NEW YORK, June, 1848.
MY DEAR MR. CLAY, — I
write to you in the fullness of my heart, not to condole with you, for though I
feel all the personal regard toward you which one man can feel for another,
personal considerations are absorbed in those of a public nature.
The Presidency could
have added nothing to your fame, and would have detracted much from your
comfort.
This Government has
had a national existence but little more than sixty years, during nearly forty
of which it has been guided by your counsels. Glorious period! You may justly
regard it with exultation! During this period you have demonstrated the great
problem of the feasibility and permanency of popular government, and almost
every nation in Europe, incited by the example, is now convulsed with the
effort to imitate it. During this period you have impressed upon the country
that high and honorable spirit in our intercourse with foreign nations,
that spirit of conciliation and union among the States which have
preserved us at home and made us respected abroad.
The uninterrupted
and unprecedented prosperity of our national career has not been the work of
accident. Three times, at least, the car of state would have taken the wrong
road, if not the road to destruction, but for your guiding hand: once in
1810–12, once in 1819-20, once in 1830–31. Will no emergency of the kind ever
occur again? When the next storm howls around us, this people, guilty and
appalled, will shrink back covered with fear and dismay at the mischief they
have done. You may say without arrogance, "Weep not for me, but rather
weep for yourselves!" As the scroll of our history unrolls itself, your
times will stand out in bold and bolder relief until it becomes the golden age
of some future people, perhaps as unlike the present as the miserable herd that
now defile the streets of Rome are unlike the associates of the elder Brutus.
Convulsions and sterility immediately and abruptly following a tract of rich
and elevated fertility, make the period of your counsels a stand mark to all
future time.
We are on the eve of
great events. Slavery will now become an immediate and bitter subject of
dispute, and will not be relinquished until it is extinguished or the Union
dissolved. I feel little disposition to commiserate the sufferings of the slave
region. They have brought it upon themselves; they have thrust slavery upon us
in the most offensive way; the policy of slavery governs all their actions;
their conduct in the Convention will not be forgotten; the means they have
taken to render themselves as they fancied more secure on this subject, has
precipitated the discussion accompanied with an acrimony which will not tend to
a friendly adjustment. The Whigs in this quarter every where are joining the
Barnburners, ready to make the slave question the great issue in future. The
next Presidential election (four years hence) will turn upon that point. A.
Barnburner will be elected.
The Whig party, as
such, is dead. The very name will be abandoned, should Taylor be elected, for
"the Taylor party." The last Whig Convention committed the double
crime of suicide and parricide. I loved that party, and whenever and wherever I
shall hereafter discover any portion of my fellow-citizens guided by its
principles, I shall attach myself to them; meantime I consider myself absolved
from all political connection.
It was resolved to
have a ratification meeting here as usual. The General Committee met on Monday
evening, they were surrounded by more than three thousand people spontaneously
collected, and the Committee was compelled to postpone the meeting
indefinitely, in hopes that General Taylor's letter of acceptance will place
himself more distinctly upon Whig ground. They will wait in vain. The
Taylorites begin to think Taylor's election is not quite as certain as they
supposed.
I hasten to the sole
object of this long letter, which is to assure you of my undiminished and
unalterable regard. Mrs. Hall begs me to join her in the expression of these
sentiments and the respectful assurances of our highest esteem.
SOURCE: Calvin Colton, Editor, The Private
Correspondence of Henry Clay, pp. 563-5
