the protectionists included. No sooner had the “Kane letter” been published, than the cry was raised: “Polk, Dallas, and the tariff of 1842.” In Pennsylvania at every mass meeting, in every procession, banners appeared bearing that legend, — not seldom with the addition, “We dare the Whigs to repeal it.” But even that was not enough. While Polk and the Democratic party were paraded as the special champions of the tariff of 1842, Clay, the father of the “American system,” was systematically cried down as a dangerous enemy of protection; and, in the name of protection to American industry, the voters of Pennsylvania were invoked to vote against him. It was one of the most audacious political frauds in our history. That it should have been possible to carry on such a palpable deception, through a campaign lasting several months, is truly astonishing. And what an opening of eyes there was in Pennsylvania when in 1846 the Polk Democrats did repeal the tariff of 1842, which the Clay Whigs vainly struggled to sustain!
While this trick cost him the vote of Pennsylvania, Clay had more dangerous enemies to encounter, elsewhere. The campaign had hardly begun when the “old hero” at the Hermitage, on the brink of the grave, sent forth his last bugle-blast to summon his friends against the man he hated most. Andrew Jackson wrote a letter again affirming his belief in the story that Clay and Adams had by bargain and corruption defrauded
