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Updated: May 17, 2025
Calhoun and Webster were, in temperament and belief, as far apart as the poles; Clay stood between them, "the great compromiser." Calhoun and Webster were greater than Clay, for they possessed a larger genius and a broader culture; and Webster was a greater man than Calhoun, because he possessed the truer vision. Calhoun died in 1850; Clay and Webster in 1852.
That no dramatic interest might be lacking when, in 1851, Charles Sumner entered the Senate chamber to take the oath of office, it came about that Henry Clay, the great Compromiser, left the Senate, going out at one door, on the very day that Conscience, in the person of this Puritan, entered it by the other door.
He would have a low tariff for the United States, if the United States would grant Canada a low tariff he had answered; but the United States would not grant Canada any tariff concessions. And the grand old guard of Whigs had jeered back that he was "a compromiser" and "a trimmer," who tacked to every breeze and never met an issue squarely in his life.
Consider how much more terrible the shock of change will be when it does come, and how much less able will men be to meet it, and to emerge successfully from it. Perhaps the compromiser shrinks, not because he fears to march alone, but because he thinks that the time has not yet come for the progressive idea which he has made his own, and for whose triumph one day he confidently hopes.
Seward, who had no doubt hoped, by kindly words of conciliation, to avert the threatened break in the ranks of the Republican party. Mr. Seward had never in his Congressional career been a compromiser, but he now worked most earnestly to bring about an accommodation between the Administration and Congress.
The famous tracing of the Creator's footsteps, undertaken by a gifted compromiser, was felt by even the most bigoted to be a lame rejoinder.
I am no compromiser, no treaty-maker, no haggler, no beggar. I live according to my own law. I must, where other people merely should or may, or may not. Whoever does not comprehend that has nothing in common, one way or the other, with me.” She was terrified at the presumptuousness of his words; and yet there was a feeling in her of joy and pride: she felt a desire to be for him, to be with him.
The liar must have things he will not lie about, the thief things he will not steal, the compromiser things he will not compromise, the practical man in the pulpit, in politics, in business, in the professor's chair, or editorial tribune, things he will not sacrifice, whatever the cost. That is "practical honor."
Whether, apart from these verifiable facts, it also inheres in a spiritual principle, is a merely curious speculation. Locke, compromiser that he was, passively tolerated the belief in a substantial soul behind our consciousness. But his successor Hume, and most empirical psychologists after him, have denied the soul, save as the name for verifiable cohesions in our inner life.
Amid such a confused and violent hurly-burly the perplexed body of order-loving citizens were, with reason, seriously alarmed. To the great relief of these people and to the equal disgust of the extremist politicians, Henry Clay, the "great compromiser," was now announced to appear once more in the rôle which all felt that he alone could play.
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