ADDRESS TO HIS CONSTITUENTS,

IN REFERENCE TO THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1824-5

[THE year 1824 was signalized by a remarkable contest for the Presidency, between the supporters respectively of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, WILLIAM H. CRAWFORD, ANDREW JACKSON, and JOHN C. CALHOUN. Mr. Crawford, then Secretary of the Treasury, was first nominated by a caucus of 66 Democratic members of Congress, and was thence put forward as the regular candidate of the party; but this assumption was resisted by the greater number, both in Congress and among the People; and Mr. Adams, the Secretary of State, Mr. Calhoun, lately Secretary of War, Mr. Clay, Speaker of the House, and General Jackson, were severally proposed by their friends in different sections. Mr. Calhoun, finding his prospect desperate, finally withdrew, and threw his weight into the scale of General Jackson; and the ecistest gradually assumed a more regular shape, the friends of all the others in most States uniting against Mr. Crawford, who, as the caucus candidate, appeared most prominent in the canvass. In this way, the votes of North Carolina, New Jersey and some others, were given to General Jackson, by the aid of the Adams men, Mr. Crawford's strength being greater than that of either competitor, singly. Mr. Clay, aside from being the youngest of the remaining candidates, labored under the disadvantage of having a popular competitor in his own section of the Union, which, in a contest so independent of party considerations, was necessarily much against him. In the Electoral College, General Jackson received 99, Mr. Adams 84, Mr. Crawford 41, and Mr. Clay 38 votes-(those of Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, and 7 from New York.) No one having a majority, the Constitution required that the election should now be made by the House of Representatives from among the three highest candidates, Mr. Clay being of course excluded. Being himself a member of Congress, and having many supporters and friends in that body, the course which Mr. Clay might think proper to pursue in this election, became a subject of intense interest and universal speculation. With neither of the rival candidates were his relations those of intimate friendship, while with General Jackson, (who appeared to be the second choice of Kentucky,) they had for years been interrupted by the resentment manifested by the latter at the terms in which Mr. Clay spoke of his conduct in the Seminole War, in the Speech heretofore given. Mr. Crawford was then suffering under a disease which incapacitated him for business, and ultimately terminated his life. Mr. Clay decided that every consideration of public duty required him to give his vote for Mr. Adams, which he did, and Mr. Adams was chosen. The moment his decision became known, a violent outcry of 'Bargain and Corruption" was raised by the disappointed partisans of General

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Jackson, led by one Kremer, a Representative from Pennsylvania. In refutation of this charge, Mr. Clay issued the following Address to the People of the Congressional District composed of the counties of Fayette, Woodford, and Clarke, in Kentucky:]

THE relations of your representative and of your neighbor, in which I have so long stood, and in which I have experienced so many strong proofs of your confidence, attachment, and friendship, having just been, the one terminated, and the other suspended, I avail myself of the occasion on taking, I hope a temporary, leave of you, to express my unfeigned gratitude for all your favors, and to assure you that I shall cherish a fond and unceasing recollection of them. The extraordinary circumstances in which, during the late session of Congress, I have been placed, and the unmerited animadversions which I have brought upon myself, for an honest and faithful discharge of my public duty, form an additional motive for this appeal to your candor and justice. If, in the office which I have just left, I have abused your confidence and betrayed your interests, I cannot deserve your support in that on the duties of which I have now entered. On the contrary, should it appear that I have been assailed without just cause, and that misguided zeal and interested passions have singled me out as a victim, I cannot doubt that I shall continue to find, in the enlightened tribunal of the public, that cheering countenance and impartial judgment, without which a public servant cannot possibly discharge with advantage the trust confided to him.

It is known to you, that my name had been presented, by the respectable States of Ohio, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Missouri, for the office of President, to the consideration of the American public, and that it had attracted some attention in other quarters of the Union. When, early in November last, I took my departure from the district to repair to this city, the issue of the Presidential election before the people was unknown. Events, however, had then so far transpired as to render it highly probable that there would be no election by the people, and that I should be excluded from the House of Representatives. It became, therefore, my duty to consider, and to make up an opinion on, the respective pretensions of the three gentlemen who might be returned, and at that early period I stated to Dr. Drake, one of the professors in the medical school of Transylvania University, and to John J. Crittenden, Esq., of Frankfort, my determination to support Mr. Adams in preference to General Jackson. I wrote to

Charles Hammond, Esq., of Cincinnati, about the same time, and mentioned certain objections to the election of Mr. Crawford, (among which was that of his continued ill health,) that appeared to me almost insuperable. During my journey hither, and up to near Christmas, it remained uncertain whether Mr. Crawford or myself would be returned to the House of Representatives. Up to near Christmas, all our information made it highly probable that the vote of Louisiana would be given to me, and that I should consequently be returned, to the exclusion of Mr. Crawford. And, while that propability was strong, I communicated to Mr. Senator Johnston, from Louisiana, my resolution not to allow my name, in consequence of the small number of votes by which it would be carried into the House, if I were returned, to constitute an obstacle, for one moment, to an election in the House of Representatives.

