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
A correct idea of the effect produced it is impossible to gather from
his reported speech, though in general accurately given. Look, tone,
gesture, and manner contributed largely to its greatness,――perhaps
as much as the ‘thoughts that breathe and words that burn,’ which in
one continuous stream fell from his eloquent lips, causing the hearts
of his hearers to thrill alternately with pleasure and pain. It is
represented as having been an exquisite specimen of grand eloquence――a
felicitous blending of the beautiful, pathetic and sublime. He seemed
to wave the enchanted wand of the fabled magician, now spreading peace
and quiet, and now causing the most stormy emotions to swell the hearts
of those who listened to him. The editor of the National Intelligencer
says that the pathetic effect produced by the appeal admits not of
description. Although the day was extremely cold, so cold that Mr. Clay,
for the only time in his life, was unable to keep himself warm by the
exercise of speaking, there were few individuals in the house who did
not bear witness by their streaming eyes to the orator’s control over
their sensibilities. Members of both political parties――men whose
patriotic souls had been sustained by his eloquence, and those who
had been writhing and agonizing under his indignation, forgot their
antipathies and wept together.
Mr. Clay had the pleasure of seeing the bill, as advocated by him,
pass the house, on the fourteenth of January, 1813, by a vote of
seventy-seven to forty-two. On the sixteenth (having passed the senate,)
it received the signature of the president; and thus was taken another
and very important step in carrying out that system of manly and bold
resistance devised and introduced by him, and which was destined to
redress all our grievances and restore our violated rights.
On the eighteenth of February, congress proceeded to ascertain the
result of an election for president and vice president, which was as
follows. For president, James Madison, one hundred and twenty-eight,
De Witt Clinton, eighty-nine. For vice president, Elbridge Gerry,
one hundred and thirty-one, Jared Ingersoll, eighty-six. Thus the
re-election of Mr. Madison furnished undoubted evidence that the
people, from whom there is no appeal, sustained the measures of war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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