Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/317

Rh suade himself that the Whig principles of old were not the things in which the country just then took great interest, and that, as to the great question of the day, the Whig party was sharply divided in itself. The old chief retired to his tent. One of the seats for Kentucky in the Senate of the United States having become vacant before the expiration of the term, the governor offered him the executive appointment to the place. Clay promptly declined. Without hesitation he informed his friends, who expressed anxiety as to his attitude, that he would do nothing against, nor anything to support, General Taylor's candidacy.

“I have been much importuned from various quarters,” he wrote to a committee of Whigs at Louisville, “to indorse General Taylor as a good Whig, who will, if elected, act on Whig principles and carry out Whig measures. But how can I do that? Can I say that in his hands Whig measures will be safe and secure, when he refuses to pledge himself to their support? When some of his most active friends say they are obsolete? When he is presented as a no-party candidate? When the Whig Convention at Philadelphia refused to recognize or proclaim its attachment to any principles or measures, and actually laid on the table resolutions having that object in view?”

He did not conceal the personal feelings aroused in him by the treatment he had received: “Ought I to come out as a warm and partisan supporter of a candidate who, in a reversal of our conditions, announced his purpose to remain a candidate, and