Grundy, like Henry Clay a Virginian by birth and born the same year, 1777, like Clay began his career in Kentucky, where he rose to be chief-justice of the State before he was thirty years old. In 1807 he removed from Kentucky to Tennessee, and was next elected to the Twelfth Congress expressly to advocate war. As a new member, whose duty, like that of all new members, required him to exchange some controversial hostilities with John Randolph, he could not afford to miss his mark; and when Randolph called upon him by a sneering request to tell what were the constitutional resources of the committee and its talents, Grundy spoke. He apologized for his remarks as embarrassed, and indeed his speech showed less fluency than the subject and occasion seemed to warrant; but though it made no pretence of wit or rhetoric, it went to the heart of the subject, and dealt seriously with the difficulties which Grundy and his party felt. “What cost me more reflection than anything else,” he admitted, “was the new test to which we are to put this government. We are about to ascertain by actual experiment how far our republican institutions are calculated to stand the shock of war; and whether, after foreign danger has disappeared, we can again assume our peaceful attitude without endangering the liberties of the people.” At the outset, Grundy stumbled upon the difficulty which checked every movement of his party. Obliged to reconcile his present action with the attitude taken by his friends in opposition to the Federalist armaments of 1798, he could only charge that the armaments of 1798 were made not for war, but to provide Executive patronage and affect domestic politics,--a charge which, whether true or not, did not meet the objection. “If your minds are resolved on war,” continued the speaker, “you are consistent, you are right, you are still Republican; but if you are not resolved, pause and reflect, for should this Resolution pass and you then become faint-hearted, remember that you have abandoned your old principles and trod in the paths of your predecessors.” Thus, according to Grundy, from the moment a party intended in earnest to make war against a foreign enemy, armies, loans, patronage, taxes, and every following corruption, with all the perils of European practice, became Republican. Only when armies were to be raised for domestic purposes were they unrepublican. The Administration of 1798 would gladly have accepted this test, had the Republicans then been willing to permit armaments on any terms.