is known that his resonant declamation produced a prodigious impression upon his hearers, and that after one of the large field meetings held in the neighborhood of Lexington, where he had spoken after George Nicholas, a man noted for his eloquence, he and Nicholas were put in a carriage and drawn by the people through the streets of the town amid great shouting and huzzaing.
It was not, however, until four years afterward, in 1803, that he was elected to a seat in the legislature of the state, having been brought forward as a candidate without his own solicitation. The sessions in which he participated were not marked by any discussions or enactments of great importance; but Clay, who had so far been only the remarkable man of Lexington and vicinity, soon was recognized as the remarkable man of the state. In such debates as occurred, he measured swords with the “big men” of the legislature who thus far had been considered unsurpassed; and the attention attracted by his eloquence was such that the benches of the Senate became empty when he spoke in the House.
At this time, too, he paid his first tribute to what is euphoniously called the spirit of chivalry. A Mr. Bush, a tavern-keeper at Frankfort, was assaulted by one of the magnates of Kentucky, Colonel Joseph Hamilton Daviess, then District Attorney of the United States. The Colonel's influence was so powerful that no attorney at Frankfort would institute an action against him for Mr. Bush.
