QUINCY, May 24, 1848.
MY DEAR SIR, — On
behalf of my mother and the few surviving relatives of my late father, as well
as for myself, permit me to express the sense which I entertain of the kindness
expressed in your letter of the 15th instant. Much as the sympathy has been
which the painful event to which you are pleased to allude has called out from
almost all quarters, from none could it have come more gratefully than from
yourself. A kind providence had by a preceding warning in a measure prepared me
to expect the blow, but I confess I was wholly unprepared for so deep and
general a manifestation of the public regard. Besides the soothing influence of
this result to the feelings of those immediately connected with him, I trust,
it may have a wider bearing to prove to all that class of statesmen of which
you as well as he are a prominent example, that the most vehement opposition of
rivals and cotemporaries, though attended with temporary success, avails little
to cloud the deliberate judgment of a later time.
Suffer me, sir, most
respectfully to reciprocate the good will which you are pleased to express
toward myself. I have always looked back with pleasure to the days in which as
a very young man I had some extraordinary opportunities of acquaintance with
the most distinguished men of the country. I have never been anxious to alloy
the impressions obtained in Washington at that period with new ones to be found
in the later society of that capital. Had the statesmen of that day continued
to guide the destinies of the country, its prospects at this time would have
been somewhat different from what they are. But the die is cast.
SOURCE: Calvin Colton, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, pp. 561-2
