Henry Clay to James Clay, February 21, 1848

WASHINGTON, February 21, 1848.

MY DEAR SON, — Mr. Adams was striken to-day in his seat in the House of Representatives with paralysis, and, if not now dead, it is believed that he can not live until night. Both houses immediately adjourned.

The court has not yet decided my cause, but as it has a press of business before it, I do not draw any unfavorable conclusion from the delay. I can not lose it.

I shall leave this city the day after to-morrow for Philadelphia on Mr. Shelby's business, and shall be detained there about a week.

Mr. Trist has certainly concluded a treaty with the Mexican Commissioners, which is now in this city. I understand that it cedes the boundary of the Rio Bravo, all New Mexico, and Upper California; and that we are to pay fifteen millions of dollars, besides assuming the payment of the debt due from Mexico to our citizens. I am told that the treaty will be submitted to the Senate for its advice, etc.

I wrote to your mother that I had received the check which you sent me from New Orleans.

My love to Susan, Lucy, and your other children.

SOURCE: Calvin Colton, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, p. 556

Charles F. Adams to Henry Clay, May 24, 1848

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