The breech-loading gun had been invented. The fire-alarm telegram system
had come into use.
Thackeray had come over from England to smile upon us genially, to
lecture at the rate "of a pound a minute," as he had expressed it. Young
America was putting old America behind her.
Calhoun was gone. Clay, defeated in his life's ambition to be President,
had crept to his grave. Webster was a dying man. The slavery question
had vexed and shadowed his dying years. He had supported the Compromises
of 1850 and had been bitterly denounced for it. Whittier had expunged
his name from the list of the great and the good. He had wanted to be
President too. Men like General Harrison had secured the prize over his
head. He was reduced to the rejection of the proffered Vice Presidency.
He had been Secretary of State under Harrison, Tyler, and Fillmore. He
had supported the bank, the tariff, implied powers, and Hamiltonism. He
had followed Clay's leadership. Still he had risen to great heights of
oratory and legalistic reason. Carlyle had called him a logic machine in
pants. His debate with Hayne, however, was to furnish the material for
one of the greatest of state papers, to be written less than a decade
from this day. From the hills of Massachusetts he failed to see the
West. Young Douglas had fronted him and told him of the power of the new
and growing country along the Mississippi River.
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