DEFEAT OF HENRY CLAY.

165 dered where all the coons came from. The market was brisk during the campaign, but after election prices collapsed.

Mr. Clay was defeated, his opponent receiving 170 votes of the electoral college, he receiving 105. This result was extremely distasteful to Mr. Greeley. He was not among those who thought Mr. Clay would go through with a hurrah, on account of the fact that Mr. Polk was comparatively unknown. He knew that only restless labour, the best exertions of all working Whigs, and the appliance of every honourable means of influence would secure success. A warmer friend and more unselfish admirer of Mr. Clay than most men, his judgment was not put at fault by his feelings, and he almost ruined his constitution by the work that he imposed upon himself. Years afterwards, he maintained with undoubted sincerity but with questionable correctness, that the victory would have been with Mr. Clay had the friends of Protection liberally expended their money in that behalf, supplying the people with The Tribune and other Whig journals to such extent that all voters might have had an opportunity to read Whig arguments. Mr. Greeley was probably mistaken. As the people defeated Mr. Clay with a gentleman so little known as Mr. Polk was at that time, it seems reasonable to conclude that no earthly power could have induced them to elevate the Kentucky statesman to the chief magistracy. However this may be, it is certain that Mr. Greeley never became reconciled to the result, and lamented it as a public calamity whenever afterwards he spoke of it.

Mr. Greeley had a most exalted, perhaps extravagant, opinion of Henry Clay. He says of him:

"Mr. Clay, born in poverty and obscurity, had not even a commonschool education, and had only a few months' clerkship in a store, with a somewhat longer training in a lawyer's office, as preparation for his great career. Tall in person, though plain in features, graceful in manner, and at once dignified and affable in bearing, I think his fervid patriotism and thrilling eloquence combined with decided natural abilities and a wide and varied experience to render him the American more fitted to win and enjoy popularity than any other who has lived. That popularity he steadily achieved and extended through the earlier half of his long public life; but he was now confronted by a political combination well-nigh

invincible, based on the potent personal strength of General Jackson; and this overcame him. Five times presented as a candidate for President, he was always beaten,-twice in conventions of his political associates, thrice in the choice of electors by the people. The careless reader of our history in future centuries will scarcely realize the force of his personal magnetism, nor conceive how millions of hearts glowed with sanguine hopes of his election to the Presidency, and bitterly lamented his and their discomfiture."?

In accounting for the defeat of Clay, Mr. Greeley, in after years, attributed it, so far as general causes were concerned, to Mr. Clay's paltering on the question of the annexation of Texas, on the one hand, and to Mr. Polk's paltering, on the question of the Tariff, on the other. These, he thought, were the "great issues" of the campaign. And as Mr. Clay, in his Alabama letters, stated that he did not object to the annexation of Texas on account of slavery, thereby losing the most of the "Liberal" vote of the North, and gaining nothing in the South; and as Mr. Polk, in his "Kane letter," came out in favour of "incidental protection," thus enabling him to beat Mr. Clay in Pennsylvania, though this would defeat such "protection" as Pennsylvania desired, the people were misled in regard to either candidate, and that upon the vital issues of the campaign.

Herein Mr. Greeley was to a certain extent correct, and it is astonishing that he did not see that Mr. Clay's paltering course was almost infinitely worse than that of Mr. Polk; and this for the reason that the Texas question was almost infinitely more important than the Tariff question,-as events have since abundantly shown. Mr. Clay equivocated upon the great question; Mr. Polk upon the little one. The abolitionists saw this with perfect distinctness, and wisely preferred to "throw away their votes upon Mr. Birney rather than more than waste them upon Mr. Clay. The Whigs had not adopted any platform further than a resolution that Whig principles might be summed up as embracing a well regulated national currency; "a Tariff for revenue to defray the necessary expenses of the government, and discriminating with special reference to the

66

2 Ibid., p. 168.

DEFEAT OF HENRY CLAY.

167

protection of the domestic labour of the country;" the distribution of the proceeds from the sales of the public lands; a single term for the Presidency; reform of executive usurpation. It would have been more correct, if the convention had said that Whig principles might be summed up in Henry Clay.

