who had joined Taylor's command with a regiment of Kentucky volunteers, fell at Buena Vista. This blow struck him very deeply. “My life has been full of domestic afflictions,” he wrote to a friend, alluding to the loss of all his daughters by death, “but this last is the severest among them.” Not long after the arrival of these sad tidings Clay became a member of the Episcopal Church, and was baptized according to its rites in the presence of his family. He never pretended to be a pious man, but always showed much respect for religious beliefs and observances. With advancing age he grew more meditative, and also more regular in his attendance upon Sunday services.
The political situation during that period could not be cheering to him. All the Whig principles and policies had been overthrown, and in the great crisis the conduct of the Whigs in Congress had lacked courage and dignity. They had denounced the war policy as unjust and dishonorable before the war was begun; afterward only fourteen of them in the House and two in the Senate voted firmly to the last against the declaration that war existed by the act of Mexico, which they believed to be a lie; and then, the war having been made its own by Congress, they denounced it as “Polk's war,” and sought to belittle and discredit it as an unrighteous, partisan enterprise. It was Polk's war until Congress had assumed Polk's responsibility. Then it was the war of the American people, made so with the concurrence of a large
