Honorable Frankness
The New York Tribune makes the following frank concession:
‘As to Mr. Clay and Mr. Van Buren, we do not see how either of them has claims on abolitionists as such,
for their support. Nobody asks support for Mr. Clay, on the pretence that he is an abolitionist, or friendly to abolition.’
It would certainly be creditable for all other whigs and whig party papers to be equally ingenuous. That nothing to our cause is to be expected from either of those men, is here fully admitted, as it ought to be. Were any candidate to hold the position on the tariff which these hold on the subject of slavery, would any anti-tariff man vote for him? Or be asked to do so? Surely not. But the Tribune is not correct in saying that ‘nobody asks support for Mr. Clay on the pretence that he is friendly to abolition’. In anti-slavery sections of this and other States, whigs are looking up old rusty colonization speeches, and every expression of Mr. Clay’s that can be found adverse to slavery , and endeavoring to make the people believe they contain his present views, according to which he will control his conduct if elected, notwithstanding his late repeated and most explicit declarations to the contrary. Is that honorable or honest? Will such double dealing be approved by the people? —- From the Liberty Standard
(Liberator, May 3, 1844, pg 4)
