1. Hone, Diary, 387.
2. Winthrop to Everett, August 1, 1850, quoted in Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, 1:341.
3. Holman Hamilton subscribed to this view. See Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict, 148–49; see also Holt, American Whig Party, 486.
4. The House of Representatives passed the bills in somewhat different fashion during September.
5. Holman Hamilton, “Democratic Senate Leadership and the Compromise of 1850,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41 (December 1954), 405.
6. “Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and Jackson: How They Sat for the Daguerreotypes,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 38 (May 1869):788.
7. Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, 1:344.
8. Douglas to Lanphier and Walker, August 3, 1850, Robert W. Johannsen, editor, The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), 192–93.
9. Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict, 172.
10. Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, 1:349.
11. Clay to Clay, August 15, 1850, HCP 10:795.
12. McDowell, “Recollections,” 766.
13. Clay to Clay, October 2, December 4, 29, 1849, January 2, 8, 1850; Clay to Clayton, December 6, 1849, Clay to Clay, December 15, 1849, Clay to Clay, February 2, 1850, Clay to Clay, February 18, November 15, 1850, HCP 10:620, 629–30, 639–40, 631, 633, 641–42, 645–46, 660, 678–79, 828; Bearss, “Claims Against Portugal,” 173–74.
14. Bearss, “Claims Against Portugal,” 177.
15. Bearss makes this claim. See ibid., 178.
16. Clay to Clay, August 22, 31, 1850, Clay to Webster, August 22, 1850, Clay to Fillmore, August 17, 20, 1850, HCP 10:779, 793, 798, 801.
17. Clay to Clay, October 26, 1851, Clay to Clay, January 3, 1852, HCP 10:927, 943.
18. Clay to Clay, June 1, 1852, Thomas J. Clay Collection, Henry Clay Papers.
19. Clay to Clay, October 16, 1850, HCP 10:822.
20. Clay to Harrison, [summer 1850], Papers of James O. Harrison, LOC.
21. McDowell, “Recollections,” 766–67.
22. In these last years, Clay was as willing to recommend Democrats as Whigs for patronage posts. See George W. Jones to Clay, November 2, 1850, Clay to Stuart, November 7, 1850, Stuart Papers, UVA.
23. National Intelligencer, November 27, 1850.
24. Clay to Clay, December 23, 1850, HCP 10:835; National Intelligencer, December 18, 1850; New York Herald, December 19, 1850.
25. Clay to Clay, February 27, 1851, Clay to Clay, March 5, 1851, HCP 10:876, 880–81.
26. Cong. Globe, 31 Cong., 2 sess., 506.
27. Ibid., 597. See also Fish to Clay, February 18, 1851, Clay to Fish, February 23, 1851, HCP 10:864–65, 870–71.
28. Clay to Stevenson, May 17, 1851, ibid., 10:891.
29. Obituaries, 53; Clay to Clay, February 27, 1851, Clay to Clay, March 5, 1851, HCP 10:876, 880–81.
30. Clay to Clay, March 7, 1851, HCP 10:881.
31. Passport, March 8, 1851, Clay Legal Documents.
32. March 18, 1851, HCP 10:883.
33. Clay to Clay, March 18, April 7, 1851, Clay to Hunt, April 9, 1851, ibid., 10:881, 884.
34. Lutz to Clay, May 23, 1851, Clay to Lutz, May 26, 1851, ibid., 10:892, 893.
35. Clay to Hopkins, July 17, 1851, ibid., 10:905.
36. Clay to Clay, May 9, 1851, ibid., 10:889.
37. Clay to Short, June 16, 1851, ibid., 10:898; see also Thomas Speed, The Political Club, Danville Kentucky, 1786–1790: Being an Account of Early Kentucky Society from the Original Papers Recently Found (Louisville, KY: John P. Morton, 1894), 77–78; Cong. Globe, 31 Cong., 1 sess., 225.
38. Last Will and Testament, July 10, 1851, HCP 10:900–904.
39. J. Winston Coleman, Last Days, Death and Funeral of Henry Clay (Lexington: Winburn Press, 1951), 2.
40. Clay to Ullmann, June 14, September 26, 1851, HCP 10:896–97, 914.
41. Clay to McLeod, November 15, 1851, McLeod Family Papers.
42. Clay to Mercer, August 1, 1851, 1850, HCP 10:908.
43. Clay to Clay, July 22, 1851, Thomas J. Clay Collection, Henry Clay Papers; Clay to Clay, July 28, 1851, Clay-Russell Papers.
