Terrebonne County Louisiana Archives News.....Fifty Years Ago No. 26 May 5, 1894
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Savanna King savanna18king@gmail.com August 11, 2023, 1:19 am

The Thibodaux Sentinel May 5, 1894
The political campaign of 1844 was famous for its intense bitterness, malignant 
and unjustifiable abuses of private character. The English language was strained 
to furnish words strong enough to satisfy the stump speakers and the pot-house 
politicians.

The Whig party, marshaled under the banners of their great and beloved leader, 
Henry Clay, or as he was familiarly known, “Harry of the West,” entered into the 
contest with earnestness, vigor, and determination. As far as practicable, the 
tactics of the campaign of 1840 were followed in every town and city. Barbecues 
and mass meetings were held; at every neighboring cross road, poles were erected 
from whose tops Whig banners floated in the free breeze, bearing the name of 
Henry Clay.

All the talent and oratory of the party was brought to the front. In wagons, in 
carriages, on horseback, the Whig speakers traveled all over the land addressing 
the people, who collected in masses to hear the doctrine of their party 
expounded, to hear the praises of their idolized leader, extolled to the skies, 
and to listen to the denunciations of the Cocofoco partisans. Banners were 
carried at the head of every procession, lithographic portraits of Henry Clay 
were innumerable, whilst glee clubs, composed of ladies and gentlemen formed a 
conspicuous feature of the campaign at all their meetings. Ships were built and 
rigged complete, and placed upon wheels were manned with sailors in costumes, 
and drawn by six or eight horses from one large assemblage of the Whigs to 
another, often traveling from 30 to 50 miles.

From their masts floated pennants bearing the words “Free trade and sailor’s 
rights” (Not the free trade of the present day.) These were words used by Henry 
Clay in Congress about the beginning of the war of 1812 with England, and their 
maintenance was one of the issues involved in that struggle.

England, in her arrogant supposed supremacy on the sea, claimed the right to 
board any vessel, and search for fugitives or deserters from her ships.

This power the government of the United States denied, and asserted that the 
ocean was free to the vessels of all nations, and that the right of search could 
not be permitted by any power. Clay was one of the most eloquent and powerful 
advocates of this doctrine in the Halls of Congress, claiming that when any man, 
soldier, citizen or sailor took refuge upon an American vessel, he was under the 
protection of the United States flag from which protection no foreign power 
could remove him by force.

The Whig party advocated the creation of a National Bank, a general system of 
internal improvements, one term for a presidential incumbent, and the 
continuation of the High Tariff that the party had enacted in 1842. The 
political lines were very nearly the same as they were in 1840.

The adherents of Polk were not idle. The plan of holding mass meetings, raising 
poles, giving barbecues, and stump speaking was practiced fully as much as it 
was by the Whig party.

Their orators denounced the tariff of 1842, the creation of a national bank but 
turned their attention principally to the vilification and personal slander of 
the Whig candidates.

In 1824 there were four candidates for the Presidency; Andrew Jackson of 
Tennessee, John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, William H. Crawford of Georgia, 
and Henry Clay of Kentucky. Neither candidate received a majority of the votes 
in the electoral colleges, Jackson received 99 votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and 
Clay 37; Calhoun received 182 votes for vice president and was elected.

This carried the contest into the Halls of Congress, the first and only time in 
which such a thing ever occurred.

Clay was a representative in Congress from Kentucky, and, of course, had a voice 
in the election of the President. The vote in such cases is cast by states, Clay 
was out of the race, Crawford was in such a state of health that his claims 
could not be considered, thus leaving the contest between Adams and Jackson. 
Clay with his colleagues from Kentucky threw the vote of that state for Adams 
who was elected.

That he had a perfect and undisputed right to support Adams no one can gainsay, 
and that he did what his constituents desired, was proven by the majority which 
that state gave for Adams four years later in a square race between Adams and 
Jackson. On March 4, 1825, Adams was inaugurated President. In forming his 
cabinet, he appointed Henry Clay, Secretary of State. In this selection of one 
of the ablest statesmen of the nation, and a strong personal and political 
friend, he did an act that could not be censured by any reasonable man. Yet no 
sooner was this done that the enemies of Clay raised a great hue and cry about 
“Bargain corruption, that Clay had sold his vote for the office of Secretary of 
State,” thus it was a “uniting of the Massachusetts puritan with the Kentucky 
blackleg.”

Some years previous to this campaign, Mr. Graves, of Kentucky and Cilley, of 
Maine, both members of Congress, fought a duel, in which Graves killed Cilley, 
and because Clay accompanied his friend and colleague, Graves, to the field, 
Clay was denounced as a murderer of Cilley. This was at a period in which public 
opinion compelled a man to fight or to be pronounced a poltroon or a scoundrel.

This bloody duel, although the parties were driven to the field by the force of 
an imperious custom, was undoubtedly the foundation of the opposition that has 
finally completely abolished the custom of settling difficulties in that manner.

Clay was denounced as a gambler, a blackleg, &c., because he did–what all other 
men of any prominence did at that period–play cards.

I remember, during that campaign, hearing Amos Lane, a democratic member of 
Congress from Indiana, whose head was white with age, make a characteristic 
speech, in which he exhausted the English vocabulary of infamous epithets, in 
abuse of the Whig leader. So anxious was he to prove to his hearers that Clay 
was a gambler that he put on an exceedingly pious look and said: “Why, fellow 
citizens, I know what I am talking about, for I have sat up all night many and 
many a time playing poker with Henry Clay.”


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