to Hayne” had made his name a household word in the country, an ungovernable longing possessed him to be President of the United States. The morbid craving commonly called “the Presidential fever” developed in him, as it became chronic, its most distressing forms, disordering his ambition, unsettling his judgment and warping his statesmanship. His imagination always saw the coveted prize within his grasp, which in reality it never was. He lacked the sort of popularity which, since the Administration of John Quincy Adams, seemed to be required for a Presidential candidacy. He travelled over the land, South and North and East and West, to manufacture it for himself, but in vain. The people looked at him with awe and listened to him with rapture and wonder, but as to the Presidency the fancy and favor of the politicians, as well as of the masses, obstinately ran to other men. So it was again and again. Clay, too, was unfortunate as a Presidential candidate. But he could have at least the nomination of his party so long as there appeared to be any hope for his election. Webster was denied even that. The vote for him in the party conventions was always distressingly small, usually confined to New England, or only a part of it. Yet he never ceased to hope against hope, and thus to invite more and more galling disappointments. To Henry Clay he could yield without humiliation; but when he saw his party prefer to himself, not once, but twice and three times, men of only military fame, without any political significance whatever, his mortification was so keen that, in the bitterness of his soul, he twice openly protested against the result. Worse than all this, he had to meet the fate—a fate not uncommon with chronic Presidential candidates—to see the most important and most questionable act of his last years attributed to his inordinate craving for the elusive prize.
