Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/172

162 Clay suspected Calhoun of personal ambition in this movement. He wrote to his friend Brooke: “They [Calhoun's resolutions] are at last disposed of. Their professed object is slavery; their real aim, to advance the political interest of the mover, and to affect mine.” That was the suspicion of a presidential candidate watching a supposed rival. Calhoun certainly could not expect to win any political capital by his resolutions. They could never be popular at the North, and even a good many Southern men considered their introduction extremely impolitic. A speech delivered by Clay about a year later was more justly suspected to be a part of a presidential campaign.

The Senate continued to lay anti-slavery petitions on the table without that reference and respectful consideration which Clay had asked for them. The House adopted more gag rules to silence anti-slavery members. But all these things served only to strengthen the movement among the people. It began seriously to alarm the politicians, for they found themselves confronted by a force which could neither be conciliated by the offer of offices, nor be frightened by exclusion from them. To the managing politician the man who wants nothing is the most embarrassing problem. The anti-slavery men began to catechise candidates, and to work against those they did not find “sound” on the slavery question. And, as is apt to happen, they worked most bitterly against those who in their opinion ought to have been sound and were not. By them