to him, and to laud to the skies whatever he does. He has swept over the government during the last eight years like a tropical tornado. Every department exhibits traces of the ravages of the storm. What object of his ambition is unsatisfied? When disabled from age any longer to hold the sceptre of power, he designates his successor, and transmits it to his favorite. What more does he want? Must we blot, deface, and mutilate the records of the country to punish the presumptuousness of expressing an opinion contrary to his own? What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this expunging resolution? Can you make that not to be which has been? Is it to appease the wrath and to heal the wounded pride of the chief magistrate? If he really be the hero that his friends represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all groveling sycophancy, all self-degradation and self-abasement. He would reject with scorn and contempt, as unworthy of his fame, your black scratches and your baby lines in the fair records of his country.”
Benton himself admitted Clay's speech to have “lacked nothing but verisimilitude” to render it “grand and affecting.”
But such attacks had “verisimilitude” enough to make the leaders of the expunging movement feel somewhat uncomfortable as to the firmness of their followers. Jackson imposed upon his friends tasks which not all of them found it consistent with their self-respect to perform. Some had already dropped away from him, and others were inclined to do so. Benton confessed that “members of the party were in the process of separating from
