Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/155

Rh as oppressive to us:” he could therefore not continue “to sustain those in opposition in whose wisdom, firmness, and patriotism he had no reason to confide.” This was not only notice of a dissolved alliance: it was a declaration of war.

Such a challenge could not pass unanswered. A “personal debate” succeeded, one of those oratorical lance-breakings in which the statesmen of that period delighted, and which that generation of citizens listened to or followed in the printed reports with bated breath. This time it was a passage at arms between those who were called the giants, — Calhoun on one side, Clay and Webster on the other; but on his side Clay was so much more conspicuous than Webster that the debate was usually called “the great debate between Clay and Calhoun.” It started in the shape of great orations, and then, subsiding and breaking out again, it ran fitfully along with the discussions on the sub-treasury and on Calhoun's land bill until January, 1840.

It was a curious spectacle, that of the two contracting parties to the compromise of 1833, now become enemies, settling their accounts in public. But, as is usually the case, these encounters, however dramatic and brilliant, added little to the stock of things worth knowing. They consisted mainly in arduous efforts of each combatant to set forth what he desired the world to think of himself and of his antagonist. Clay opened with a severe criticism of Calhoun's new alliance with the Van Bu-