Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/328

318 only to intensify the determination of the slave-holding interest to maintain itself at any cost, and to rally the South in the struggle against the growing anti-slavery tendency in the North.

But Clay's public activity was not to be confined to the writing of letters. There could scarcely have been a stronger proof of the hold he had upon the people of Kentucky than that the legislature elected him by a unanimous vote to a seat in the Senate of the United States for a full term, at the time when the discussion on emancipation was beginning, and he was known to cherish sentiments so distasteful to a majority of those whom he was to represent. He forgot his vows of retirement and accepted the charge. It was after all natural that, to a man so accustomed to the excitements of public activity and to leadership, quiet retirement, especially at a period of life when it threatened to be final, should have had its horrors.

There seems to have been a feeling in Kentucky as if he, in a position of power, could avert the dangers threatening the country. He himself, however, did not then appreciate the seriousness of the coming crisis. He did not yet understand that the slavery question was overshadowing all else. On December 19, 1848, when his return to the Senate began to be spoken of, he wrote to Thomas B. Stevenson: —

“Greeley writes me from Washington that the Free Soil question will be certainly adjusted at this session, on the basis of admitting the newly acquired territory