Monday, September 11, 2023

Senator Henry Clay to Adam Beatty, April 28, 1851

ASHLAND, April 28, 1851.

MY DEAR SIR,—I received your favor transmitting two letters, one addressed to yourself and the other in reply to it, and I thank you for the opportunity afforded me of perusing them.

If the course of ——— affords cause of regret, I am grateful for the firmness and fidelity with which you remained attached to me in 1848, as upon all former occasions.

The nomination made of General Taylor, in Philadelphia, has now no other than an historical interest. It has long ceased to affect me. I fear, indeed, that it has had a pernicious influence upon the Whig cause, but of that we shall hereafter be able better to judge. I concur entirely in the views presented in your reply to ———. Had I been nominated I am perfectly confident that I should have obtained every electoral vote which he received, and, besides them, the vote of Ohio certainly, and that of Indiana probably. My majority in Pennsylvania would have been greater than that which was given to him. But the thing is passed, and no one has more quietly submitted to the event than I have.

I was very sorry that circumstances were such as not to admit of my calling to see you on my return home; but I hope we may yet live to meet each other. I returned by the route of Cuba and New Orleans, and was highly gratified with my visit to that delightful island.

SOURCE: Calvin Colton, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, p. 615-6

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