of civil war――trembling from
the conviction, that if such a contest should arise, let it terminate
how it might, it would put our present institutions in jeopardy, and
end either in consolidation or disunion; for I am persuaded that the
first drop of blood which shall be shed in a civil strife between the
federal government and any state, will flow from an irremediable wound,
that none may ever hope to see healed. I cannot but remember, that
the president, though ♦wielding such a vast power and influence, never
contributed the least aid to bring about the compromise that saved
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