(J. J. Crittenden to Hon. Daniel Webster.)

WASHINGTON, June 10, 1852.

There is no duty, sir, that I more readily perform than that of making atonement frankly and voluntarily for any impropriety or fault of mine which may have done wrong or given offense to others.

I am sensible that yesterday I was betrayed into the impropriety of addressing you in a manner and with a degree of excitement wanting in proper courtesy and respect.

I regret it, sir, and I hope that this will be received as a satisfactory atonement, and that you will properly understand the motive which prompts it.

I am very respectfully yours,

Hon. DANIEL WEBSTER.

J. J. CRITTENDEN.

(Daniel Webster to J. J. Crittenden.)

WASHINGTON, 1852.

MY DEAR SIR,-Your note of yesterday has given me relief and pleasure. It is certainly true that your remarks at the President's the day before caused me uneasiness and concern; but my heart is, and has always been, full of kindness for you, and I dismiss from my mind at once all recollection of a painful incident.

Mr. CRITTENDEN.

Yours, as ever, truly,

DANIEL WEBSTER.

(J. R. Underwood to J. J. Crittenden.)

WASHINGTON, June 19, 1852. DEAR SIR,-Conversing to-day with Mr. Clay, I gave him a brief account of my observations at Baltimore. I told him that the division in the Whig Convention might result in withdrawing Mr. Fillmore, Mr. Webster, and General Scott, in which event I said, from what I had heard, it was not improbable that you would receive the nomination.

I then ventured to ask him whether a difference between him and you, of which I had heard rumors, still existed, and whether he would be reconciled to your nomination. He replied to this effect:

"Mr. Crittenden and myself are cordial friends, and if it be necessary to bring him forward as the candidate, it will meet with my hearty approbation." Supposing it may be agreeable to you to retain this evidence of Mr. Clay's good feeling and friendship, I take pleasure in placing it in your possession. With sincere esteem, your obedient servant, J. R. UNDERWOOD.

Hon. J. J. CRITTENDEN.

(Hon. Thomas Corwin to J. J. Crittenden.)

WASHINGTON.

DEAR CRITTENDEN,—If Messrs. Crittenden and Burnley, or either of them, want exercise, let them visit the sick. Here I am ensconced, like a Hebrew of old, on my back, about to dine, but, unlike the Hebrew, with no stomach for dinner. Oh, these cursed influenzas, they fatten on Washington patronage alone! Hot water runs out of one eye like sap from a sugar-tree, or like lava from Vesuvius. The mucous membrane of my nose, "os frontis" and "os occipitis," is, of course, in a melting mood. Did you ever look into the technology of anatomy? If not, this Latin will be above “your huckleberry." Is there no news— no lies brought forth to-day? Has the Father of Lies been celebrating the 8th of January, and allowed his children a holiday? Is Kossuth a candidate for the Presidency? Oh, you should have seen Sam Houston last night, with a red handkerchief hanging down two feet from the rear pocket of his coat! He looked like the devil with a yard of brimstone on fire in his rear. All the candidates were there, and acted as if they thought themselves second fiddlers to the great leader of the orchestra in that humbug theatre.

Civilized men are all asses. Your gentleman of God's making, nowadays, is only to be found in savage life. God help us! Good-night,

Hon. J. J. CRITTENDEN.

THOMAS CORWIN.

(Hon. James Buchanan to J. J. Crittenden.)

Tuesday evening.

MY DEAR SIR,-Colonel King has just mentioned to me (and I am sorry he did not do so before we left the Senate) that you felt yourself aggrieved by my remarks on Thursday last, and thought they were calculated to injure you. I can assure you you are among the last of living men whom I would desire to injure.

that

It is not too late yet to suppress all these remarks, except my disclaimer of the doctrine imputed to me in the Kentucky pamphlet. The debate will not be published in the Globe until to-morrow evening; and I am not only willing, but I am anxious, that it shall never appear. If this be your wish, please to call and see me this evening, and we can go to Rives and arrange the whole matter. I live at Mrs. Miller's,—it is almost on your way,-on F Street, where Barnard lived last session. Yours sincerely,

Hon. J. J. CRITTENDEN.

JAMES BUCHANAN.

CHAPTER III.

1852-1853.

Address on Life and Death of Henry Clay, September 29, 1852—Letters to Mrs. Crittenden, Mrs. Coleman, President Pierce-Letter of Edward Everett.

Clay:

R. CRITTENDEN was invited, by the State of Kentucky, to deliver this address in commemoration of Henry

ADDRESS ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF HENRY CLAY, DELIVERED AT LOUISVILLE, SEPTEMBER 29, 1852.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—I am very sensible of the difficulty and magnitude of the task which I have undertaken.

