This war element, which practically took matters from Madison's hands,
was composed of men who were to measure their careers by decades instead
of years. Its constituents had been reared in the strenuous life of
the frontier. Separated from Old World influence by the Allegheny
barrier, they felt the first impulses of true Americanism. A
continuation of dominant foreign influence under them was impossible.
Instead of seceding to a foreign power, as their fathers had threatened,
these trans-Allegheny frontiersmen had now been absorbed by the Union
and were to secure their long-delayed rights by controlling their own
government, which had once been disposed to neglect them. They were,
for the most part, country-bred lawyers, belonging to the agricultural
and borrowing class rather than the bank-founding, lending Federalists.
In this respect, they would be in accord with Jefferson and Madison,
but totally at variance with them in their inland attitude toward ocean
commerce.
Like true Democrats, they breathed the air of the individual rather
than the masses. Clay was the son of a dissenting clergyman in
aristocratic Virginia, which was still under the spell of an
establishment of religion.
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