1811:

"Clay, from Kentucky, spoke against the Bank. He is one of
the finest fellows I have seen here, and one of the finest
orators in the Senate, though I believe the youngest man in
it. The galleries, however, were so much crowded with ladies
and gentlemen, and such expectations had been expressed
concerning his speech, that he was completely frightened,
and acquitted himself very little to his own satisfaction.
He is a man I have great personal regard for."

This was the anti-bank speech which General Jackson used to say had
convinced him of the impolicy of a national bank, and which, with
ingenious malice, he covertly quoted in making up his Bank Veto
Message of 1832.

Mr. Clay's public life proper began in November, 1811, when he
appeared in Washington as a member of the House of Representatives,
and was immediately elected Speaker by the war party, by the decisive
majority of thirty-one. He was then thirty-four years of age. His
election to the Speakership on his first appearance in the House gave
him, at once, national standing. His master in political doctrine and
his partisan chief, Thomas Jefferson, was gone from the scene; and
Clay could now be a planet instead of a satellite. Restive as he had
been under the arrogant aggressions of England, he had schooled
himself to patient waiting, aided by Jefferson's benign sentiments and
great example. But his voice was now for war; and such was the temper
of the public in those months, that the eloquence of Henry Clay,
seconded by the power of the Speaker, rendered the war unavoidable.