HE DECIDED HE might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. With his tactical maneuvers failing, Henry Clay determined to speak his conscience. A petition to have Congress end slavery in the District of Columbia prompted reflection on the phenomenon of abolitionism. Clay identified three groups of abolitionists. The first comprised Quakers and other religious groups that had always opposed slavery. These philanthropic abolitionists were a threat to no one, because they opposed violence even more than they opposed slavery, and they confined themselves to reasoned persuasion. Clay’s second group consisted of individuals who were affronted by the gag rule and who allied with the abolitionists for the purpose of vindicating the First Amendment. These operational abolitionists were no threat either, because they were more interested in freedom of speech and petition than in freedom for slaves.
It was the third group that caused all the trouble. “The third class are the real ultra-abolitionists, who are resolved to persevere in the pursuit of their object at all hazards, and without regard to any consequences, however calamitous they may be,” Clay told the Senate. The radical abolitionists were a grave threat to American constitutionalism and the rule of law. “With them the rights of property are nothing; the deficiency of the powers of the general government is nothing; the acknowledged and incontestable powers of the states are nothing; civil war, a dissolution of the Union, and the overthrow of a government in which are concentrated the fondest hopes of the civilized world, are nothing. A single idea has taken possession of their minds, and onward they pursue it, overlooking all barriers, reckless and regardless of all consequences.”
The radical abolitionists were currently demanding an end to slavery in the federal district, and also in the federal territory of Florida. They wanted to bar interstate commerce in slaves, and they insisted that Congress admit no more slave states. They presented these aims as modest and quite within the constitutional powers of Congress. But they had a larger agenda, Clay said. “Their purpose is abolition, universal abolition—peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must be.” The legal approach they avowed was not the only or most important part of their campaign. “Another, and much more lamentable one, is that which this class is endeavoring to employ, of arraying one portion against another portion of the Union. With that view, in all their leading prints and publications, the alleged horrors of slavery are depicted in the most glowing and exaggerated colors, to excite the imaginations and stimulate the rage of the people in the free states, against the people in the slave states. The slaveholder is held up and represented as the most atrocious of human beings. Advertisements of fugitive slaves and of slaves to be sold are carefully collected and blazoned forth, to infuse a spirit of detestation and hatred against one entire and the largest section of the Union.”
Clay recounted some history. In the early days of the republic, he said, the founders had feared two dangers to the Union. One was the Allegheny Mountains, which divided the waters running east from those running west. That danger had been allayed by the construction of roads across the mountains, by the Erie and other canals, and by the development of the steamboat. The second threat was slavery. “It was this which created the greatest obstacle, and the most anxious solicitude, in the deliberations of the convention that adopted the general Constitution,” Clay said. The framers concluded to keep their distance. “The convention wisely left to the several states the power over the institution of slavery, as a power not necessary to the plan of union which it devised, and as one with which the general government could not be invested without planting the seeds of certain destruction.” Clay paused for effect. “There let it remain undisturbed by any unhallowed hand.”
But it was not remaining undisturbed, and Clay feared the result. Suppose the abolitionists succeeded in uniting the inhabitants of the free states against those of the slave states. “Union on the one side will beget union on the other,” Clay said. “And this process of reciprocal consolidation will be attended with all the violent prejudices, embittered passions, and implacable animosities, which ever degraded or deformed human nature. A virtual dissolution of the Union will have taken place, while the forms of its existence remain. The most valuable element of union, mutual kindness, the feelings of sympathy, the fraternal bonds, which now happily unite us, will have been extinguished for ever. One section will stand in menacing and hostile array against the other. The collision of opinion will be quickly followed by the clash of arms.”
What would this civil war look like? “Abolitionists themselves would shrink back in dismay and horror at the contemplation of desolated fields, conflagrated cities, murdered inhabitants and the overthrow of the fairest fabric of human government that ever rose to animate the hopes of civilized man.” Nor should the abolitionists flatter themselves that victory in such a war would be assured. “All history and experience proves the hazard and uncertainty of war. And we are admonished by Holy Writ, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.”
Even if they triumphed, whom would they have conquered? “A foreign foe, one who had insulted our flag, invaded our shores and laid our country waste? No, sir; no, sir. It would be a conquest without laurels, without glory; a self, a suicidal conquest; a conquest of brothers over brothers, achieved by one over another portion of the descendants of common ancestors who, nobly pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, had fought and bled, side by side, in many a hard battle on land and ocean, severed our country from the British crown, and established our national independence.”
The radical abolitionists dreamed of a world that didn’t exist; statesmen had to deal with the world that did. “If the question were an original question, whether, there being no slaves within the country, we should introduce them, and incorporate them into our society, that would be a totally different question.” Slavery was a bane, a corrupter of democratic values. But slavery existed in America, Clay observed, and it couldn’t be wished away. “The slaves are here. No practical scheme for their removal or separation from us has been yet devised or proposed; and the true inquiry is what is best to be done with them.”
