Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/359

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THE PARTY CHIEFS.
347

sign, mainly for the purpose of eliminating from the administration Calhoun's friends, and a new Cabinet had been appointed, in which Edward Livingston was Secretary of State; Louis McLane of Delaware, Secretary of the Treasury; Roger B. Taney, Attorney General; and Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the Navy; the Post Office Department remaining in Barry's hands.

The Kitchen Cabinet had elicited demonstrations from the legislature of Pennsylvania, subsequently indorsed by that of New York, calling upon General Jackson to stand for a second term, notwithstanding his previous declarations in favor of the one-term principle, and it was generally understood that he would do so.

All these occurrences, added to the impression that in the President and his confidential advisers there was to be dealt with a force yet undefined and beyond the ordinary rules of calculation, produced among the opposition party a singular feeling of insecurity. They looked for a strong man to lead them; they wanted to hear Clay's voice in Congress; and it is characteristic that Daniel Webster, who had just then reached the zenith of his glory, and was by far the first man in the Senate, should have given the most emphatic expression to that anxiety for energetic leadership. “You must be aware,” he wrote to Clay from Boston on October 5, 1831, “of the strong desire manifested in many parts of the country that you should come into the Senate: the wish is entertained here as