As he looked over the personnel of Congress, Clay must have rejoiced over his advantage. There, by his side, sat Webster, with all the prestige of his great name and in all the splendor of his genius. Presiding still over the deliberations of the Senate was the stern-visaged political philosopher and sage who had definitely broken with Jackson-Calhoun. It could not have taken him long to discover, in the young Hercules with the harshly carven features, the brilliant possibilities of John M. Clayton. And there, harboring a secret grudge, and suffering acutely from the wounds inflicted on his mentor in the chair, sat the eloquent Hayne, meditating revenge. In Thomas Ewing of Ohio, a robust partisan and able debater, he found a fighter after his own heart. And while they were of the State Rights persuasion, and hostile to the tariff and internal improvements, he could scarcely have failed to catch in the eyes of the erudite Tazewell and Tyler of Virginia something of a promise that was to be fulfilled. And against him, he saw John Forsyth and Benton, men of character and power, supported by Felix Grundy and Hugh White, “Ike” Hill and Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey. His was manifestly the advantage in the Senate. But in the House his advantage was much greater, for among the members of the Opposition was the most brilliant array of great orators ever assembled in a single Congress. John Quincy Adams had reëntered public life as a Representative from Quincy--as full of fire and pepper as ever in his youth; Edward Everett, the most scholarly and polished orator of his generation; Rufus Choate, the greatest forensic orator the Republic has produced; Richard Henry Wilde, who combined the qualities of a graceful poet, a vigorous debater and eloquent orator, and a sound scholar; Tom Corwin, the wit and the slashing master of polemics; and greater perhaps than all, as a congressional orator, the fiery and indomitable George McDuffie of South Carolina. And against this combination the best the Administration could do was to put forth the commonplace plodder James K. Polk, assisted by Churchill C. Cambreleng of New York. If Jackson had the advantage of position, Clay had all the prestige of genius on his side. Thus the two parties faced each other for the battle. III