Sold – Henry Clay Tells a Key Pennsylvania Supporter That He Will Soon Leave on the 1844 Campaign Trail

Although Henry Clay had run for president in 1824 and 1832 and lost, he was determined to secure his Whig Party’s nomination in 1844 and take one last try at the presidency. The great question at the time was the powderkeg of annexing Texas to the Union (as it would be a huge slave state). Both he and likely opponent, Democratic nominee Martin Van Buren, realized taking a clear stand on this issue could hurt each of them, and they agreed to try and evade taking a firm position on the question. But in those days newspapers and indeed private citizens addressed interrogatories to candidates to try and force them to take stands, and failure to respond meant bad publicity and accusations that a candidate was afraid. Soon Van Buren gave an answer that he opposed the annexation; this position cost him the nomination, which instead went to pro-annexation dark horse James K. Polk. Clay dodged taking such a stand, after being nominated he found himself compelled to write several public letters that attempted to clarify his position on the annexation of Texas.

As he readied himself to leave on the campaign trail to firm up support for the Whig nomination, he wrote John S. Richards, a lawyer and politically active Whig who served as mayor of Reading, PA, revealing his schedule of speaking engagements, opposing the practice of posing interrogatories, characterizing his correspondence as “oppressive,” and lamenting that the unauthorized publication of his private letters makes him cautious about sending them. He also states his belief that Pennsylvania may be swinging into the Whig column. The “Argus,” to which he refers, was a figure in Greek mythology that had 100 eyes.

Autograph Letter Signed, two pages, Ashland, Kentucky, November 6, 1843, to Richards. “I received your friendly letter.  Messers George Robertson , Dr. B.W. Dudley, Richard Pendall and Genl. Leslie Combs, all of Lexington (KY) or any of them may be relied on for any information you may desire to prosper from this quarter. Messers John J. Crittenden, James T. Morehead, Speaker John White or Garret Davis of Congress may be confided in for any they would communicate, during the Session of Congress. I expect to be absent from home from about the middle of next month until May. I go on business to N. Orleans, and thence via Alabama, Georgia & So Carolina to fulfill my North Carolina engagement. I agree with you as to the impropriety of being addressed with interrogatories; and the subsequent publication of the responses. My letters have several times been published, without my previous expectation. And I have been sometimes mortified with the parade of letters from me, acknowledging small presents etc. of which I am made the, almost, involuntary recipient. It is easier to see the evil than to prescribe a remedy for all this.  Although my correspondence is excessively  oppressive I cannot decline returning a civil answer to a kind and friendly letter. The frequent publication of my letters imposes however an inconvenient restraint upon the freedom of correspondence. Instead of writing for the eye only of a friend, one feels that he is writing for all the eyes of all the Arguses, or rather he sometimes forgets that he is doing so, and may thus appear less advantageously. With you I rejoice in the manifestation of public sentiment made in recent elections, and that especially in the Keystone State. No state had been under grander delusions, or more deceived by Demagogues, than Pennsylvania. She is at last opening her eyes to her true interests, and will see how much she has been betrayed and abused.” With Free Frank.

Of course, in the end Clay answered interrogatories and lost the election. Pennsylvania, for which he held out such hope, went for Polk.