The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1897-12-12
A LAUkCEL0T OF POLITICS

From the Sit. Louis Glebe-Demoerat.
Cassius M. Clay, whose recent domestic
troubles have brought his name before
the public, but who was far better known
to an earlier generation, is one CT the
strangesIt. characters who has ever ap-
peared in the country's politics. AL.
though he never held a national office
except that of minister to Russia. to
which he was appointed by President
lincoln, he was conspicuous political
figure for nearly half century, be-
ginning at a time soon after he entered
the Kentucky legislature in 1885. He
was delegate TO several national con-
ventions. was a stump speaker in many
presidential canvasses. and was tender
ed important offices by several presi-
dents, but refused thsm all except the
Russian mis1lonL
A resident of slave state, Mr.. Clay
was an ardent and outsnoken abolition
list alt a time when abolitlon.sm was UNI
popular In all the free states, and when
its advocacy was attended with personal
danger in most of them. At one time
and another in his two-thirds of cen
fury of participation in politics he has
belonged to an The great political par
=
lican and Democra tic-which have APP
peared in his time, and to several of the
smaller part.es-Libsrty, Free Soil, Lib
eral Republican, and one or two others
was in at the birth of all the parties
here mentioned, great and small, except
Ithe National Republican and The Dem
oaraey, and was prominently mentioned
fo-- second place on the national ticket
of awo or three of them.
The antipodes and antipa,hles, social
and political, met in Cass.us M. Clay to
a greater degree than in any other man
of equal prominence in our day. He
was, untl emancipation and the adop-
ton of the thirteenth amendment, as
much at variance with his environment
as Jefferson would have been in a Fed
eral.st caucus AS a party man---Naion
al Republican,, Wing, Libertyite, Free
Soiler Republican. Liberal Republican
or Democrat-he was often as refractory
as Randolph. On occasions he wasd as
violent as Tombs. He had as tempes-
tuous a career as Wise.
But in his swings from one party to
anotehr ne was never open to the i'm
puta ton of Inconsistency, and the
charge would not have trubled him if
ternal improvements at the nations ex-
pense, ne naturally went into the Ma
tional Republican party. and passed
from that into its larger Wing success
sor His hostility ito slavery sent him
to the Liberty party when slavery be-
came the dominant issue. The same
question made him a Free soller whzn
the LlbertyJtes merged themselves into
THE larger and more moderate party
which took up the anti-slavery crusade.
1t was inevitable that he should be
republican when, n the enactment of the
Douglas Kansas Nebraska law, the Lib
ertyites Free Sellers and anti-s,avery
men of all political sscts combined in
thu great organizations which adopted
THE Republican name. The slavery queS-
ton being settled and the union being
saved the tie that bound him to the
republican parity was that of association
merely, and this he cut in his oppoS--
ton Ito the policy of President Grant,
and he entered the Liberal Republican
movement Internal improvement in all
ITS comprehensive phase which the
democrats usually opposed, having lost
much of its interest after the develop
ment of the railroads, and both Demo-
Gratis and Republicans fayoring adequate
expenditures for rivers and harbors, the
last of this obstacles keeping him out
of the Democracy disappeared, and he
has occasionally aclted with that patty
in the past score of years.
But in a certain sense 1T may be said
that Cassius M. Clay is an accident. A
project was on foot a quarter of a CEN
fury before Clay was born which would
have intercepted him .f 1T had succeed
ed. This was the slavery provision of
the ordinance of 1884 jefferson pro-
posed this ordinance, and all of it was
adopted except the anti-Slavery section.
This section provided. for the prohibit
ton of slavery after the year 1900 in all
the west north of latitude 81 degrees,
thus applying to the region south of the
Ohio river as well as north of it. Three
years later than this, or in 1887 the or
dinance was passed which excluded
slavery from the region north of the
Ohio river, which subsequently COM
prised the states of Ohio Indiana, Illi-
nois, Michigan, Wisconsin and that part
of Minnesota east of the Miss .sSippi rfy-
er; Jefferson's anti-slavery restriction, II
adopted, would have also applied to
Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and
Alabama, and would have made them
free territory. The failure of this s1av-
cry exclusion clause of the ordinance
of 1884, which lacked just one vote of
the necessary majority of states, was
long a source of sorrow to jefferson.
1.-THE voice of q single Individual" he
said in a letter a few years afterward,
would peahrevnesdtv shrdlu cmfwypt
would have prevented this abominable
crime. Heaven will not always be s.
lent. The friends to the rights of hui
man nature will In the end prevail
The effect on the future history and
destiny of the United States of the
aGptin Jefferson's slavery section of
the ordinance of 1884 would have been
momentous. 1T would have restricted
slavery to the states in which 1t then
existed, and have given, right from the
beginning of the government, a heavy
preponderance to the section devoted to
freedom. Slavery existed in all of the
original thirteen states at the outset
thegdo .inf?m SHRDLU SHRDL ETA
but through legislation in the individual
states the institution gradually disap-
peared in the northern tier of common
wealths. Economic reasons, howeUver,
had, i'm all the northern states, nearly as
much ito do with bringing abolition as
had moral scruples. In some of these
states the economic reasons were the
preponderant considerations. Not sole
ly because slavery was sinful was 1t
abolished in Massachusetts,. New York
and the other states north of the old
line of Mason and Dixon, but because
their soil and Climate prevented the rails