Clay continued to think, not without reason, that the President carried his toleration to a dangerous extreme. He would not have permitted men in office to make their hostility to the administration conspicuous and defiant. But he was far from favoring the use of the appointing and removing power as a political engine. He was opposed to arbitrary removals, as to everything that would give the public offices the character of spoils.
While these were the principles upon which the administration was conducted, the virulent hostility of its opponents continued to crop out in a ceaseless repetition, in speech and press, of the assaults upon its members, which had begun with the election. In May Clay went to Kentucky to meet his family and to take them to Washington. Wherever he passed, his friends greeted him with enthusiastic demonstrations. Public dinners crowded one another, not only in Kentucky, but in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, along his route of travel; but everywhere, in response to expressions of affection and confidence, he felt himself obliged to say something in explanation of his conduct in the last presidential election. The spectre of the “bargain and corruption” charge seemed to pursue him wherever he went.
When he returned to Washington, in August, he was in deep affliction, two of his daughters having died in one month, one of them on her way to the national capital. But as to the state of the public mind he felt somewhat encouraged. He
