Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/199

Rh which had happened two and a half years before — the first crossing of the ocean by a steamship, the bringing to one another's doors of the Old and the New World — was far more important in its consequences; and perhaps fewer still that the seven thousand votes cast for Birney and Lemoyne, the candidates of an anti-slavery convention which had been almost entirely lost sight of in the turmoil of the “hard-cider campaign,” bore in themselves the germ of infinitely greater developments.

Soon after the election, Clay and Harrison had an interview, which Harrison had in vain tried to avoid. The lucky mediocrity seems to have felt some discomfort in the thought of meeting the imperious party chief, to whom the honors which he himself wore were known to be really due. Harrison offered to Clay the first place in his Cabinet, intending to summon Webster also. This was prudent. A second-rate man elected to the presidency will act wisely in taking the able and ambitious leaders of his party, if they are honest men, from Congress into the Cabinet. They may then try to serve their own ambitions, but, in doing so, they will feel themselves under honorable obligation and restraint; they will scarcely seek to overthrow the administration. When the real leaders of the party are not identified with the administration and strive to control it from the outside, dissension and strife are almost inevitable.

But Clay declined Harrison's offer. He desired