“ Henry Clay appears as an active, memorable, and abiding force and personality, a man eminent for failings as well as for great virtues and great services to the Republic, and a generation which knows scarcely anything clearly and definitely of Clay's place in the affairs of his country will read it with abounding pleasure and assured profit. ”

“ Schurz, “was certainly unbecoming a great leader.” Probably the extent of Clay's wrath was to some degree due to the sacrifices he had made in his anti-abolition speech and in his letters of explanation.
But still a greater humiliation awaited him. “It was a terrible disappointment,” says Mr. Schurz, “first to be thrown aside by the convention of his party for a second-rate man, and then to be thrown aside by that second-rate man to gratify the jealousy or greed of small politicians. For 12 years he had struggled against the tremendous power of Jackson and the cunning of Van Buren. ”

“ Schurz has taken Clay at his word, and has used this declaration as the key to his career. Indeed of Clay's patriotism and belief in the future grandeur of his country he always writes with enthusiasm — in one place as follows:
“Here was the well-spring from which Henry Clay drew his political inspirations — a grand conception of the future destiny of the American Republic and of a Government adapted to the fulfillment of that great destiny; an ardent love for the Union as the ark of liberty and national grandeur, a Union to be maintained at any price ”

“ Sumner's biography of Jackson, another was Mr. Roosevelt's recent sketch of Benton, and a third, the most conspicuous of all, is the present “Life of Henry Clay,” by Mr. Carl Schurz. Eminent as the work is for its union of criticism with philosophical fairness, this is not its sole claim to rank as one of the ablest and most important of recent political writings. It is a work that belongs to good literature, being pervaded by literary and art sense, written in elegant language, charming for its lucidity, its intellectual integrity, its grasp of the subject, and its fine, manly courage. ”

“ But this enthusiastic conception of the Nation's grandeur, this lofty Unionism constantly appearing as the inspiration of his public conduct, gave to his policies, as they stood forth in the glow of his eloquence, a peculiarly potent charm. ”

“ In war he was of course made a General, and without any knowledge of military service he went out to meet the enemy, made raw militia fight like veterans, and won the most brilliant victory in the war of 1812. He was not only a brave man himself, his mere presence infused bravery into others. ”

“ The author admits that the desire of so distinguished a political leader to be President “was natural and legitimate,” and that, “even had he cherished it less ardently his followers would have more than once pushed him forward;” but in various parts of Clay's career Mr. Schurz finds illustrations of the weakening effect of Presidential ambitions upon Clay's character, and his famous saying that he would “rather be right than be President” was spoken, he says, “at a time when he was more desirous of being President than sure of being right.” ”

“ Political feeling then became so intense and consuming, and prosperity has followed that crisis so surprisingly until it is even now making affluent the localities most completely desolated by war, that a reaction has of necessity ensued, until unthinking prejudice has grown into criticism, which, while candid, fails not to be sympathetic and capable of making allowances. ”

“ Not until our day has existed the needed critical and literary gift properly animated by a sincere desire to narrate events truthfully and searchingly and yet not maliciously, and to state unpleasant facts with intelligent sympathy and a just appreciation of their relations to larger and greater things. ”

“ In his youth he had mastered scarcely the rudiments of education, and he did not possess that acquisitive intellectuality which impels men, with or without preparation, to search for knowledge and store it up. ”

“ Schurz's biography, and above all its intellectual disinterestedness. It is the truth of history that we find him searching for and recording, not the passionate adulation or the passionate detraction of prejudice and partisanship, and thus it is that he is able to write of Jackson as critically, and withal as justly as of his great antagonist Clay.
Henry Clay was not a learned man; scarcely in any academic sense could he be called an educated man ”

“ It was about 15 years after these events that we find Clay developed into a full-blown protectionist, and making a famous speech — one of the most elaborate and effective he ever made — in advocacy of a policy to which he gave the name of “The American System,” and which our author characterizes as exhibiting “Clay's strong as well as his weak points; his skill of statement; his ingenuity in the grouping of facts and principles; his plausibility of reasoning ”

“ It would be an interesting occupation to trace the origin and growth of these gifts, by means of which we have come to live in a truly eclectic and tolerant age. Doubtless in political matters the civil war contributed a very potent share of influence. ”

“ Our high protectionists ought not to overlook it, for there are facts here worth pondering over, provided one has the willingness to indulge in that laborious and oftentimes destructive occupation. Clay's first effort in behalf of a policy of protection was made in the Legislature of Kentucky in 1808. ”