A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky / Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.

by Unknown

Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character. General Jackson cannot be insensible to its value, for he appears to be the most anxious to set forth the loftiness and purity of his own. How has he treated mine? During the dispensation of the hospitalities of the hermitage, in the midst of a mixed company of individuals from various states, he permits himself to make certain statements respecting my friends and me, which, if true, would forever dishonor and degrade us. The words are hardly passed from his mouth, before they are committed to paper, by one of his guests, and transmitted in the form of a letter to another state, when they are published in a newspaper, and thence circulated throughout the union. And now he pretends that these statements were made ‘without any calculation that they were to be thrown into the public journals.’ Does he reprove the indiscretion of this guest who had violated the sanctity of a conversation at the hospitable board? Far from it. The public is incredulous. It cannot be, general Jackson would be so wanting in delicacy and decorum. The guest appeals to him for the confirmation of the published statements; and the general promptly addresses a letter to him, in which ‘he unequivocally confirms (says Mr. Carter Beverley,) all I have said regarding the overture made to him pending the last presidential election before congress; and he asserts a great deal more than he ever told me.’ I should be glad to know if all the versions of the tale have now made their appearance, and whether general Jackson will allege, that he did not ‘calculate’ upon the publication of his letter of the sixth of June.

The general states that the unknown envoy used the terms, ‘Mr. Clay’s friends,’ to the exclusion, therefore, of myself, but he nevertheless inferred that he had come from me. Now, why did he draw this inference contrary to the import of the statement which he received? Does not this disposition to deduce conclusions unfavorable to me, manifest the spirit which actuates him? And does not general Jackson exhibit throughout his letter a desire to give acoloring to the statements of his friend, the distinguished member of congress, higher than they would justify? No one should ever resort to implication but from necessity. Why did he not ascertain from the envoy if he had come from me? Was any thing more natural than that general Jackson should ascertain the persons who had deputed the envoy? If his slacked sensibility and indignant virtue and patriotism would not allow him to inquire into particulars, ought he to have hazarded the assertion, that I was privy to the proposal, without assuring himself of the fact; could he not, after rejecting the proposal, continuing, as he did, on friendly terms with the organ of it, have satisfied himself if I were conusant of it? If he had not time then, might he not have ascertained the fact from his friend or from me, during the intervening two and a half years? The compunctions of his own conscience appear for a moment to have visited him towards the conclusion of his letter, for he there does say, ‘that in the supposition stated, I may have done injustice to Mr. Clay; if so, the gentleman informing me can explain.’ No good or honorable man will do another voluntarily any injustice. It was not necessary that general Jackson should have done me any. And he cannot acquit himself of the rashness and iniquity of his conduct towards me, by referring at this late day to a person whose name is withheld from the public. This compendious mode of administering justice, by first hanging and then trying a man, however justifiable it may be, according to the precepts of the Jackson code, is sanctioned by no respectable system of jurisprudence.

It is stated in the letter of the sixth of June, that the overture was made early in January; and that the second day after the communication, it ‘was announced in the newspapers, that Mr. Clay had come out openly and avowedly in favor of Mr. Adams.’ The object of this statement is obvious. It is to insinuate that the proposal which was rejected with disdain by general Jackson, was accepted with promptitude by Mr. Adams. This renders the fact as to the time of the alleged annunciation very important. It is to be regretted that general Jackson had not been a little more precise. It was early in January that the overture was made, and the second day after, the annunciation of my intention took place. Now, I will not assert that there may not have been some speculations in the newspapers about that time, (although I do not believe there were any speculations so early,) as to the probable vote which I should give; but I should be glad to see any newspaper which the second day after early in January, asserted in its columns, that I had come out ‘openly and avowedly in favor of Mr. Adams.’ I challenge the production of such a paper. I do not believe my intention so to vote for Mr. Adams was announced in the newspapers openly and avowedly during the whole month of January, or at any rate until late in that month. The only avowal of myintention to vote for him, which was publicly made in the newspapers, prior to the election, is contained in my letter to Judge Brooke, which is dated the twenty-eighth of January. It was first published in the Enquirer at Richmond, some time in the ensuing month. I go further; I do not believe any newspaper at Washington can be produced, announcing, before the latter part of January, the fact, whether upon my avowal or not, of my intention to vote for Mr. Adams. General Jackson’s memory must deceive him. He must have confounded events and circumstances. His friend, Mr. George Kremer, in his letter to the Columbian Observer bearing date the twenty-fifth of January, has, according to my recollection of the public prints, a claim to the merit of being the first, or among the first, to announce to the public my intended vote. That letter was first published at Philadelphia, and returned in the Columbian Observer to Washington city, on the thirty-first of January. How long before its date that letter was written to Mr. Kremer, does not appear. Whether there be any connection made by the distinguished member of congress, and that letter, perhaps general Jackson can explain.

