"
It is not too much to say that Clay made the speakership one of the
important American institutions. He was the master of the House of
Representatives, shaping its measures by the appointment of his
committees and his parliamentary management.[Footnote: Follett,
Speaker of the House, pp. 41-46.] By the period of our survey, with
the power of this office behind him, Clay had fashioned a set of
American political issues reflective of western and middle-state
ideas, and had made himself a formidable rival in the presidential
struggle. He had caught the self-confidence, the continental
aspirations, the dash and impetuosity of the west. But he was also,
as a writer of the time declared, "able to captivate high and low,
l'homme du salon and the 'squatter' in the Western wilderness." He
was a mediator between east and west, between north and south--the
"great conciliator." [Footnote: Grund, Aristocracy in America, II.,
213. For other views of Clay, cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality, chap.
xii.
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