NEW ORLEANS, March 7, 1849.
MY DEAR SIR,—I
received your last letter, transmitting one which is returned. Many thanks are
due to you for various communications received during the past winter, and
which afforded me much valuable information. I should have before acknowledged
them, but for the consequences of my fall, which for a time disabled me from
both walking and writing.
The project of
assuming the debt of Texas on the consideration of her relinquishment of her
territorial claim beyond the Nueces, is worthy of serious examination. The
difficulty in the way will be the Free Soil question.
I am most anxious
that you should obtain some good appointment under the present Administration.
You, I think, eminently deserve it. Whether I can aid you or not, I can not at
present say. My relations to the President, on my part, and, as far as I know,
on his, are amicable; but I have had no proof of any desire to confer or
consult with me on any subject. Some of his warm and confidential friends, I
have reason to know, view me with jealousy, if not enmity. While self-respect
will restrain me from volunteering any opinion or advice, unless I know it will
be acceptable, public duty will equally restrain me from offering any
opposition to the course of his Administration, if, as I hope and anticipate,
it should be conducted on principles which we have so long cherished and
adhered to.
I hope to reach
home, and to see you in all this month, when there will be time enough to talk
over all these and other matters.
I did not go to the
Call Session, because, supposing that it would be short and formal, and without
any serious division, I disliked encountering, in my lame condition, a journey
so long in the winter. I am, etc.
SOURCE: Calvin
Colton, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, p. 585-6
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