Quotes · Quote card
Quotation from Speeches on the Compromise of 1850 by Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster
“I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me, upon earth, that if the direful event of the dissolution of this Union is to happen, I shall not survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle.”
Speeches on the Compromise of 1850, Clay's speech, February 5-6, 1850, last sentence (Calvin Colton, The Last Seven Years of the Life of Henry Clay (1856), appendix, Internet Archive OCR text)
The close of Clay's last great speech; he died in June 1852.
Citation: "I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me, upon earth, that if the direful event of the dissolution of this Union is to happen, I shall not survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle." — Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, Speeches on the Compromise of 1850, Clay's speech, February 5-6, 1850, last sentence (Calvin Colton, The Last Seven Years of the Life of Henry Clay (1856), appendix, Internet Archive OCR text). (id compromise-of-1850-speeches-q3)
Virtues: Hope
Portrait: Henry Clay, Matthew Harris Jouett, Public domain.
