NEW YORK, June 9, 1848.
MY DEAR SIR, — The
mis-representatives of the Whig party have at length consummated the greatest
act of national injustice it was in their power to perform, in the nomination
of a man as their candidate for the Presidency who has rejected the principles
and spurned the organization and discipline of the Whigs. The intelligence has
fallen upon the honest and true-hearted Whigs of this city, and I doubt not of
the country at large, like a clap of thunder; and the execrations of the mass
of the party here, at the treachery by which they have again been overtaken,
are both loud and deep. For yourself, my dear sir, it will be gratifying to
know that this last act of ingratitude has only served to bind you more closely
to the hearts of your friends; and I do but justice to their feelings and my
own when I say that a signal, and I trust, withering rebuke will be promptly
administered to the stock-jobbing politicians for whose selfish purposes this
outrage upon us has been perpetrated. To you no station can bring higher honor
than that which you now enjoy; and, so far as you are individually concerned,
it is not too much to say that an honorable retirement, accompanied with the
heartfelt affection of the whole nation, must be more grateful than the turmoil
and anxieties attendant upon office, however exalted. But it can not and will
not be forgotten, that in your person the integrity and the hopes of the Whig
party have been stricken down, and their existence as a party blasted and
destroyed. And I trust the day is far distant when a forgiveness will be
extended to the base combination between the heartless rivals whom you have
outstripped, both in unexampled devotion to your country and in the favor of
your countrymen, and the truckling harpies, who, like the followers of a camp,
are bent upon plunder alone.
I know, my dear sir,
that you will indulge in no personal regrets at the issue. But at the same
time, allow me, as one of your truest friends, as one who from the moment when
I was invested with the right to express an opinion upon public affairs, have
been a Whig, and a Clay Whig, to beg of you, as an act of justice to your
faithful friends, to withhold any expression of approval of the action of this
Convention. Your magnanimity will be appealed to by those who have stabbed you
and outraged us, as it was when we were betrayed in 1839; but I trust that the
appeal will meet with a different response.
In addressing you in
this earnest and emphatic manner, I feel that I am taking a great, perhaps an
unwarrantable liberty, with you. I plead, as my apology, my integrity as a Whig
and my unalterable veneration for yourself. I speak, moreover, the sentiments
of your hosts of friends in New York, who only find relief from the despondency
which weighs them down, in the proud reflection that they have battled to the
last under your glorious and honored name.
SOURCE: Calvin Colton, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, pp. 562-3
