Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/42

30 feeble flicker among the educated men who had come there from Virginia and Pennsylvania. It had never touched the rough pioneers of Kentucky with any force. The number of slaves held in the state was, indeed, small enough to render easy the gradual abolition of the system. But the Kentucky farmer could not understand why, if he had money to buy negroes, he should not have them to work for him in raising his crops of corn, and hemp, and tobacco, and in watching his cattle and swine in the forest. His opposition to emancipation in any form was, therefore, vehement and overwhelming. The cause so fervently advocated by Clay, following his own generous impulses, as well as the teachings of his noble mentor, Chancellor Wythe, and by a small band of men of the same way of thinking, was, therefore, desperate from the beginning. But they deserve the more credit for their courageous fidelity to their convictions. Clay was then a promising young man just attracting public attention. At the very start he boldly took the unpopular side, thus exposing himself to the displeasure of a power, which, in the South, was then already very strong, and threatened to become unforgiving and merciless. Nor did he ever express regret at this first venture in his public career. On the contrary, all his life he continued to look back upon it with pride. In a speech he delivered at Frankfort, the political capital of Kentucky, in 1829, he said: —