NEW ORLEANS, January 26, 1849.
MY DEAR SIR,—I met
with an accidental but violent fall a week ago, in carelessly descending a
flight of stairs, to receive a gentleman who bore me a letter of introduction,
and I got terribly bruised. I broke no bones, but it disabled me, for the
present, from walking without assistance, and almost from writing.
I received yesterday
your favor of the 12th, and to-day that of the 14th. I regret extremely that
the use of my name, in connection with the office of Senator, should have
created any division among the Whigs, or excited any dissatisfaction with any
one. God knows that I have no personal desire to return to that body, nor any
private or ambitious purposes to promote by resuming a seat in it. I expressed
to you and to other friends, at the period of my departure from home, the exact
state of my feelings, when I declared that I could not reconcile it to my
feelings to become a formal or an avowed candidate; and that if the General
Assembly had any other person in view, I did not wish to interfere with him. I
added that, if, nevertheless, the Legislature thought proper to require my
services in the Senate, deference to their will, a sense of public duty, and the
hope of doing some good, would prompt me to accept the office.
These views are
unchanged. According to them, it follows that I have no desire to have my name
pressed upon the General Assembly, and I hope that it will not be presented,
unless it is manifestly the free and voluntary wish of a majority of that body.
It would be a great mortification to me to be thought to be solicitous for that
office, and to be supposed to be seeking it from the reluctant grant of the
Legislature. I hope that my friends will act in consonance with the state of my
feelings, and not suffer my name to be used but on the conditions which I have
stated.
SOURCE: Calvin
Colton, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, p. 583-4
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