Sold – Henry Clay Gives a Treatise on the Need for an Active and Effective Opposition in a Democracy

It was clear by late 1831 that Henry Clay would be the 1832 Presidential nominee by acclamation of his Whig Party when its convention met in December. And there was a certainty that President Andrew Jackson would run again, so the two protagonists were set. Many in Clay’s own party thought the Whigs could not beat Jackson in 1832 and that Clay should concentrate on the 1836 election and let a lesser candidate lose in 1832. Clay would not hear of this, as it violated his fundamental beliefs of how the American political system should operate – the opposition should, and must, speak out and act as a check on those in power. Here he gives a detailed and very moving exposition of those principles, enabling us to see why and how Abraham Lincoln considered Clay his “beau ideal” of a man.

John Law was an Indiana prosecuting attorney from 1825-1828 and judge of the seventh judicial circuit in 1830-1831. He had been a supporter of Henry Clay and the Whigs, but as the 1832 Presidential election neared, he seems to have begun shifting his political positions, as his ambivalence about Clay’s making a run of the White House against Andrew Jackson seems to indicate. President Van Buren named him receiver of the land office at Vincennes in 1838, indicating that he might have become a Democrat by then, and he supported the Democrat Polk over Clay in the 1844 election. Law was appointed by President Franklin Pierce judge of the court of land claims and served from 1855 to 1857. He was then elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1861-March 3, 1865).

Autograph Letter Signed, Ashland, Kentucky, October 1, 1831, to Law. “I have received your favor of the 20th ultimo and retain such a general recollection of you, and possess such a knowledge of your standing and character as to justify a frank reply…Of our prospects in the…contest, our friends and I believe that we have a reasonable probability of 11 states: Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Delaware, Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island. We have also a hope of New York, founded upon the known fact of their being a majority in it against Jackson. We do not despair of Pennsylvania and Virginia. But N.Y. alone, with the 11 states above enumerated will be sufficient. I agree with you that there is no probability of Illinois or Missouri. I have not time to enter into debates by which these results are deduced. If the Anti-Masons should unite with us there is almost a certainty of our success. They hold the balance in N.Y., Penna. and Vermont.  Judge McLean will probably have been nominated at Baltimore and I think that he will not accept the nomination, or if he accepts it, that he will ultimately be abandoned from the utter hopelessness of his success. In either contingency, the mass of that party will come to us. I have done nothing to identify myself with either party to that controversy between the Masons of the North and the Anti-Masons. I believe the general government has Constitutionally nothing to do with it; and therefore that it is not a suitable topic to introduce into the discussions between the parties contending for the Presidency. If we have our difficulties and uncertainties, so has the Jackson party. Can they count upon more certain votes than we can? I believe not. They are the losing, we the gaining party. And the same current of loss and gain will probably continue to the end of the contest.

‘I was not a careless or indifferent spectator of your late contest. My hopes went with you, and I shared largely in your disappointment, although you have had a success almost equal to a complete victory. I intend visiting my son this fall, but I wish to make the journey unnoticed, unhonored, unwept. At the same time, it will give me pleasure to see, without any parade or ceremony, such of my fellow citizens of Indiana as I may casually meet. Among them I certainly hope you may be one…”  This letter was obtained by us direct from the Law descendants and has never before been offered for sale.

This is the finest political letter of Clay we can recall seeing. He may have been right about most of the points he made above, but his powers of prediction were off. In the 1832 election, Clay won just 5 states and Jackson won handily.