Of his oratory Robert C. Winthrop wrote after a lapse of years: "I can only bear witness to an impressiveness of speech never exceeded, if ever equaled, within an experience of half a century, during which I have listened to many of the greatest orators on both sides of the Atlantic." As a parliamentary leader, Rhodes calls him the greatest in our history. "His leadership," says Mr. Schurz, "was not of that mean order which merely contrives to organize a personal following; it was the leadership of a statesman zealously striving to promote great public interests."
As a presiding officer he was the most commanding Speaker the National House of Representatives has ever had. Winthrop, who served long with him in Congress, said of him:--"No abler or more commanding presiding officer ever sat in the Speaker's chair on either side of the Atlantic. Prompt, dignified, resolute, fearless, he had a combination of intellectual and physical qualities which made him a natural ruler over men." He was six times elected Speaker, sometimes almost by acclamation; and during the many years which he presided over the House not one of his decisions was ever reversed.
As a Secretary of State, during his term of four years the treaties with foreign countries negotiated by him exceeded in numbers all that had been negotiated by other secretaries, during the previous thirty-five years of our constitutional history. As a diplomat, he showed himself at Ghent more than a match for the trained diplomatists of the old world.
And with all these he was--at his ideal country home, Ashland, surrounded by wooded lawns and fertile acres of beautiful blue-grass land--a most successful farmer and breeder of thoroughbred stock, from the Scotch collie to the thoroughbred race-horse. I have been told by one who knew him as a farmer that no one could guess nearer to the weight of a Shorthorn bullock than he. He was as much at home with horses and horsemen as with senators and diplomats. I have known many men who were friends and followers of Mr. Clay, and from the love and veneration these men had for his memory, I can well understand why the historian Rhodes says, "No man has been loved as the people of the United States loved Henry Clay."