At the end of more than two years after a corrupt overture has been made to general Jackson, he now, for the first time, openly proclaims it. It is true, as I have ascertained since the publication of Mr. Beverley’s Fayetteville letter, the general has been for a long time secretly circulating the charge. Immediately on the appearance at Washington of that letter in the public prints, the editor of the Telegraph asserted, in his paper, that general Jackson had communicated the overture to him about the period of the election, not as he now states, but according to Mr. Beverley’s version of the tale. Since I left Washington on the tenth of last month, I have understood that general Jackson has made a similar communication to several other persons at different and distant points. Why has the overture been thus clandestinely circulated? Was it that through the medium of the Telegraph, the leading paper supporting the interest of general Jackson, and through his other depositories, the belief of the charge should be duly and gradually infused into the public mind, and thus contribute to the support of his cause? The zeal and industry with which it has been propagated, the daily columns of certain newspapers can testify. Finding the public still unconvinced, has the general found it to be necessary to come out in proper person, through the thin veil of Mr. Carter Beverley’s agency?

When the alleged overture was made, the election remained undecided. Why did not general Jackson then hold up to universal scorn and indignation the infamous bearer of the proposal, and those who dared to insult his honor, and tamper with his integrity? If he had at that time denounced all the infamous parties concerned, demanded an inquiry in the house of representatives, and establishedby satisfactory proof the truth of his accusation, there might and probably would have been a different result to the election. Why, when at my instance, a committee was on the fifth day of February, 1825, (only four days before the election,) appointed to investigate the charges of Mr. Kremer, did not general Jackson present himself and establish their truth? Why, on the seventh of that month, two days before the election, when the committee reported that Mr. Kremer declined to come forward, and that ‘if they knew of any reason for such investigation, they would have asked to be clothed with the proper power, but not having themselves any such knowledge, they have felt it to be their duty only to lay before the house the communication which they have received;’ why did not general Jackson authorize a motion to recommit the report, and manfully come forward with all his information? The congress of the nation is in session. An important election has devolved on it. All eyes are turned towards Washington. The result is awaited with intense anxiety and breathless expectation. A corrupt proposition, affecting the election, is made to one of the candidates. He receives it, is advised to accept it, deliberates, decides upon it. A committee is in session to investigate the very charge. The candidate, notwithstanding, remains profoundly silent, and, after the lapse of more than two years, when the period of another election is rapidly approaching, in which he is the only competitor for the office, for the first time, announces it to the American republic! They must have more than an ordinary share of credulity who do not believe that general Jackson labors under some extraordinary delusion.

It is possible that he may urge by way of excuse, for what must be deemed his culpable concealment of meditated corruption, that he did not like to volunteer as a witness before the committee, or to transmit to it the name of his friend, the distinguished member of the house of representatives, although it is not very easy to discern any just reason for his volunteering now, which would not have applied with more force at that time. But what apology can be made for his failure to discharge his sacred duty as an American senator? More than two months after the alleged overture, my nomination to the office which I now hold, was made to the senate of the United States, of which general Jackson was then a sworn member. On that nomination he had to deliberate and to act in the most solemn manner. If I were privy to a corrupt proposal to general Jackson, touching the recent election; if I had entered into a corrupt bargain with Mr. Adams to secure his elevation, I was unworthy of the office to which I was nominated; and it was the duty of general Jackson, if he really possessed the information which he now puts forward, to have moved the senate to appoint a committee of inquiry, and by establishing my guilt, to have preserved the national councils from an abominable contamination.As the conspiracy of George Kremer & Co. had a short time before meanly shrunk from appearing before the committee of the house of representatives, to make good their charges, I requested a senator of the United States, when my nomination should be taken up, to ask of the senate the appointment of a committee of inquiry, unless it should appear to him to be altogether unnecessary. One of our senators was compelled, by the urgency of his private business, to leave Washington before my nomination was disposed of; and as I had but little confidence in the fidelity and professed friendship of the other, I was constrained to present my application to a senator from another state. I was afterwards informed that when it was acted upon, general Jackson, and every other senator present, was silent as to the imputation now made; no one presuming to question my honor or integrity. How can general Jackson justify to his conscience or to his country, this palpable breach of his public duty? It is in vain to say that he gave a silent negative vote. He was in possession of information which, if true, must have occasioned the rejection of my nomination. It does not appear that any other senator possessed the same information. Investigation was alike due to the purity of the national councils, to me, and, as an act of strict justice, to all the other parties implicated. It is impossible for him to escape from the dilemma that he has been faithless as a senator of the United States, or has lent himself to the circulation of an atrocious calumny.

