How rich that enjoyment must have been it is only for us to imagine. How eminently deserved it was we and the world can attest.
The love and the devotion of his political friends were cheering and grateful to his heart, and were acknowledged in all his life――were recognized even to his death.
The contest in the senate chamber or the forum were rewarded with success achieved, and the great victor could enjoy the ovation which partial friendship or the gratitude of the benefit prepared. But the triumph of his life was no party achievement. It was not in the applause which admiring friends and defeated antagonists offered to his measureless success, that he found the reward of his labors, and comprehended the extent of his mission.
It was only when friends and antagonists paused in their contests appalled at the public difficulties and national dangers which had been accumulating, unseen and unregarded; it was only when the nation itself felt the danger, and acknowledged the inefficacy of party action as a remedy, that Henry Clay calculated the full extent of his powers, and enjoyed the reward of their saving exercise. Then, sir, you saw, and I saw, party designations dropped, and party allegiance disavowed, and anxious patriots, of all localities and name, turn toward the country’s benefactor as the man for the terrible exigencies of the hour; and the sick chamber of Henry Clay became the Delphos whence were given out the oracles that presented the means and the measures of our Union’s safety. There, sir, and not in the high places of the country, were the labors and sacrifices of half a century to be rewarded and closed. With his right yet in that senate which he had entered the youngest, and lingered still the eldest member, he felt that his work was done, and the object of his life accomplished. Every cloud that had dimmed the noonday lustre had been dissipated; and the retiring orb, which sunk from the sight of the nation in fullness and in beauty, will yet pour up the horizon a posthumous glory that shall tell of the splendor and greatness of the luminary that has passed away.
Mr. BAYLY, of Virginia.――Mr. Speaker: Although I have been all my life a political opponent of Mr. Clay, yet from my boyhood I have been upon terms of personal friendship with him. More than twenty years ago, I was introduced to him by my father, who was his personal friend. From that time to this, there has existed between us as great personal intimacy as the disparity in our years and our political difference would justify. After I became a member of this house, and upon his return to the senate, subsequent to his resignation in 1842, the warm regard upon his part for the daughter of a devoted friend of forty years’ standing, made him a constant visitor at my house, and frequently a guest at my table. These circumstances make it proper that, upon this occasion, I should pay this last tribute to his memory. I not only knew him well as a statesman, but I knew him better in most unreserved social intercourse. The most happy circumstance, as I esteem it, of my political life has been, that I have thus known each of our great congressional triumvirate.