I am to address you in commemoration of the public services of HENRY CLAY, and in celebration of his obsequies. His death filled his whole country with mourning, and the loss of no citizen, save the Father of his Country, has ever produced such manifestations of the grief and homage of the public heart. His history has indeed been read "in a nation's eyes." A nation's tears proclaim, with their silent eloquence, its sense of the national loss. Kentucky has more than a common share in this national bereavement. To her it is a domestic grief,—to her belongs the sad privilege of being the chief mourner. He was her favorite son, her pride, and her glory. She mourns for him as a mother. But let her not mourn as those who have no hope or consolation. She can find the richest and the noblest solace in the memory of her son, and of his great and good actions; and his fame will come back, like a comforter, from his grave, to wipe away her tears. Even while she weeps for him, her tears shall be mingled with the proud feelings of triumph which his name will inspire; and Old Kentucky, from the depths of her affectionate and heroic heart, shall exclaim, like the Duke of Ormond, when informed that his brave son had fallen in battle, "I would not exchange my dead son for any living son in Christendom." From these same abundant sources we may hope that the widowed partner of his life, who now sits in sadness at Ashland, will derive some pleasing consolations. I presume not to offer any words of comfort of my own. Her grief is too sacred to permit me to use that privilege. You, sons and daughters of Kentucky, have assembled here

to commemorate his life and death. How can I address you suitably on such a theme? I feel the oppressive consciousness that I cannot do it in terms adequate to the subject, or to your excited feelings. I am no orator, nor have I come here to attempt any idle or vainglorious display of words; I come as a plain Kentuckian, who, sympathizing in all your feelings, presents you with this address, as his poor offering, to be laid upon that altar which you are here erecting to the memory of Henry Clay. Let it not be judged according to its own value, but according to the spirit in which it is offered. It would be no difficult task to address you on this occasion in the extravagant and rhetorical language that is usual in funeral orations; but my subject deserves a different treatment—the monumental name of Henry Clay rises above all mere personal favor and flattery; it rejects them, and challenges the scrutiny and the judgment of the world. The noble uses to which his name should be applied, are to teach his country, by his example, lessons of public virtue and political wisdom; to teach patriots and statesmen how to act, how to live, and how to die. I can but glance at a subject that spreads out in such bright and boundless expanse before me.

Henry Clay lived in a most eventful period, and the history of his life for forty years has been literally that of his country. He was so identified with the government for more than twothirds of its existence, that, during that time, hardly any act which has redounded to its honor, its prosperity, its present rank among the nations of the earth, can be spoken of without calling to mind involuntarily the lineaments of his noble person. It would be difficult to determine whether in peace or in war, in the field of legislation or of diplomacy, in the springtide of his life, or in its golden ebb, he won the highest honor. It can be no disparagement to any one of his contemporaries to say that, in all the points of practical statesmanship, he encountered no superior in any of the employments which his constituents or his country conferred upon him.

For the reason that he had been so much and so constantly in the public eye, an elaborate review of his life will not be expected of me. All that I shall attempt will be to sketch a few leading traits, which may serve to give those who have had fewer opportunities of observation than I have had something like a just idea of his public character and services. If, in doing this, I speak more at large of the earlier than of the later periods of his life, it is because, in regard to the former, though of vast consequence, intervening years have thrown them somewhat in the background.

Passing by, therefore, the prior service of Mr. Clay in the

Senate for brief periods in 1806 and 1810-11, I come at once to his Speakership in the House of Representatives, and his consequent agency in the war of 1812.

To that war our country is indebted for much of the security, freedom, prosperity, and reputation which it now enjoys. It has been truly said by one of the living actors in that perilous era, that the very act of our going to war was heroic.* By the supremacy of the naval power of England the fleets of all Europe had been swept from the seas; the banner of the United States alone floated in solitary fearlessness. She seemed to encircle the earth with her navies, and to be the undisputed mistress of the ocean. We went out upon the deep with a sling in our hands. When, in all time, were such fearful odds seen as we had against us?

The events of the war with England, so memorable, and even wonderful, are too familiar to all to require any particular recital on this occasion. Of that war,-of its causes and consequences,—of its disasters, its bloody battles, and its glorious victories by land and sea, history and our own official records have given a faithful narrative. A just national pride has engraven that narrative upon our hearts. But even in the fiercest conflicts of that war, there was nothing more truly heroic than the declaration of it by Congress.

Of that declaration, of the incidents, personal influences, and anxious deliberations which preceded and led to it, the history is not so well or generally known. The more it is known the more it will appear how important was the part that Mr. Clay acted, and how much we are indebted to him for all the glorious and beneficial issues of the declaration of that war, which has not inappropriately been called the Second War of Independence.

The public grounds of the war were the injustice, injury, and insults inflicted on the United States by the government of Great Britain, then engaged in a war of maritime edicts with France, of which the commerce of the United States was the victim, our merchant ships being captured by British cruisers on every sea, and confiscated by her courts, in utter contempt of the rights of this nation as an independent power. Added to this, and more offensive than even those outrages, was the arrogation, by the same power, of a right to search American vessels for the purpose of impressing seamen from vessels sailing under the American flag. These aggressions upon our national rights constituted, undoubtedly, justifiable cause of war. With equal justice on our part, and on the same grounds (impressment of seamen excepted), we should have been warranted in declaring

* Hon. Mr. Rush.