The abolitionists had not made life better for the slaves, the objects of their asserted sympathy. By the alarm they had raised in the South, they had made the life of slaves worse. “They have thrown back for half a century the prospect of any species of emancipation of the African race, gradual or immediate,” Clay said. “They have increased the rigors of legislation against slaves in most, if not all, of the slave states.”
The abolitionists acted as though the world could be remade overnight. It could not, Clay said. Emancipation would come, but it would take time. And it would come most swiftly under the auspices of the Union. The abolitionists might soothe their consciences by demanding immediate emancipation, but they did no practical good and risked great harm, to the slaves no less than to the country at large. Clay asked Americans to remember what they had to lose. “Was ever a people before so blessed as we are, if true to ourselves? Did ever any other nation contain within its bosom so many elements of prosperity, of greatness and of glory? Our only real danger lies ahead, conspicuous, elevated and visible.” The abolitionists brought the danger closer.
CLAY’S ATTACK ON the abolitionists reflected his honest belief about the threat they posed to the Union and the welfare of all its people. Clay was never less than sincere in speaking about the Union. But he simultaneously could hope that his anti-abolitionist stance would win him votes in the South.
The question was whether it would cost him heavily in the North. He had reason to believe it would not, because the abolitionists were as deeply suspect in many Northern communities as they were in the South. At first he thought the speech had hit the mark he intended. “I expected it would enrage the Ultras more than ever against me, and I have not been disappointed,” he wrote to a friend. But among broader groups it seemed to prosper. “Its reception at the North has far exceeded my most sanguine expectations.” Clay assumed a favorable response in other regions. “I hope it will do good everywhere.” He congratulated himself on a statement of conscience that paid political dividends. “From all quarters, the most gratifying intelligence is received as to my future prospects.”
He spoke too soon. The Whigs were still struggling to coalesce. Born in opposition to Jackson, they had yet to develop a national leadership that could answer such basic questions as when the party’s nominating convention would be held. Clay argued for an early convention, in order that the party pull together behind its nominee. William Harrison sought delay, judging that men in the public eye like Clay would make enemies by the positions they would have to take on the controversial issues of the day. The sidelines had suited Andrew Jackson in his quest for the presidency, and they suited Harrison. Yet it was less Harrison’s preference than the overall confusion among the Whigs that caused the convention to keep being pushed back. And with each month’s delay, the mood in the party shifted further toward Harrison.
Clay could feel the shift. He sensed it in planted rumors that he had decided to drop out of the race. He denied the rumors even while realizing that his response added to the doubt they intentionally sowed. Erstwhile supporters began to defect. “Your friends in this state with whom I have conversed—and no man ever had more ardent ones—are looking with painful anxiety to the determination of the Whig national convention in the selection of the candidate,” an Indiana ally reported. “If they thought your success probable, they would not hesitate in warmly soliciting your name to be placed before them as their candidate. But they can not bear the idea of seeing you placed in a doubtful and desperate contest at this time.” Clay had often emphasized the need for party unity. The call was echoed back to him. “The opinion of your friends here, so far as I have been able to learn it, is that you and the party have much to gain and nothing to lose by your indicating in such terms as your own good sense may suggest your willingness or desire that Gen. Harrison may be the nominee of the convention.”
Clay reluctantly accepted the inevitable. “I have no wish to be the candidate if there be any other Whig more acceptable to the greater number than myself,” he replied to the Indianan, with the understanding that the message would be repeated.
This was all the Harrison forces needed to hear. Many paid honor to Clay for his leadership in Congress while reiterating their argument that that very leadership had made him unelectable. Peter Porter, Clay’s New York ally, reported the result from the Whig convention, finally held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “General Harrison is nominated,” Porter wrote to Clay, “and what is most extraordinary, by a body of men three fourths of whom, as well as their constituents, if their own open declarations are to be credited, are decidedly of the opinion that you ought to be the president of the United States in preference to any other individual!” Porter offered solace along with an explanation. “If I looked alone to your personal comfort or, I think I may add, to your future fame, I should be glad with all my heart that General Harrison is nominated, for we know that you have some bitter political enemies who would surely do all in their power to thwart you. And the scale of the party is so nearly balanced that a small diversion from our ranks would turn it. And if you were to be defeated you would be placed in a most unpleasant predicament—whereas now, whatever may be the result, you will by your magnanimous course have secured the eternal admiration of the country.”
Clay did take the magnanimous course. No sooner had the news of the convention’s decision reached Washington than he endorsed it and the nominee. “If I have friends,” he told a gathering of Whigs, “friends connected with me by the ties of blood, by my regard of common friendship, if I have any one that loves me, I assure them that they cannot do me a better service than to follow my example and vote heartily, as I shall, for the nomination which has been made.” Clay’s audience cheered. Clay continued, “We have not been contending for Henry Clay, for William Henry Harrison, for Daniel Webster, or for Winfield Scott”—another general favored by some. “No! We have been contending for principles! Not men, but principles, are our rules of action.” The party must and would unite against the ills that afflicted the country. “William Henry Harrison and John Tyler”—the Virginian nominated for vice president—“are the medicine which will cure us.”