Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/355

Rh indulged in the hope that Clay himself might be prevailed upon to give up his candidacy, and permit the whole opposition to the Jackson régime to be united under Anti-Masonic auspices. Far from entertaining such a proposition, he declared, with sharp emphasis, in a public letter to a committee of citizens of Indiana, that the Constitution did not give the general government the slightest power to interfere with the subject of Freemasonry, and that he thought the presidential office should be filled by one who was capable, “unswayed by sectarian feelings or passions, of administering its high duties impartially towards the whole people, however divided into religious, social, benevolent, or literary associations.”

He felt so strongly on this point that he wrote to his friend Brooke: “If the alternative be between Andrew Jackson and an Anti-Masonic candidate, with his exclusive prescriptive principles, I should be embarrassed in the choice. I am not sure that the old tyranny is not better than the new.” It is not surprising that he, with many others, should have under-estimated the strength of the movement. We find it now hard to believe that men of good sense should have seriously thought of making the question of Freemasonry the principal issue of a national contest upon which the American people were to divide. But we meet among those who were prominently engaged in that enterprise such names as William H. Seward, Thurlow Weed, Francis Granger, Thaddeus Stevens, Richard Rush