Edgefield Advertiser

LETTER FROM MR. CLAYTON.

WASHINGTON, July 2, 1849.

GENTLEMEN: I have this day, received your invitation to attend the festival of the Whig citizens of Wilmington and New Castle county, Delaware, who are making preparations for a patriotic celebration of the coming anniversary of American Independence.

The pressure of public business necessarily consequent upon the advent of a new administration, owing its existence to a party which has virtually been proscribed for twenty years, has occupied all my time during the last four months, and will probably continue to occupy it to the exclusion of all other matters during the period for which I may remain in my present station. No man who ever held the office of American Secretary of State has slept for one moment upon a bed of roses.

The leisure of one to visit my home in Delaware, which I have not seen in four months, though within seven hours' travel of it, would be a luxury to me of which you who enjoy the pleasure of locomotion daily can hardly have any just conception. Chained down to a spot from 14 to 16 hours a day, and laboring all the time, while every act I do or can perform is not only liable to misconstruction but certain to be misconstrued from some quarter or other, a man in my situation is compelled to throw himself upon the charity as well as the justice of his countrymen, or abandon his position. I cannot be mistaken when I say that from the origin of our Republic down to this present writing there has never been a period during which greater difficulties have beset the path of a public man, than that which comprises the four first months of the new Administration.

The Departments at Washington have been crowded by a host of the expectants of office, never before exceeded, not even in the first year of the advent of Jacksonism. This is no disgrace to that party, which has been excluded from office for nearly 20 years. During all that time these men have been virtually disfranchised so far as regards the right to hold offices of either trust or honor. The principles they have professed and practised have been avowed as the ground of their exclusion, and now when the first attempt is made to do them justice, sheer justice, by admitting them to equal privileges as American citizens, from which they have been so long excluded, it is not surprising that many of them should rush forward to claim an equal right to share in the service and the honors of their country. But by those to whom is assigned the painful duty of hearing the applications, and deciding upon their relative claims, difficulties and embarrassments which can be better felt than described, are absolutely unavoidable.

Oppressed by the weight of these and other responsibilities inseparably incident to my position, my first and most natural appeal for relief and support is to my old friends, and the citizens of my native State. Next to the approbation of my own conscience, is that of those with whom I have been associated in the land of my forefathers and the home of my own boyhood. And although the State to which I owe my humble origin is the least of all the sisters in the great family of American Republics, yet to me her encouraging voice, which has cheered me through all the vicissitudes of a long and laborious public life, would be among the sweetest consolations, as it is among the highest rewards, to which my ambition will ever aspire.

For the reason already stated, every hour of my time being anxiously devoted to public duties, I cannot join in your festival though my heart will be with you all, while the memory of your own gallant ancestors, whose blood was freely shed on more than thirty battle-fields of the Revolution, will

Be in your flowing cups freshly remember'd.

Allow me the pleasure of offering the following sentiment—on the occasion:

Honor to the old Blue Hen, and health and prosperity to all her brood.

I am, gentlemen, faithfully yours,

JOHN M. CLAYTON.

To Messrs. Wales, Dupont, Price, &c.

Committee.