The nation was wiser than Mr. Greeley. But he never ceased to lament the defeat of Mr. Clay, or to regard him with an affection and admiration of the most devoted and chivalric nature. We shall see that his friendship remained steadfast to the last. Even so late as when he wrote his " American Conflict," his still enduring love for Clay made him almost excuse the measures generally known as the Compromise of 1850. It would appear to be certain that Mr. Greeley never discovered that slavery had demoralized even the generous, chivalric, "Harry of the West."

CHAPTER XI.

CONTINUATION OF TRIBUNE HISTORY.

The Tribune and Literature-Inaugurates A New Era of Criticism-Edgar A. Poe-A High-Priced Autograph - The Tribune Brings Out the Transcendentalists - Margaret Fuller; Her Contributions to the Tribune- Mr. Greeley's Tribute to Her Genius-Notices of American Female Journalists -- Charles Dickens - Mr. Greeley's Early Recognition of his Genius-His First Visit to America - Washington Irving's "Break Down" at the Dickens Dinner-Mr. Dickens's Second VisitMr. Greeley Presides at the New-York Dinner-A Notable Gathering - Mr. Greeley's Great Services to Literature-Contributions of Tribune Writers to Permanent Literature.

THE TRIBUNE was generous, catholic in spirit toward current literature from the day of its establishment. Until it inaugurated a new era of criticism, exclusively literary journals alone were generally consulted by scholars and thinkers for intelligence as to books, the arts and sciences, the current labour, in short, of scholars and thinkers. Ponderous quarterly Reviews had for nearly half a century been regarded as guides in all such matters; though monthly magazines, particularly Blackwood's, of Edinburgh, Scotland, while under the editorship of John Wilson, were not wanting, which discussed literature, science, art, and politics with a brilliancy of criticism and a splendid flow of vituperation not surpassed by the most dashing daily journalist of the year 1873. Of those journals which were called literary, the one in New-York which attained the largest influence during the early years of The Tribune, was The Weekly Mirror, afterwards The Home Journal, of which the editors were the distinguished poet, N. P. Willis, and the no less distinguished song-writer, George P. Morris. Mr. Greeley became well acquainted with these gentlemen, and other men of letters who contributed to their journal, making it a sort of literary" organ," and authority for "the upper ten," a phrase which is said to have originated with Mr. Willis.

Among the celebrated literary men with whom Mr. Greeley became quite intimately acquainted was Edgar A. Poe, author of "The Raven," and other poems of rare beauty and power, as well as of a number of tales exhibiting remarkable acumen and powers of analysis. Poe was no less brilliant as a conversationist than he was as a writer, but he was irregular in habits and careless in business matters. Long after the poet's death, Mr. Greeley received the following letter

"DEAR SIR:- In your extensive correspondence, you have undoubtedly secured several autographs of the late distinguished American poet, Edgar A. Poe. If so, will you please favour me with one, and oblige, "Yours, respectfully,

To which Mr. Greeley replied:

A. B."

"DEAR SIR:-- I happen to have in my possession but one autograph of the late distinguished American poet, Edgar A. Poc. It consists of an I. O. U., with my name on the back of it. It cost me just $50, and you can have it for half price.

Poor Poe had said that genius might almost be defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty. There was some sad selflove in this, doubtless; and, let us hope, his early death alone prevented him from relieving Mr. Greeley of the necessity of paying an exorbitant price for the poet's autograph. However this may be, Poe was popular as poet and critic, and did all he could in the literary world to cast contempt and ridicule upon "the Transcendentalists," as a certain number of writers, at the head of whom was Ralph Waldo Emerson, were called. Thus, and by reason of other influences, the Transcendentalists were made to appear as decidedly heterodox in the literary church. They became a common target for innumerable paper-bullets of the brain; so that it was well nigh a reproach to be a Transcendentalist or an admirer of the school.

Mr. Greeley proceeded with great vigour to put an end to this small business. The Transcendentalists were simply reformers in literature; believers in enlarging the realm of thought, in ensmalling the sphere of mere authority. They proposed to themselves to elevate the recognized standard of