Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/173

Rh a Democrat might be forgiven for being a pro-slavery man, but a Whig could not be forgiven.

“In Ohio the abolitionists are alleged to have gone against us almost to a man,” Clay wrote in November, 1838. “The introduction of this new element of abolition into our elections cannot fail to excite, with all reflecting men, the deepest solicitude. Although their numbers are not very great, they are sufficiently numerous in several states to turn the scale. I have now before me a letter from the secretary of the American Anti-slavery Society in New York, in which he says: ‘I should consider’ (as in all candor I acknowledge I would) ‘the election of a slave-holder to the presidency a great calamity to the country.’ The danger is that the contagion may spread until it reaches all the Free States. My own position touching slavery, at the present time, is singular enough. The abolitionists are denouncing me as a slave-holder, and slave-holders as an abolitionist, while both unite on Mr. Van Buren.”

The opinion that the abolitionists were a dangerous class of people grew very strong in Clay's mind. The half-way man usually considers those who insist upon the last logical consequences of his own feelings or principles very inconvenient, and even very obnoxious, persons. On the other hand, Clay's course with regard to the anti-slavery petitions, as well as his occasional professions of sentiments unfriendly to slavery, had injured his popularity with the slave-holders. This he felt, as his correspondence indicates; and it is probable that Southern Whigs, many of whom, while his friends, were