“He ever was, on principle and in feeling, opposed to slavery,” Lincoln said. Clay had long worked for emancipation in Kentucky, and hoped to see it in the country at large. “And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves.” Clay appreciated that emancipation was a practical issue as well as a moral one, and practical matters had to be acknowledged. “Cast into life where slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself.”
