Senator Henry Clay to Susan Jacob Clay, December 15, 1849

WASHINGTON, December 15, 1849.

MY DEAR SUSAN,—I received and read with great pleasure your letter of the 19th of October. All its details of information were agreeable to me, and I hope you will continue to write to me and to communicate every thing, the minutest circumstance concerning yourself or your dear family. I have taken apartments at the National Hotel (a parlor and bed-room adjoining), for the winter. I have an excellent valet, a freeman, and I am as comfortable as I can be. No advance has been yet made in Congress, in the public business, owing to the House, from its divided condition, being yet unable to elect a Speaker. When that will be done is uncertain; but I suppose from the absolute necessity of the case there will be, before long, one chosen.

I have been treated with much consideration by the President and most of his Cabinet; but I have had yet no very confidential intercourse with the President. I dined with him this week, and I have been invited to dine with two members of the Cabinet, but declined on account of a very bad cold. Mr. Clayton sent, me James' diplomatic note to the Portuguese minister on the case of the General Armstrong, with the inclosed note from himself. James' note has been well spoken of by the Attorney-General to me, and I think it creditable. There are some clerical inaccuracies in it, which ought to be avoided in future copies of his official notes. James might have added, in respect to the practice of impressment, that "the Portuguese Secretary, in volunteering a sanction of it, has extended the British claim, now become obsolete, beyond any limit to which it was ever asserted by Great Britain herself, she never having pretended that she could exercise the practice within the Territorial jurisdiction of a third or neutral power, or any where but on the high seas or in her own ports."

I understood from Clayton that it was intended by the President to submit to Congress the conduct of the Portuguese Government, without recommending, at present, any measure of coercion. It is desirable to get the answer to James' note, as soon as practicable, if one be returned.

I have heard from Ashland as late as the 10th instant. All the whites were well; but there had been a number of cases of small-pox in Lexington, and one of our black men had caught it, but he was getting well. Think of your present enjoyment of a delightful climate and tropical fruits, when there fell at Lexington on the 10th instant, a snow six or eight inches deep!

Your brother, the Doctor, has returned to Louisville. You said nothing in your letter to me about Thomas, Henry Clay, or my dear Lucy, and your other children. Is Henry going to school and where?

I believe I did not mention in my former letters to James that Lucretia Erwin has determined to take the black vail.

I send herewith a letter from Mary Ann's husband. My love to James and to all the family.

SOURCE: Calvin Colton, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, p. 591-3