The chapter of our history most abounding in all the elements of
interest will be that one which will relate the rise and first
national triumph of the Democratic party. Young Clay came to the
Kentucky stump just when the country was at the crisis of the struggle
between the Old and the New. But in Kentucky it was not a struggle;
for the people there, mostly of Virginian birth, had been personally
benefited by Jefferson's equalizing measures, and were in the fullest
sympathy with his political doctrines. When, therefore, this brilliant
and commanding youth, with that magnificent voice of his, and large
gesticulation, mounted the wagon that usually served as platform in
the open-air meetings of Kentucky, and gave forth, in fervid oratory,
the republican principles he had imbibed in Richmond, he won that
immediate and intense popularity which an orator always wins who gives
powerful expression to the sentiments of his hearers. We cannot wonder
that, at the close of an impassioned address upon the Alien and
Sedition Laws, the multitude should have pressed about him, and borne
him aloft in triumph upon their shoulders; nor that Kentucky should
have hastened to employ him in her public business as soon as he was
of the requisite age.
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