dead. He declined absolutely. “Considering my age,” he wrote to Daniel Ullmann, “the delicate state of my health, the frequency and the unsuccessful presentation of my name on former occasions, I feel an unconquerable repugnance to such a use of it again. I cannot, therefore, consent to it.”
But another call came which could not be wholly declined. Late in the summer Clay received from a committee of citizens of New York an urgent invitation to visit that state for the purpose of repelling the attacks to which the compromise was exposed. “We have a well-founded conviction,” they said, “that the great body of the American people are in favor of maintaining and enforcing the compromises of the Constitution; nevertheless, in the resolutions and addresses adopted at conventions lately assembled around us, we have seen with regret, as well as alarm, that the question of adherence to the compromise measures is avoided or evaded, that modification and amendment are declared to be requisite, and repeal itself admissible. It is evident, therefore, that there requires to be more generally diffused a spirit that will not hold communion with those who advance and support doctrines in relation to the great national adjustment fatal to the future peace and harmony of the Union.” In other words, the people were to be persuaded no longer to read the resolutions and addresses of Free Soilers or anti-slavery Whigs, and no longer to listen to the speeches of men who