During the month of December, and the greater part of January, strong professions of high consideration, and of unbounded admiration of me, were made to my friends, in the greatest profusion, by some of the active friends of all the returned candidates. Everybody professed to regret, after I was excluded from the House, that I had not been returned to it. I seemed to be the favorite of everybody. Describing my situation to a distant friend, I said to him, "I am enjoying, whilst alive, the posthumous honors which are usually awarded to the venerated dead." A person not acquainted with human nature would have been surprised, in listening to these praises, that the object of them had not been elected by general acclamation. None made more or warmer manifestations of these sentiments of esteem and admiration than some of the friends of General Jackson. None were so reserved as those of Mr. Adams; under an opinion, (as I have learned since the election,) which they early imbibed, that the western vote would be only influenced by its own sense of public duty; and that if its judgment pointed to any other than Mr. Adams, nothing which they could do would secure it to him. These professions and manifestations were taken by me for what they were worth. I knew that the sunbeams would quickly disappear, after my opinion should be ascertained, and that they would be succeeded by a storm; although I did not foresee exactly how it would burst upon my poor head. I found myself transformed from a candidate before the people, into an elector for the people. I deliberately examined the duties incident to this new attitude, and weighed all the facts before

me, upon which my judgment was to be formed or reviewed. If the eagerness of any of the heated partisans of the respective candidates suggested a tardiness in the declaration of my intention, I believed that the new relation in which I was placed to the subject, imposed on me an obligation to pay some respect to delicacy and decorum.

Meanwhile, that very reserve supplied aliment to newspaper criticism. The critics could not comprehend how a man standing as I had stood toward the other gentlemen, should be restrained, by a sense of propriety, from instantly fighting under the banners of one of them, against the others. Letters were issued from the manufactory at Washington, to come back, after performing long journeys, for Washington consumption. These letters imputed to "Mr. Clay and his friends a mysterious air, a portentous silence," &c. From dark and distant hints the progress was easy to open and bitter denunciation. Anonymous letters, full of menace and abuse, were almost daily poured in on me. Personal threats were communicated to me, through friendly organs, and I was kindly apprized of all the glories of village effigies which awaited me. A systematic attack was simultaneously commenced upon me from Boston to Charleston, with an object, present and future, which it was impossible to mistake. No man but myself could know the nature, extent, and variety of means which were employed to awe and influence me. I bore them, I trust, as your representative ought to have borne them, and as became me. Then followed the letter, afterwards adopted as his own, by Mr. Kremer, to the Columbian Observer. With its character and contents you are well acquainted. When I saw that letter, alleged to be written by a member of the very House over which I was presiding, who was so far designated as to be described as belonging to a particular delegation, by name, a member with whom I might be daily exchanging, at least on my part, friendly salutations, and who was possibly receiving from me constantly acts of courtesy and kindness, I felt that I could no longer remain silent. crisis appeared to me to have arisen in my public life. I issued my card. I ought not to have put in it the last paragraph, because, although it does not necessarily imply the resort to a personal combat, it admits of that construction: nor will I conceal that such a possible issue was within my contemplation. I owe it to the community to say, that whatever heretofore I may have done, or, by inevitable circumstances, might be forced to do, no man in it holds in deeper abhor

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rence than I do, that pernicious practice. Condemned as it must be by the judgment and philosophy, to say nothing of the religion, of every thinking man, it is an affair of feeling about which we cannot, although we should, reason. Its true corrective will be found when all shall unite, as all ought to unite, in its unqualified proscription.

A few days after the publication of my card, "Another Card," under Mr. Kremer's name, was published in the Intelligencer. The night before, as I was voluntarily informed, Mr. Eaton, a Senator from Tennessee, and the biographer of Gen. Jackson, (who boarded in the end of this city opposite to that in which Mr. Kremer took up his abode, a distance of about two miles and a half,) was closeted for some time with him. Mr. Kremer is entitled to great credit for having overcome all the disadvantages, incident to his early life and want of education, and forced his way to the honorable station of a member of the House of Representatives. Ardent in his attachment to the cause which he had espoused, Gen. Jackson is his idol, and of his blind zeal others have availed themselves, and have made him their dupe and their instrument. I do not pretend to know the object of Mr. Eaton's visit to him. I state the fact, as it was communicated to me, and leave you to judge. Mr. Kremer's card is composed with some care and no little art, and he is made to avow in it, though somewhat equivocally, that he is the author of the letter to the Columbian Observer. To Mr. Crowninshield, a member from Massachusetts, formerly Secretary of the Navy, he declared that he was not the author of that letter. In his card he draws a clear line of separation between my friends and me, acquitting them, and undertaking to make good his charges in that letter, only so far as I was concerned. The purpose of this discrimination is obvious. At that time the election was undecided, and it was therefore as important to abstain from imputations against my friends, as it was politic to fix them upon me. If they could be made to believe that I had been perfidious, in the transport of their indignation, they might have been carried to the support of Gen. Jackson. I received the National Intelligencer, containing Mr. Kremer's card, at breakfast, (the usual time of its distribution,) on the morning of its publication. As soon as I read the card, I took my resolution. The terms of it clearly implied that it had not entered into his conception to have a personal affair with me; and I should have justly exposed myself to universal