dency, an office which I never dreamed of attaining, and which I had ardently desired to see you occupy. I confess that I did covet the second, but never the first, office in the gift of my fellow-citizens. Fate, as Bonaparte would say, has placed me where I am, and I wait the result which time will determine.” When a man put forward as a candidate for the presidency sees no particular reason why he should be made the chief of a great state, he may still discover in himself the mysterious qualification of being a man of “fate.” It was upon him that Clay's opponents in the Whig party united, because he had elements of popularity which lay outside of politics and aroused no hostility.
The opposition to Clay came from several classes, — the Anti-Masons, of whom there were remnants mainly in Pennsylvania and New York; some of the anti-slavery Whigs, whom Clay displeased as a slave-holder, and whom his speech against the abolitionists had irritated; some of Webster's friends, for reasons largely personal; and the political managers, who wanted to win at any price, and in whose eyes Clay had, by his defeats in former campaigns, been marked as an “unlucky candidate.” These politicians went to work systematically to compass his defeat.
The Whig National Convention was to meet at Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania, on December 4, 1839. In February, 1839, Clay was advised by one of his confidential friends, General Porter, that a majority of the Whigs in New York decidedly pre-
