can republics to maintain their independence was as a matter of fact beyond reasonable doubt. On March 8, 1822, Monroe sent a message to Congress recommending the recognition of the independent South American governments, which was promptly responded to.
Clay's efforts in behalf of this cause gave him great renown in South America. Some of his speeches were translated into Spanish and read at the head of the revolutionary armies. His name was a household word among the patriots. In the United States, too, his fervid appeals in behalf of an oppressed people fighting for their liberty awakened the memories of the North American war for independence, and called forth strong emotions of sympathy. There is no doubt that those appeals were on his part not a mere manœuvre of opposition, but came straight from his generous impulses. The idea of the whole American continent being occupied by a great family of republics naturally flattered his imagination. That imagination supplied the struggling brethren with all the excellent qualities he desired them to possess, and his chivalrous nature was impatient to rush to their aid. This tendency was reinforced by his general aptness to take a somewhat superficial view of things, and, as is often the case with men of the oratorical temperament, to persuade himself with the gorgeous flow of his own rhetoric. That his own thoughts appear to him originally in the seductive garb of sonorous