After the election, general Jackson was among the first who eagerly pressed his congratulations upon his successful rival. If Mr. Adams had been guilty of the employment of impure means to effect his election, general Jackson ought to have disdained to sully his own hands by touching those of his corrupt competitor.

On the tenth of February, 1825, the very next day after the election, general Jackson was invited to a public dinner at Washington, by some of his friends. He expressed to them his wish that he might be excused from accepting the invitation, because, alluding to the recent election, he said, ‘any evidence of kindness and regard, such as you propose, might, by many, be viewed as conveying with it EXCEPTION, murmurings, and feelings of complaint, which I sincerely hope belong to none of my friends.’ More than one month after the corrupt proposal is pretended to have been received, and after, according to the insinuation of general Jackson, a corrupt arrangement had been made between Mr. Adams and me: after the actual termination of an election, the issue of which was brought about, according to general Jackson, by the basest means, he was unwilling to accept the honors of a public dinner, lest it should imply even an exception against the result of the election.

General Jackson professes in his letter of the sixth of June—Iquote again his words—‘to have always intended, should Mr. Clay come out over his own signature, and deny having any knowledge of the communication made by his friends to my friends, and to me, that I would give him the name of the gentleman through whom that communication came.’ He pretends never to have seen the Fayetteville letter; and yet the pretext of a denial under my signature is precisely that which had been urged by the principal editors who sustain his cause. If this be an unconcerted, it is nevertheless a most wonderful coincidence. The general never communicated to me his professed intention, but left me in entire ignorance of his generous purpose; like the overture itself, it was profoundly concealed from me. There was an authorized denial from me, which went to the circle of the public prints, immediately after the arrival at Washington of the Fayetteville letter. In that denial my words are given. They were contained in a letter dated at Washington city on the eighteenth day of April last, and are correctly stated to have been ‘that the statement that his (my) friends had made such a proposition as the latter describes to the friends of general Jackson was, as far as he knew or believed, utterly destitute of foundation; that he was unwilling to believe that general Jackson had made any such statement; but that no matter with whom it had originated, he was fully persuaded it was a gross fabrication of the same calumnious character with the Kremer story, put forth for the double purpose of injuring his public character, and propping the cause of general Jackson; and then for himself and for his friends he defied the substantiation of the charge before any fair tribunal whatever.’ Such were my own words, transmitted in the form of a letter from a friend to a known person. Whereas the charge which they repelled was contained in a letter written by a person then unknown to some person also unknown. Did I not deny the charge under my own signature, in my card of the thirty-first of January, 1825, published in the National Intelligencer? Was not there a substantial denial of it in my letter to Judge Brooke, dated the twenty-eighth of the same month? In my circular to my constituents? In my Lewisburg speech? And may I not add, in the whole tenor of my public life and conduct? If general Jackson had offered to furnish me the name of a member of congress, who was capable of advising his acceptance of a base and corrupt proposition, ought I to have resorted to his infamous and discredited witness?

It has been a thousand times asserted and repeated, that I violated instructions which I ought to have obeyed. I deny the charge; and I am happy to have this opportunity of denying it in the presence of my assembled constituents. The general assembly requested the Kentucky delegation to vote in a particular way. A majority of that delegation, including myself, voted in opposition to that request. The legislature did not intend to give an imperativeinstruction. The distinction between a request and an instruction was familiar to the legislature, and their rolls attest that the former is always addressed to the members of the house of representatives, and the latter only to the senators of the United States.