“The cession of that kind of property—­for it is so misnamed—­is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if in that way a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected, and gradually and with due sacrifices I think it might be.  But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.  Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”

Mr. Clay was in Congress, and, perceiving the danger, at once engaged his whole energies to avert it.  It began, as I have said, in 1819; and it did not terminate till 1821.  Missouri would not yield the point; and Congress that is, a majority in Congress—­by repeated votes showed a determination not to admit the State unless it should yield.  After several failures, and great labor on the part of Mr. Clay to so present the question that a majority could consent to the admission, it was by a vote rejected, and, as all seemed to think, finally.  A sullen gloom hung over the nation.  All felt that the rejection of Missouri was equivalent to a dissolution of the Union, because those States which already had what Missouri was rejected for refusing to relinquish would go with Missouri.  All deprecated and deplored this, but none saw how to avert it.  For the judgment of members to be convinced of the necessity of yielding was not the whole difficulty; each had a constituency to meet and to answer to.  Mr. Clay, though worn down and exhausted, was appealed to by members to renew his efforts at compromise.  He did so, and by some judicious modifications of his plan, coupled with laborious efforts with individual members and his own overmastering eloquence upon that floor, he finally secured the admission of the State.  Brightly and captivating as it had previously shown, it was now perceived that his great eloquence was a mere embellishment, or at most but a helping hand to his inventive genius and his devotion to his country in the day of her extreme peril.

After the settlement of the Missouri question, although a portion of the American people have differed with Mr. Clay, and a majority even appear generally to have been opposed to him on questions of ordinary administration, he seems constantly to have been regarded by all as the man for the crisis.  Accordingly, in the days of nullification, and more recently in the reappearance of the slavery question connected with our territory newly acquired of Mexico, the task of devising a mode of adjustment seems to have been cast upon Mr. Clay by common consent—­and his performance of the task in each case was little else than a literal fulfilment of the public expectation.

Mr. Clay’s efforts in behalf of the South Americans, and afterward in behalf of the Greeks, in the times of their respective struggles for civil liberty, are among the finest on record, upon the noblest of all themes, and bear ample corroboration of what I have said was his ruling passion—­a love of liberty and right, unselfishly, and for their own sakes.