Buren's party or policies, he had always had a kind word to say for the man. When Van Buren, after leaving the presidential office, traveled in the South and West, Clay invited him to Ashland, and Van Buren, in May, 1842, heartily enjoyed for a few days the hospitality of his old adversary's roof. There they had, as Clay wrote to Crittenden, “a great deal of agreeable conversation, but not much of politics.” A little conversation on politics, however, may possibly have sufficed for their purpose. The annexation of Texas was an unwelcome subject to both of them. Clay, in a large sense a Southern man with Northern principles, disliked annexation because his instinct told him that it meant the propagation of slavery, and that it endangered the Union. Van Buren, a Northern man with Southern principles, was afraid of it, because it was intensely unpopular at the North, and threatened to bring on a war. They agreed, therefore, if it should become necessary, both publicly to take position against it.
Until late in 1843, Clay hoped it would not be necessary. On December 5 he said, in a letter to Crittenden, that he did not “think it right, unnecessarily, to present new questions to the public,” and “to allow Mr. Tyler, for his own selfish purposes, to introduce an exciting topic, and add to the other subjects of contention before the country.” But the negotiations going on between the administration and the Texan government did in their progress not remain secret, and the rising
