HIS NAME AND HIS FAME.

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his fame. The wonder of the wise and the good that he was not president, would speak louder in his behalf, and be a prouder tribute to his worth, than their exultation at his success. The absence of his bust from the triumph, will be more noted than its presence could ever be.

Whatever the Future may have in store, "the Past is secure." His name lives in the hearts of his countrymen. His fame is incorporate with the history of the republic. May they both be blended with the highest honor which a free people can bestow! NEW YORK, May, 1848.

END OF SARGENT'S LIFE OF CLAY.

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XXX.*

THE PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST OF 1848.

MR. CLAY'S name, in connection with the Presidency, was again presented to the Whig National Convention which met at Philadelphia, in June, 1848. It is due to his unchanging friends that the grounds on which they urged his nomination at this time should be fairly set forth.

There is a sense in which Mr. Clay was not, and for more than twenty years had not been, a popular man. His name was not calculated to draw to the standard on which it was inscribed that large class who are habitually spoken of as "the floating vote ;" and who incline to this party or that from no regard to the principles it advocates, or the measures it supports, but simply or mainly from personal admiration of its leading candidate or exultation over his achievements. On the contrary, the Whig party, in presenting Mr. Clay for President, must count on the support of those only whose intelligent convictions had impelled them to regard with favor its distinctive objects—its leading aims and aspirations.

But with all, or nearly all, those who did cherish this sympathy, Mr. Clay was not only popular, but decidedly the most popular candidate that could be selected; he was the very man, confessedly, whom nine-tenths of the Whigs of the whole Union preferred to all other men for, President. His Genius, his Talents, his Eloquence, his Patriotism, and, in the better sense, his popularity, had for twenty years rendered him the practical and conceded champion and master-spirit of the Whig party, of which he might without extravagance have been termed the creating life, the animating soul. If the question had been, "Whom do the Whigs desire to elect President?" it was already most emphatically decided. No one pretended to doubt that the first choice of an immense majority of the Whigs was Henry Clay.

For this chapter, and all that follows it, the reader will hold the Editor solely respon sible.

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The first question, then, for practical consideration was this Can Mr. Clay be elected? Is the Whig party strong enough, in and of itself, to nominate the man of its choice with a reasonable probability of electing him?

Mr. Clay, it was notorious, had been repeatedly beaten; but only once when he was sustained by the full strength of the Whig party. The scrub race of 1824 had only demonstrated one thing the hostility of the people to the abuses and corrup tions of congressional caucuses. All beyond this was accidental

fortuitous. In 1832, the Anti-Jackson strength was divided by Anti-Masonry, which abstracted from Mr. Clay the votes of several States which he would otherwise have carried. And in 1844, Mr. Clay was barely beaten by the Kane Letter swindle in Pennsylvania, whereby a large body of voters were carried against him by the preposterously false and impudent, but nevertheless successful, assumption that Mr. Polk was the better Protectionist of the two, and were drawn to swell the vote of the latter under banners inscribed "Polk, Dallas, and the Tariff of '42"-by the terrors of Nativism which had been infused into the great body of our adopted citizens by the Church-burning and other acts of violence committed in Philadelphia, in the spring and early summer of that year-by the audacious and persistent assertion of Birney and Co. that the Annexation of Texas was as much favored by Mr. Clay as by Mr. Polk, and more likely to be effected by the former, because of his far greater ability and influence-and by the atrocious frauds and illegal votings, whereof the Plaquemine canvass in Louisiana afforded the most conspicuous illustration. That a majority of the legal voters of New-York and Louisiana cast their ballots for Mr. Clay, in 1844, is morally, though not legally, demonstrable. That a majority of those of Pennsylvania would have done so had they not been deceived and misled, is also palpable. The votes of these States, added to those actually thrown for Mr. Clay, would have given him nearly two-thirds of the entire Electoral body, and rendered his election more triumphant than was that of Mr. Polk. Yet in no canvass were Whig principles ever more plainly and thoroughly proclaimed, nor more absolutely relied on, than in that of 1844, by the supporters of Mr. Clay

The friends of Mr. Clay in 1848 argued thus-New-York, which alone defeated us in '44, is now for us heartily and reliably; she has been carried by the Whigs in the last two elections-in that of '47 by an overwhelming majority. She has elected a delegation almost unanimously for Mr. Clay, and she tells us officially and otherwise that her vote is more certain for him than for any other Whig. Now admit that we may lose some one or more of the Eleven States which voted for Mr. Clay in '44, we insist that there is at least as much probability that we shall carry Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and some other of the States which then voted for Mr. Polk, leaving New-York as clear and absolute gain, which is as much as we actually need. Since, then, it is conceded that Mr. Clay is the first choice of nearly all Whigs, and is demonstrable that he could pretty certainly be elected, we insist that he and no other is the man who ought to be nominated.

But the friends of Mr. Clay cherished serious objections, moreover, to the support of General Taylor, his leading competitor for the nomination, in view of the circumstances under which his name was presented. That General Taylor was an honest, brave, humane patriot and soldier, they were not inclined to doubt; but his life had been mainly spent in camps and forts on the frontier at or beyond the outskirts of civilization; so that he was confessedly ignorant, to a remarkable degree, of the great questions of public policy which for a generation had convulsed the country. He had never voted at any election, and no one could say when or where, prior to the suggestion of his name for the Presidency, he had evinced any decided interest in, or even familiarity with, those great beneficent principles and measures for which the Whigs had so patiently and resolutely struggled. To nominate him for. President, therefore, in view of his no-party professions and the corresponding impulses which first designated him as a candidate, seemed to many of the Old Guard like abandoning the great purposes of our organization as a party, and advertising the world that we cared more for grasping the offices than for advancing our principles. Such considerations made the thought of surrendering Mr. Clay for any other candidate, but especially General Taylor, exceedingly

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distasteful to a large proportion of the most zealous, intelligent, and devoted Whigs.

On the other hand, it was urged-True, General Taylor is not a Statesman of the same grade with Mr. Clay; but he is an honest, patriotic Whig, who will hear and heed advice from all those whom a Whig President should heed-he is eminently a man of strong common sense, of popular sympathies, of liberal views, and immensely popular with all those who are but loosely or not at all attached to any party. He is already the declared and accepted candidate of these; his nomination will be generally hailed as an omen and forerunner of triumph; and his election will do much to calm the effervescence and assuage the bitterness of party spirit, restoring, in good degree, the golden eras of Washington and Monroe.

These considerations ultimately prevailed. Indeed, it seems probable, in view of all the facts, that a majority of all the delegates went to Philadelphia expecting, if not absolutely desiring, General Taylor's nomination, though prevented by instructions and previous committals, if not by the strong repugnance of their immediate constituents, from immediately voting to produce it.

It is not likely that anything within the scope of human effort could have changed the result, yet the unwise and untimely appearance in Philadelphia, just as the Whig Convention was assembling, of General Cass, the antagonist nominee, with several of his leading advocates, did much to hasten it. The speeches made from hotel steps and windows by these gentlemen were of a peculiarly acrimonious and exasperating character, and, being addressed mainly to Whig auditors, tended to excite in their minds a most intense and overmastering desire for success at all hazards in resentment of this insolent and irritating irruption. And, as the local sentiment at Philadelphia, corroborating the indications of the political barometer at Washington, pointed strongly to General Taylor as the man with whom success was most certain, their effect on the nomination was very perceptible; and when Kentucky had been called through on the first ballot for President, and had given a majority of her votes for General Taylor over her own illustrious Statesman, in whose support she had never before wavered, it