Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/150

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

of great earnestness, of intense personality differ- ing widely each from the others, and yet with a signal trait in common — the power to command. In the "give and take" of daily discussion; in the art of controlling and consolidating reluc- tant and refractory followers; in the skill to overcome all forms of opposition, and to meet with competency and courage the varjnng phases of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult to rank with these a fourth name in all our Congressional history. But of these Mr. Clay was the greatest.

It would, perhaps, be impossible to find in the parliamentary annals of the world a parallel to Mr. Clay, in 1841, when at sixty-four years of age he took the control of the Whig party from the president who had received their suffrages, against the power of Webster in the Cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in the Senate, against the herculean efforts of Caleb Cush- ing and Henry A. Wise in the House. In un- shared leadership, in the pride and plenitude of power he hurled against John Tyler with deepest scorn the mass of that conquering col- umn which had swept over the land in 1840, and drove his administration to seek shelter behind the lines of his political foes. Mr. Douglas achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful when, in 1854, against the secret desires of a strong administration, against the wise counsel of the older chiefs, against the conservative instincts and even the moral sense of the country, he 120

�� �