Famous Americans of Recent Times | Page 8

the
people there, mostly of Virginian birth, had been personally benefited
by Jefferson's equalizing measures, and were in the fullest sympathy
with his political doctrines. When, therefore, this brilliant and
commanding youth, with that magnificent voice of his, and large
gesticulation, mounted the wagon that usually served as platform in the
open-air meetings of Kentucky, and gave forth, in fervid oratory, the

republican principles he had imbibed in Richmond, he won that
immediate and intense popularity which an orator always wins who
gives powerful expression to the sentiments of his hearers. We cannot
wonder that, at the close of an impassioned address upon the Alien and
Sedition Laws, the multitude should have pressed about him, and borne
him aloft in triumph upon their shoulders; nor that Kentucky should
have hastened to employ him in her public business as soon as he was
of the requisite age. At thirty he was, to use the language of the stump,
"Kentucky's favorite son," and incomparably the finest orator in the
Western country. Kentucky had tried him, and found him perfectly to
her mind. He was an easy, comfortable man to associate with, wholly
in the Jeffersonian taste. His wit was not of the highest quality, but he
had plenty of it; and if he said a good thing, he had such a way of
saying it as gave it ten times its natural force. He chewed tobacco and
took snuff,--practices which lowered the tone of his health all his life.
In familiar conversation he used language of the most Western
description; and he had a singularly careless, graceful way with him,
that was in strong contrast with the vigor and dignity of his public
efforts. He was an honest and brave young man, altogether above lying,
hypocrisy, and meanness,--full of the idea of Republican America and
her great destiny. The splendor of his talents concealed his defects and
glorified his foibles; and Kentucky rejoiced in him, loved him, trusted
him, and sent him forth to represent her in the national council.
During the first thirteen years of Henry Clay's active life as a
politician,--from his twenty-first to his thirty-fourth year,--he appears in
politics only as the eloquent champion of the policy of Mr. Jefferson,
whom he esteemed the first and best of living men. After defending
him on the stump and aiding him in the Kentucky Legislature, he was
sent in 1806, when he was scarcely thirty, to fill for one term a seat in
the Senate of the United States, made vacant by the resignation of one
of the Kentucky Senators. Mr. Jefferson received his affectionate young
disciple with cordiality, and admitted him to his confidence. Clay had
been recently defending Burr before a Kentucky court, entirely
believing that his designs were lawful and sanctioned. Mr. Jefferson
showed him the cipher letters of that mysterious and ill-starred
adventurer, which convinced Mr. Clay that Burr was certainly a liar, if
he was not a traitor. Mr. Jefferson's perplexity in 1806 was similar to

that of Jackson in 1833,--too much money in the treasury. The revenue
then was fifteen millions; and, after paying all the expenses of the
government and the stipulated portion of the national debt, there was an
obstinate and most embarrassing surplus. What to do with this
irrepressible surplus was the question then discussed in Mr. Jefferson's
Cabinet. The President, being a free-trader, would naturally have said,
Reduce the duties. But the younger men of the party, who had no pet
theories, and particularly our young Senator, who had just come in
from a six weeks' horseback flounder over bridgeless roads, urged
another solution of the difficulty,--Internal Improvements. But the
President was a strict-constructionist, denied the authority of Congress
to vote money for public works, and was fully committed to that
opinion.
Mr. Jefferson yielded. The most beautiful theories will not always
endure the wear and tear of practice. The President, it is true, still
maintained that an amendment to the Constitution ought to precede
appropriations for public works; but he said this very briefly and
without emphasis, while he stated at some length, and with force, the
desirableness of expending the surplus revenue in improving the
country. As time wore on, less and less was said about the amendment,
more and more about the importance of internal improvements; until, at
last, the Republican party, under Clay, Adams, Calhoun, and Rush,
went as far in this business of road-making and canal-digging as
Hamilton himself could have desired. Thus it was that Jefferson
rendered true his own saying, "We are all Federalists, we are all
Republicans." Jefferson yielded, also, on the question of free-trade.
There is a passage of a few lines in Mr. Jefferson's Message of 1806,
the year of Henry Clay's first appearance in Washington, which may be
regarded as the text