Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/268

256 charges brought against him, and fully explained and defended his conduct. It was an exceedingly able document, temperate in tone, complete and lucid in the presentation of facts, and unanswerable in argument. One of its notable passages may be mentioned as characteristic. Clay was very much ashamed of having threatened to challenge George Kremer. Expressing his regret therefor, he added: “I owe it to the community to say that, whatever I may have done, or by inevitable circumstances might be forced to do, no man in it holds in deeper abhorrence than I do that pernicious practice [of dueling]. Condemned as it must be by the judgment and the philosophy, to say nothing of the religion, of every thinking man, it is an affair of feeling, about which we cannot, although we should, reason. Its true correction will be found when all shall unite, as all ought to unite, in its unqualified proscription.” But until that comes to pass, shall we go on challenging and fighting, the slaves of false notions of honor? At any rate, we shall soon see the Honorable Henry Clay again with pistol in hand.

Clay may have thought that his address would make an end of the “bargain and corruption” charge for all time, and so it should have done. Indeed, he received letters from such men as Chief Justice Marshall, John Tyler, Justice Story, Daniel Webster, Lewis Cass, and others, congratulating him upon the completeness of his vindication and triumph. But he lived to appreciate the wonder-