CHAPTER XXIV.
THE ELECTION OF 1844.
No sooner had Clay declared his determination to withdraw from the Senate than invitations poured upon him from all sides to show himself to the people. He replied to them in letters burning with wrath at the “weak, vacillating, and faithless chief magistrate,” the “President vainly seeking, by a culpable administration of the patronage of the government, to create a third party.” Clay's Kentucky constituency welcomed him to his home with boundless enthusiasm. He was honored with a grand open-air feast attended by a large multitude. The toast with which the chairman greeted him was a fair specimen of the language in which the ardent Whig of the time was in the habit of expressing his feelings about his gallant leader on festive occasions: —
“Henry Clay, farmer of Ashland, patriot and philanthropist, the American statesman and unrivaled orator of the age, illustrious abroad, beloved at home: in a long career of eminent public service, often, like Aristides, he breasted the raging storm of passion and delusion, and, by offering himself a sacrifice, saved the Republic; and now, like Cincinnatus and Washington,
