CANVASS OF THE ELECTORAL VOTES. 105 ficient reasons to justify the statements he had made, he trusted he should receive the marked reprobation which had been sug gested by the speaker. Let it fall where it might, Mr. Kremer said, he was willing to meet the inquiry, and abide the result." But it is not on Mr. Kremer alone that our indignation should be expended for this miserable attempt to bolster up a profligate calumny just long enough for it to operate on the approaching election. He was merely a tool in the hands of deeper knaves. A thick-headed, illiterate, foolish, good-natured man, he was ready, in his blind attachment to General Jackson, to do any servile deed that might propitiate his idol. He seems to have inwardly repented of the act as soon as it had been committed. He frequently declared his determination to offer an explanation and apology to Mr. Clay; and had gone so far as to draw up a paper for that purpose, which was submitted to the latter. But Mr. Clay replied that the affair had passed from his control into that of the house;—and the rogues, who had taken Mr. Kremer into their keeping, were careful not to allow him to repeat his offer of an apology subsequently when the house chose to let the matter drop. In 1827-28, Mr. Clay, in an address to his constituents, gave a full and interesting history of this affair, together with the sequel, at which we shall glance in our next chapter, and in which General Jackson figured conspicuously. On the 9th of February, 1825, in the presence of both houses of Congress, Mr. Tazewell, from the committee of tellers, reported the votes of the different states for president and vicepresident of the United States. The aggregate was as follows: John Quincy Adams had eighty-four votes; William H. Crawford, forty-one; Andrew Jackson, ninety-nine; and Henry Clay, thirty-seven*—the latter having been deprived, by party intrigue * The vote of Mr. Clay in the primary colleges stood: Ohio, 16; Kentucky, 14; New York, 4; Missouri, 3. It will be seen that Missouri gave her entire vote to Mr. Clay, in 1824, at which time THOMAS H. BENTON took the lead in his support, as the candidate most favorable to Internal Improvements and the Protection of American Industry. Mr. Crawford, it must be remembered, was the regular nominee of the Democratic Congressional caucus, which, though composed of a decided minority of the members belong. ing to that party, claimed the support of all its adherents as a matter of precedent and principle. The "regular ticket" (electoral) was therefore in most states for Crawford; while Mr. Adams's name in the east and General Jackson's in the south and southwest were generally pitched upon by the contemners of caucus pretensions to form a rallying cry against E* and chicanery, of votes in New York and Louisiana-which would have carried him into the house, where he would undoubtedly have been elected president over all other candidates. The president of the senate rose, and declared that no person had received a majority of the votes given for president of the United States;-that Andrew Jackson, John Q. Adams, and William H. Crawford, were the three persons who had received the highest number of votes, and that the remaining duties in the choice of a president now devolved on the house of representatives. He farther declared, that John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, having received one hundred and eighty-two votes, was duly elected vice-president of the United States, to serve for four years from the ensuing fourth day of March. The members of the senate then retired. The constitution provides, that "from the persons having the highest numbers, not exceeding three, on the list voted for as president, the house of representatives shall CHOOSE immediately, by ballot, a president." The friends of General Jackson now, as a matter of course, eagerly advanced the doctrine that a plurality of votes for any one candidate should be considered as decisive of the will of the people, and should influence the members of the house in their votes. As if a mere plurality, forsooth, ought to swallow up a majority! A more dangerous doctrine, and one more directly opposed to the spirit of the constitution, could not well be imagined. It can not be called democratic, for it does not admit the prevalence of the will of the majority in the election. It was, in fact, a dogma engendered for the occasion by the friends of the candidate who happened to come into the house with a plurality of votes. Mr. Clay was not to be dragooned into the admission of any such principle. He resolved to be guided by what was plainly the letter and spirit of the constitution, and to give his vote to those pretensions. Mr. Clay was successful in nearly every state where an electoral ticket was run in his favor; and in New York where the members of the legislature hostile to the caucus candidate finally united on a ticket composed of twenty-five Adams and eleven Clay electors, a majority of the latter were defeated through bad faith, whereby Mr. Clay was thrown out of the House, and Mr. Crawford sent there in his stead. But for this treachery, Mr. Clay would almost certainly have been elected, as his popularity in the House was un bounded. HIS PREFERENCE OF MR. ADAMS. 107 that man of the three now eligible, whom he believed to be the most competent to preside over the destinies of the republic. By a personal visit to Mr. Crawford, he had satisfied himself that that gentleman was too broke down in health to discharge with fitting energy the duties of the chief magistracy. His option lay, therefore, between Messrs. Adams and Jackson. We have seen what were Mr. Clay's views of the character of General Jackson so far back as 1819, when the Seminole question was before the house. Was it possible that he should regard those traits which, in the soldier, had led to conduct at war with the constitution, as qualifications in the president? General Jackson was, furthermore, understood to be hostile to those great systems of internal improvement and protection to home manufactures, which Mr. Clay had spent the best part of his public life in establishing. At least the general's views were vacillating and undecided on these points. Could Mr. Clay be called upon to sacrifice those important interests on the shrine of merely sectional partiality—for the sake of having a western rather than an