44. Clay to J.D.H., November 15, 1851; see also Clay to Clay, October 31, November 16, 1851, Clay to Clay, November 5, 1851, HCP 10:927, 928, 929, 931.
45. Clay to Clay, December 2, 1851, Thomas J. Clay Collection, Henry Clay Papers.
46. Gross, Autobiography, 1:122; Clay to Clay, July 28, 1851, Clay-Russell Papers.
47. Coleman, Final Days, 3.
48. Clay to Clay, November 16, 1851, Clay to Brooke, November 3, 1838, HCP 10:931–32, 9:245.
49. Clay to Clay, November 19, 1851, ibid., 10:933.
50. Clay to Clay, November 23, 1851, ibid.
51. Cong. Globe, 32 Cong., 1 sess., 2, 4; Clay to Clay, December 1, 1851, HCP 10:934.
52. Clay to Clay, December 3, 1851, HCP 10:935.
53. Clay to Clay, December 6, 1851, Clay to Clay, December 9, 1851, Fillmore to Clay, June 7, 1851, ibid., 10:936, 967; Rayback, Fillmore, 350.
54. Clay to Clay, December 6, 1851, HCP 10:936.
55. Clay to Clay, December 18, 1851, Thomas J. Clay Collection, Henry Clay Papers.
56. Clay to Kentucky General Assembly, December 17, 1851, HCP 10:938.
57. Clay to Neagle, December 21, 1851, ibid., 10:940.
58. Clay to Clay, December 25, 1851, Kennedy to Clay, December 25, 1851, Clay to Kennedy, December 31, 1851, Clay to Allibone, January 11, 1852, ibid., 10:940, 941, 946.
59. Clay to Clay, January 4, 1852, ibid., 10:943.
60. National Intelligencer, January 10, 1851.
61. New York Times, January 12, 1852.
62. Clay to Clay, December 9, 1851, Clay to Clay, December 25, 1851, Clay to Clay, January 20, 1842, HCP 10:396, 940, 949.
63. Clay to Ullmann, September 26, 1851, March 6, 18, 1852, Clay to Citizens of New York, February 9, 1852, Ullmann to Clay, February 9, 1851, ibid., 10:914, 951, 952–53, 960.
64. Clay to Clay, January 12, March 3, 1852, Clay to Clay, February 28, 1852, ibid., 10:947, 956, 957.
65. Clay to Clay, April 7, 1852; Clay to Clay, April 21, 1852, HCP 10:964, 965.
66. Clay to Harrison, April 28, 1852, ibid., 10:966.
67. Clay to Clay, April 25, 1852, Thomas J. Clay Collection, Henry Clay Papers.
68. Clay to Clay, December 1, 1851, March 3, 1852, HCP 10:934, 957.
69. Clay to Clay, June 1, 1852, Thomas J. Clay Collection, Henry Clay Papers.
70. Obituaries, 632–33; Clay to Clay, May 8, 1852, Colton, Private Correspondence, 631, 633.
71. Blair to Clay, January 22, 1852, HCP 10:949; Van Buren, Autobiography, 535.
72. Van Buren, Autobiography, 667.
73. Tayloe to Crittenden, March 15, 1851, Crittenden Papers, LOC. The letter is incorrectly dated in the Crittenden Papers as March 19, 1851, by a hand other than Julia Tayloe’s. Yet it contains her notation “Saturday morning.” Because March 19 was a Wednesday, we have concluded that the invitation was dispatched the previous Saturday, the fifteenth, and pertained to a dinner party on the following Wednesday, the nineteenth.
74. Colton, Private Correspondence, 634; Simmons to Crittenden, November 30, 1859, Crittenden Papers, LOC; Underwood to Crittenden, June 19, 1852, Coleman, John J. Crittenden, 2:37; see also Kirwan, Crittenden, 284.
75. James Brown Clay Diary, entry, Thomas J. Clay Collection, Henry Clay Papers. We are grateful to Eric Brooks, head curator at Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate, and to Dr. Lindsey Apple, the accomplished scholar of the Clay family, for providing us with a photocopy of this document.
76. Morehead to Ruffin, June 24, 1852, Hamilton, Papers of Ruffin, 2:327–28.
77. Coleman, Final Days, 5–6; Colton, Private Correspondence, 635.
78. Colton, Private Correspondence, 635.
79. Memorandum of H. Clay, late June 1852, HCP 10:968.
80. Coleman, Final Days, 6.
81. Colton, Private Correspondence, 635.
82. Coleman, Final Days, 6–7; Clay to Clay, June 29, 1852, Colton, Private Correspondence, 636.
83. Colton, Private Correspondence, 636.