WASHINGTON, December
15, 1849.
MY DEAR SUSAN,—I
received and read with great pleasure your letter of the 19th of October. All
its details of information were agreeable to me, and I hope you will continue
to write to me and to communicate every thing, the minutest circumstance concerning
yourself or your dear family. I have taken apartments at the National Hotel (a
parlor and bed-room adjoining), for the winter. I have an excellent valet, a
freeman, and I am as comfortable as I can be. No advance has been yet made in
Congress, in the public business, owing to the House, from its divided
condition, being yet unable to elect a Speaker. When that will be done is
uncertain; but I suppose from the absolute necessity of the case there will be,
before long, one chosen.
I have been treated
with much consideration by the President and most of his Cabinet; but I have
had yet no very confidential intercourse with the President. I dined with him
this week, and I have been invited to dine with two members of the Cabinet, but
declined on account of a very bad cold. Mr. Clayton sent, me James' diplomatic
note to the Portuguese minister on the case of the General Armstrong, with the
inclosed note from himself. James' note has been well spoken of by the Attorney-General
to me, and I think it creditable. There are some clerical inaccuracies in it,
which ought to be avoided in future copies of his official notes. James might
have added, in respect to the practice of impressment, that "the
Portuguese Secretary, in volunteering a sanction of it, has extended the
British claim, now become obsolete, beyond any limit to which it was ever
asserted by Great Britain herself, she never having pretended that she could
exercise the practice within the Territorial jurisdiction of a third or neutral
power, or any where but on the high seas or in her own ports."
I understood from
Clayton that it was intended by the President to submit to Congress the conduct
of the Portuguese Government, without recommending, at present, any measure of
coercion. It is desirable to get the answer to James' note, as soon as
practicable, if one be returned.
I have heard from
Ashland as late as the 10th instant. All the whites were well; but there had
been a number of cases of small-pox in Lexington, and one of our black men had
caught it, but he was getting well. Think of your present enjoyment of a
delightful climate and tropical fruits, when there fell at Lexington on the
10th instant, a snow six or eight inches deep!
Your brother, the
Doctor, has returned to Louisville. You said nothing in your letter to me about
Thomas, Henry Clay, or my dear Lucy, and your other children. Is Henry going to
school and where?
I believe I did not
mention in my former letters to James that Lucretia Erwin has determined to
take the black vail.
I send herewith a
letter from Mary Ann's husband. My love to James and to all the family.
SOURCE: Calvin
Colton, Editor, The Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, p. 591-3