eastern man to preside over the Union? No! Henry Clay was not to be influenced by such narrow and unworthy considerations. He has himself said: "Had I voted for General Jackson in opposition to the well-known opinions which I entertained of him, one-tenth part of the ingenuity and zeal which have been employed to excite prejudices against me, would have held me up to universal contempt; and, what would have been worse, I should have felt that I really deserved it." According to the testimony of his friend, General Call, General Jackson himself never pected that he would receive the vote of Mr. Clay. With Mr. Adam Mr. Clay had always been on amicable if not on intimate terms. At Ghent, they had differed on a question of public policy, but they both had too much liberality of soul to make their dissimilarity of opinion a cause of personal displeasure and variance. The speaker saw in Mr. Adams, a statesman highly gifted, profoundly learned, and long and greatly experienced in public affairs at home and abroad. How could he in conscience hesitate when the choice lay beween two such men? He did not hesitate. He had never hes itated. Long before he left Kentucky, according to the testimony of the Hon. John J. Crittenden, six of the Kentucky delegation in Congress, and some hundreds of respectable citizens, Mr. Clay declared that he could not imagine the contingency in which he would vote for General Jackson. A still more important witness, in the person of the great and good LAFAYETTE, came forward to testify in Mr. Clay's behalf, as the following extract from his letter to Mr. Clay will show : "My remembrance concurs with your own on this point: that in the latter end of December, either before or after my visit to Annapolis, you being out of the presidential candidature, and after having expressed my abovementioned motives of forbearance, I by way of confidential exception, allowed myself to put a simple, unqualified question, respecting your electioneering guess, and your intended vote. Your answer was, that in your opinion, the actual state of health of Mr. Crawford had limited the contest to a choice between Mr. Adams and General Jackson; that a claim founded on military achievements did not meet your preference, AND THAT YOU HAD CONCLUDED TO VOTE FOR MR. ADAMS." Notwithstanding the flagitious attempt to influence his vote, Mr. Clay unhesitatingly gave it for Mr. Adams, and decided the election in his favor. He went further. When, after he was seated in the presidential chair, Mr. Adams offered him the secretaryship of state, he had the moral courage to accept it in defiance of the storm of calumny, exasperation, and malignant opposition, which he knew that act would bring down upon him. This was a critical period in Mr. Clay's public life—a bold, intrepid, and magnanimous movement. We know that he now thinks it was a mistaken one. In his speech of the 9th of June, 1842, at Lexington, he says: "My error in accept the office arose out of my underrating the power of detraction and the force of ignorance, and iding with too sure a confidence in the conscious integrity and uprightnes of my own motives. Of that ignorance, I had a remarkable and laughabi example on an occasion which I will relate. I was travelling, in 1828, though, I believe it was, Spottsylvania in Virginia, on my return to Washington, in company with some young friends. We halted at night at a tavern, kept by an aged gentleman, who, I quickly perceived, from the disorder and confusion which reigned, had not the happiness to have a wife. After a hurried and bad supper, the old gentleman sat down by me, and, without hearing my name, but understanding that I was from Kentucky, remarked that he had four sons in that state, and that he was very sorry they were divided in politics, two being for Adams and' two for Jackson; he wished they were all for Jackson. Why? I asked him. Because, he said, that fellow Clay, and Adams, had cheated Jackson out of the presidency. Have you ever seen any evidence, my old friend, said I, of that? No, he replied, none, and he REVIVAL OF THE SLANDER. 109 wanted to see none. But, I observed, looking him directly and steadily in the face, suppose Mr. Clay was to come here and assure you, upon his honor, that it was all a vile calumny, and not a word of truth in it, would you believe him? No, replied the old gentleman promptly and emphatically. I said to him, in conclusion, will you be good enough to show me to bed, and bade him good night. The next morning, having in the interval learned my name, he came to me full of apologies, but I at once put him at his ease by assuring him that I did not feel in the slightest degree hurt or offended with him." With deference, we must express our dissent from Mr. Clay in regarding his acceptance of office under Mr. Adams as an 66 error." It may have been, so far as his personal interests were concerned, erroneous, and impolitic; but, in reference to his public duties, it was right; it was honest; it was courageous. Both Madison and Monroe had offered him the highest offices in their gift; but the country was at those times in such a state, that he thought he could make himself more useful in Congress; and he refused them. None but the ignorant and base-minded could credit the monstrous assertion, that he had made the promise of the secretaryship the condition of giving his vote for Mr. Adams. Mr. Clay may have been temporarily injured by the wretched slander; and it will be seen, as we advance in his biography, that after it had been dropped by Kremer, it was revived by General Jackson. But we do not believe that there is at this time a single person of moderate intelligence in the country, who attaches the least credit to the story, thoroughly exploded as it has been by the most abundant and triumphant testimony. It is, therefore, because we have faith in the ultimate prevalence of truth, that we do not think Mr. Clay was in error, when he so far defied his traducers as to accept the very office which they had previously accused him of bargaining for. The clouds which for the moment hide Truth from our sight only make her shine the brighter when they are dissipated. In the words of Spenser : "It often falls in course of common life, That right long time is overborne of wrong, Mr. Clay may still abide, "with a sure confidence, in the conscious integrity and uprightness of his own motives." Slander |