AT THE WHIG NATIONAL CONVENTION OF

YOUNG MEN.

BALTIMORE, MAY 4, 1840.

[IN December, 1839, William Henry Harrison was nominated by the Harrisburg National Whig Convention as candidate for the presidency; and to promote this object there was held at Baltimore, May 4, 1840, a National Convention of Whig young men, on which occasion Mr. Clay delivered the following speech. His full and cheerful acquiescence in the nomination of General Harrison was characteristic alike of his nature, and prudence, and patriotism; for he could not but feel that a great wrong had been done to himself in that nomination. That Convention would never have committed so great a folly-we might call it a political crime-if they had been aware of the popular revolution then in progress against the Jackson dynasty, and if they had not been overruled by leaders of the party unworthy of the influence which they wielded, and who afterward repented in dust and ashes for their great fault. For that was the grand mistake which, by the death of Harrison and the treason of Tyler, lost to the Whig party and to the country forever all the advantages of the great Whig victory of 1840. They rallied in 1844 on Mr. Clay; but it was too late. They were demoralized as a party by their rejection of Mr. Clay in 1840, and were soon disbanded beyond hope of reorganization. It was no longer a Whig party in 1848, and General Taylor was elected as a noparty man.*]

MR. CLAY commenced by a reference to the north-west wind, which blew almost a gale, and compared it happily to the popular voice of the immense multitude who were present. Difficult as it was to be heard by such a throng, he said he could not refrain from obeying the general summons, and responding to the call. He was truly grateful for the honor

*See Chapter IV., on The Fall of the Whig Party, in The Last Seven Years of Henry Clay.

conferred upon him. This, said he, is no time to argue; the time for dis cussion has passed, the nation has already pronounced its sentence. I behold here the advanced guard. A revolution, by the grace of God and the will of the people, will be achieved. William Henry Harrison will be elected President of the United States.

We behold, continued Mr. Clay, in his emphatic and eloquent manner, the ravages brought upon our country under the revolutionary administrations of the present and the past. We see them in a disturbed country, in broken hopes, in deranged exchanges, in the mutilation of the highest constitutional records of the country. All these are the fruits of the party in power, and a part of that revolution which has been in progress for the last ten years. But this party, Mr. Clay thought he could say, had been, or was demolished. As it had demolished the institutions of the country, so it had fallen itself. As institution after institution had fallen by it, and with them interest after interest, until a general and wide-spread ruin had come upon the country, so now the revolution was to end in the destruction of the party and the principles which had been instrumental in our national sufferings.

This, said Mr. Clay, is a proud day for the patriot. It animated his own bosom with hope, and I, he added, am here to mingle my hopes with yours, my heart with yours, and my exertions with your exertions. Our enemies hope to conquer us, but they are deluded, and doomed to disappointment.

Mr. Clay then alluded most happily, and amid the cheers of all around him, to the union of the whigs. We are, said he, all whigs, we are all Harrison men. We are united. We must triumph.

One word of myself, he said, referring to the national convention which met at Harrisburg in December last. That convention was composed of as enlightened and as respectable a body of men as were ever assembled in the country. They met, deliberated, and after a full and impartial deliberation, decided that William Henry Harrison was the man best calculated to unite the whigs of the Union against the present executive. General Harrison was nominated, and cheerfully, and without a moment's hesitation, I gave my hearty concurrence in that nomination. From that moment to the present, I have had but one wish, one object, one desire, and that is, to secure the election of the distinguished citizen who received the suffrages of the convention.

Allow me here to say, continued Mr. Clay, that his election is certain. This I say, not in any boasting or over-confident sense, far from it. But I feel sure, almost, that there are twenty States who will give their votes for Harrison. Do not the glories of this day authorize the anticipation of such a victory? I behold before me more than twenty thousand freemen, and is it anticipating too much to say that such an assembly as this is a sign ominous of triumph?

Mr. Clay then warned his friends of two great errors in political warfare

-too much confidence, and too much despondency. Both were to be feared. There should be no relaxation. The enemy were yet powerful in numbers, and strong in organization. It became the whigs, therefore, to abstain from no laudable exertion necessary to success. Should we fail, he added, should Mr. Van Buren be re-elected-which calamity God avert -though he would be the last man to despair of the republic, he believed the struggle of restoring the country to its former glory would be almost a hopeless one. That calamity, however, or the alternative, was left with the twenty thousand whigs here assembled.

