At this time Clay was tall, erect, commanding, with long arms, small hands, a large mouth, blue, electrical eyes, high forehead, a sanguine temperament, excitable, easy in his manners, self-possessed, courteous, deferential, with a voice penetrating and musical, with great command of language, and so earnest that he impressed everybody with his blended sincerity and kindness of heart.

The true field for such a man was politics, which Clay loved, so that his duties and pleasures went hand in hand,—­an essential thing for great success.  His first efforts were in connection with a constitutional convention in Kentucky, when he earnestly advocated a system of gradual emancipation of slaves,—­unpopular as that idea was among his fellow-citizens.  It did not seem, however, to hurt his political prospects, for in 1803 he was solicited to become a member of the State legislature, and was easily elected, being a member of the Democratic-Republican party as led by Jefferson.  He made his mark at once as an orator, and so brilliant and rapid was his legislative career that he was elected in 1806 to the United States Senate to fill the unexpired term, of John Adair,—­being only twenty-nine years old, the youngest man that ever sat in that body of legislators.  All that could then be said of him was that he made a good impression in the debates and on the committees, and was a man of great promise, a favorite in society, attending all parties of pleasure, and never at home in the evening.  On his return to Kentucky he was again elected as a member of the lower House in the State legislature, and chosen Speaker,—­an excellent training for the larger place he was to fill.  In the winter of 1809-10 he was a second time sent to the United States Senate, for two years, to fill the unexpired term of Buckner Thurston, where he made speeches in favor of encouraging American manufacturing industries, not to the extent of exportation,—­which he thought should be confined to surplus farm-produce,—­but enough to supply the people with clothing and to make them independent of foreign countries for many things unnecessarily imported.  He also made himself felt on many other important topics, and was recognized as a rising man.

When his term had expired in the Senate, he was chosen a member of the House of Representatives at Washington,—­a more agreeable field to him than the Senate, as giving him greater scope for his peculiar eloquence.  He was promptly elected Speaker, which position, however, did not interfere with his speech-making whenever the House went into Committee of the Whole.  It was as Speaker of the House of Representatives that Clay drew upon himself the eyes of the nation; and his truly great congressional career began in 1811, on the eve of the war with Great Britain in Madison’s administration.

Clay was now the most influential, and certainly the most popular man in public life, in the whole country, which was very remarkable, considering that he was only thirty-seven years of age.  Daniel Webster was then practising law in Portsmouth, N.H., two years before his election to Congress, and John C. Calhoun had not yet entered the Senate, but was chairman of the Committee of Foreign Relations in the House of Representatives, and a warm friend of the Speaker.