For thirty-four years, John Marshall occupied that exalted position, interpreting to the new country its organic law, and the decisions handed down by him remain the standard authority on constitutional questions.  In clearness of thought, breadth of view, and strength of logic they have never been surpassed.  His service to his country was of incalculable value, for he built for the national government a firm, foundation which has stood unshaken through the years.

* * * * *

So we come to a new era in American history—­an era marked by unexampled bitterness of feeling and culminating in the great struggle for the preservation of the Union.  Across this era, three mighty giants cast their shadows—­Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun.

Closely and curiously intertwined were the destinies of these three men, Clay was born in 1777; Webster and Calhoun five years later.  Calhoun and Clay were Irishmen and hated England; Webster was a Scotchman, and Scotchmen were usually Tories.  Calhoun and Clay were southerners, but with a difference, for Calhoun was born in the very sanctum sanctorum of the South, South Carolina, while Clay’s life was spent in the border state of Kentucky, so removed from the South that it did not secede from the Union.  Webster was a product of Massachusetts.  Calhoun and Webster were, in temperament and belief, as far apart as the poles; Clay stood between them, “the great compromiser.”  Calhoun and Webster were greater than Clay, for they possessed a larger genius and a broader culture; and Webster was a greater man than Calhoun, because he possessed the truer vision.  Calhoun died in 1850; Clay and Webster in 1852.  For the forty years previous to that, these three men were in every way the most famous and conspicuous in America.  Others flashed, meteor-like, into a brief brilliance; but these three burned steady as the stars.  They had no real rivals.  And yet, though each of them was consumed by an ambition to be President, not one was able to realize that ambition, and their last years were embittered by defeat.

As has been said, Clay was the smallest man of the three.  His reputation rests, not upon constructive statesmanship, but upon his ability as a party leader, in which respect he has had few equals in American history, and upon his success in proposing compromises.  Born in Virginia, and admitted to the bar in 1797, he moved the same year to Lexington, Kentucky, where his practice brought him rapid and brilliant success.  His personality, too, won him many friends, and it was so all his life.  “To come within reach of the snare of his speech was to love him,” and even to this day Kentucky believes that no statesman ever lived who equalled this adopted son of hers, nor doubts the entire sincerity of his famous boast that he would rather be right than President.