We received our liberty, said Mr. Clay, in conclusion, from our revolutionary ancestors, and we are bound in all honor, to transfer it unimpaired to our posterity. The breeze which this day blows from the right quarter, is the promise of that popular breeze which will defeat our adversaries, and make William Henry Harrison the President of the United States.

STATE OF THE COUNTRY UNDER MR. VAN

BUREN.

HANOVER COUNTY, VIRGINIA, JUNE 27, 1840.

[HERE we find Mr. Clay in a very interesting position-in his native State and native county, surrounded by those who were native to the same soil that gave him birth. It was also in the height of a most interesting and eventful presidential campaign that of 1840. For twelve, we may say for sixteen years, Mr. Clay had been battling for his country against the strongest and most popular man that ever rose to eminence in the councils of the nation, and who, as Mr. Clay believed, had not only greatly wronged himself, but wronged his country more. These views are fully expressed in this speech, as well as elsewhere. But, for some cause or causes, the country, after General Jackson's advent to power, had been getting into great and still greater commercial and financial difficulties, when naturally and under good government, it should have gone forward in a career of the greatest prosperity. He who has attentively read Mr. Clay's speeches during this period, and been an attentive observer of the political history of the time, will have no difficulty in ascertaining the true causes of those public calamities, which, running through General Jackson's, had culminated under Mr. Van Buren's, administration. The country could bear it no longer, and was at this moment in the midst of a great political revolution on this account. The people had trusted in General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren till they saw that no relief came, but that things were waxing worse and worse. They came at last to the resolution of having a change of government and of public policy, and General Harrison was elected in 1840 by an overwhelming majority. Unfortunately, General Harrison died in thirty days after he was inaugurated, and John Tyler, the vicepresident, succeeded to the presidential chair. A vain, weak, and ambitious man, instead of devoting himself patriotically, in conjunction with the party that had raised him to power, to

carry out Whig policy by the adoption of Whig measures, he immediately took counsel of himself to adopt a policy and pursue a course that should make himself president for the next term of four years, by quarreling with the Whigs, embarrassing the legislation of a Whig Congress, vetoing some of their most important measures, and utterly defeating the great object of the people in a change of administration. The nation was confounded by the treason of a man whom the people had elected as vice-president, and who succeeded to the chair of president by the death of his principal; who affected to weep because Mr. Clay was not nominated at Harrisburg, but who, finding himself unexpectedly chief magistrate of the republic, and hoping to be elected to that place at the end of four years, took the first opportunity to forfeit Mr. Clay's confidence by his infidelity, and to set up his own policy against that of the Whig party. His apostacy and treachery brought out the following strong language from the Hon. John Davis, senator from Massachusetts -commonly called "honest John"-in a letter to Mr. Clay, dated Worcester, Mass., Oct. 14, 1843: "Corruption and Tyler, and Tyler and corruption, will stick together as long as Cataline and treason. The name of Tyler will stink in the nostrils of the people; for the history of our government affords no such palpable example of the prostitution of executive patronage to the wicked purposes of bribery."* The Whig Congress found itself thwarted by Mr. Tyler at almost every point of important legislation. They repealed the Sub-Treasury act, which Mr. Tyler approved; but he vetoed the fiscal (national) bank bill, which was intended to take the place of the Sub-Treasury, and which was vitally important to the country. The tariff of 1842 was also permitted to remain, till it was superseded by the tariff of 1846. But in the main, Mr. Tyler set himself in vigorous opposition to the Whig party, and prevented their policy from being carried out; and in this way, the nation had not half recovered from the disasters of the Jackson dynasty, before the same old incubus was replaced on its bosom by the election and inauguration of James K. Polk, and the Sub-Treasury was re-enacted, with the tariff of 1846. Such was the result of the great Whig triumph of 1840, through the treason of John Tyler; for if Tyler had been true to the party that raised him to power, the Whig policy would have been carried out, and Mr. Clay would have succeeded to the presidency in 1844.]

* Private Correspondence of Henry Clay, p. 480.