Clay insisted that their
report, to have the requisite effect upon Congress and the country,
must be unanimous; and unanimous it was. Both Houses, with a
surprising approach to unanimity, adopted the compromise proposed; and
thus was again postponed the bloody arbitrament to which the
irrepressible controversy has since been submitted.
Clay's masterly conduct on this occasion added his name to the long
list of gentlemen who were mentioned for the succession to Mr. Monroe
in 1825. If the city of Washington had been the United States, if the
House of Representatives had possessed the right to elect a President,
Henry Clay might have been its choice. During the thirteen years of
his Speakership not one of his decisions had been reversed; and he had
presided over the turbulent and restive House with that perfect
blending of courtesy and firmness which at once restrains and charms.
The debates just before the war, during the war, and after the war,
had been violent and acrimonious; but he had kept his own temper, and
compelled the House to observe an approach to decorum. On one occasion
he came into such sharp collision with the excitable Randolph, that
the dispute was transferred to the newspapers, and narrowly escaped
degenerating from a war of "cards" to a conflict with pistols.
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