Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/224

214 reasons for refusing to do so. But his conduct, when the disagreement between him and his party became critical, was that of a small, if not a tricky, man. He dealt in equivocations which seemed to mean one thing and turned out to mean the opposite. He appeared to accept and then rejected the same propositions in rapid succession. He authorized members of his Cabinet to confer with members of Congress about measures which he had permitted them to consider and to represent as acceptable to him, and then turned his back upon them. This is the way in which a public man easily makes himself contemptible. He was surrounded by a Kitchen Cabinet mainly composed of Virginians, and led by Henry A. Wise, a man of ability, but in a high degree flighty and erratic, who interfered in everything, and constantly pulled him back whenever an approach between him and leading Whigs in Congress seemed to be in progress. That coterie inflamed Tyler's brain, which was never one of the strongest, and easily turned by flattery, with gorgeous visions of future greatness, promising to gather a party around him strong enough to keep him in the presidential chair for a second term or more. Few things are more hateful to men interested in public affairs, than to see the head of the state controlled by secret influence. On the whole, there was in the spectacle of “Captain” Tyler, as he was derisively called, and his little personal party, dubbed by Clay “the corporal's guard,” much that provoked disdain and ridicule.