JOHN M. CLAYTON AND THE SEARCH FOR ORDER: A STUDY IN WHIG POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY by Richard Arden Wire /1/ Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1971 c.~p ..J.. ABSTRACT Title of Thesis: John M. Clayton and the Search for Order: A Study in Whig Politics and Diplomacy Richard Arden Wire, Doctor of Philosophy, 1971 Thesis directed by: Dean David S. Sparks As a Whig politician and diplomatist John M. Clayton participated in the search for an orderly republic to be achieved and maintained by the politics of moderation. Driven by a sense of duty but haunted by a recurring feeling of desolation in his personal life, he did make some impor­ tant contributions to that search for order. Ultimately, however, his limited success epitomized the plight of a moderate politician in an age of growing instability. Clayton was born and educated in downstate Delaware and the Connecticut River Valley where society was characterized by respect for order. A lawyer by profession, he defined order in legal and constitutional terms. Above all, he urged a reliance on the institutions and standards of the past, which, he believed, needed continuing but relatively minor modifications to meet the needs of the present. For Clayton the road to power lay in manipulating institutions and the men in those institutions. The state legislature elected him to the United States Senate four times, the Governor appointed him Delaware Chief Justice in 1837, and President Zachary Taylor named him Secretary of State at midcentury. Stable institutions and a generation of Whig ascendancy in Delaware gave him a secure, if not large, power base from which to enter national politics, where he served from 1829 to his death in 1856. In confronting the question of slavery extension during the late 1840's, Clayton urged Congress, and later President Taylor, to bring order and' civil authority to the territories gained from Mexico in a way that would not jeopardize the stability of the Union. In 1848 the House of Representatives rejected the Senate-passed Clayton Compromise bill, which embodied a judicial solution of that question by appealing ultimately to the Supreme Court. Shortly afterwards, as Secretary of State, he proposed that the constitutional question of congressional power over slavery in the terri­ tories be obviated by admitting California and New Mexico as states and thus enabling them to deal exclusively with the peculiar institution. Congress, however, discarded the so-called Taylor plan and, following the General's death, passed the Compromise of 1850, a dubious accomplishment in Clayton's opinion. Although Clayton's sensitivity to criticism made him impulsive at times in his diplomacy, as Secretary of State he tried to strengthen the fabric of an orderly world. For strategic and commercial reasons he challenged British domi­ nation of Central America and attempted to bring about Anglo-American cooperation concerning the isthmus and its projected interoceanic canal. Through the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 he obligated Britain to abandon its uni­ late1-al policy in Central America and pursue a bilateral policy there. During the final six years of his life, Clayton tried to halt the fragmentation of American conservatism and unify the proponents of an orderly republic. He first sought to make foreign policy, particularly the enforcement of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, the basis of national political reorganization. In doing so, he misjudged the prospects of avoiding sectional agitation at home by emphasizing the British threat abroad. After realizing his mistake, he attempted to compromise the question of slavery in the Kansas-Nebraska territories and postpone disruptive decisions until time had permitted passions to cool and reason to reassert itself. Despite his best efforts, however, the politics of accommodation gave way to the politics of confrontation, and the Union began to divide. In his personal life Clayton's search for order was thwarted early by the death of his young wife, later by that of his two sons, then by the disappearance of the old Whig organization leaving him a man without a party, and finally by the steady erosion of the Union he loved so much. In the last months of his life, therefore, he turned to the Christian faith as the consummation of his search for order. '. PREFACE Growing out of a general concern with Whig politics, this dissertation portrays John M. Clayton as a moderate politician in an age of in~reasing sectional agitation. According to its conclusions, his efforts to achieve, or restore, a republic of order faltered and collapsed in the mid-1850's when the politics of confrontation superseded the politics of accommodation. As his hopes for the national community diminished, he carried his personal search for order beyond the realm of state, national, and international politics. By turning to the Christian faith, he probed the eternal dimension of order and community. Previous historical literature on Clayton has been limited almost entirely to his sixteen-month tenure as Secretary of State. Therefore, while not neglecting his diplomacy, this dissertation has given primary attention to his political career. Consideration of his family life and legal career, furthermore, has been essential to an understanding of Clayton both as a politician and as a diplomatist. Finally, the religious experience which consummated his search for order illustrates the impact of evangelical Christianity on America during the middle of the nineteenth century. ii The need for a full-length biography of Clayton has long existed. The only comprehensive book on him is the impressionistic and eulogistic Memoir of John M. Clayton (1882) by Joseph P. Comegys, his former law-apprentice, the husband of his niece, and his successor for a short time in the United States Senate. It has value as primary source material but must be used with some care. Many decades ago Mary Wilhelmine Williams wrote a brief sketch of Clayton for the Dictionary of American Biography and a detailed account of his diplomacy for volume VI of Samuel Flagg Bemis, ed., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, In these efforts Professor Williams drew on her earlier study, Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy, 1815-1915 (1916), which superseded Ira Dudley Travis' The History of the Clayton­ Bu1wer Treaty (1900) as the standard monograph on the subject. The time has thus come for a reexamination of Clayton's diplomacy, and this dissertation begins that task. Although I have not yet examined the diplomatic records so thoroughly as the political sources, I am convinced that Clayton merely escalated his search for order to the inter­ national level when he became Secretary of State. The general picture of Clayton the diplomatist is sufficiently clear. Further research, however, will undoubtedly add important nuances. For their assistance during the various stages of the dissertation, I am indebted to many persons and institutions. Clayton Douglass Buck, Jr., of Wilmington, Delaware, kindly iv granted me access to his extensive collection of Clayton correspondence. Professor John A. Munroe of the University of Delaware permitted me to use his transcriptions of the Clayton letters in the John W. Houston Manuscripts, with the approval of Miss Elisabeth W. Houston of Georgetown, Dela­ ware. The staffs at numerous institutions facilitated my research, particularly those at the Library of Congress, the Interlibrary Loan Department of the University of Maryland, the Historical Society of Delaware, the Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, the Delaware Public Archives, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the University of Pennsylvania Library, Yale University Library and Archives, and the Western Reserve Historical Society. My special thanks go to Professors Wayne S. Cole and Elbert B. Smith for reading the dissertation and offering helpful suggestions, to Ginger Molvar for typing the manu­ script, and to my parents for lending their moral and financial support. Finally, I wish to thank my adviser, Dean David S. Sparks, for his understanding and guidance during the period of my graduate training. In a Middle Period seminar several years ago, he called my attention to the need for a biography of Clayton and has since inspired me to formulate and develop the main theme of the dissertation. For his kind and patient supervision I am most grateful. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page PREFACE . ii 1. I HELD MY OWN REMARKABLY. 1 II. DOOMED TO POLITICAL CONTENTION. 27 III. I HAVE TAKEN MY STAND IN THE MIDDLE 73 IV. THE TIMES ARE DREADFULLY OUT OF JOINT 126 V. THE DEMON OF DISCORD .... 188 VI. A NEW ERA IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC .... 245 VII. THE CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY AND THE END OF THE NEW ERA. .. 288 VIII. TO GATHER THE FRAGMENTS OF CONSERVATISM TOGETHER . .. 328 IX. THE STATESMANSHIP OF THE LAST GENERATION. 358 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY . 395 .v 239 canal, but "nothing has yet been attempted with success to save our commerce the dangerous navigation of nine thousand miles around the cape." Within the past month New York merchant William Henry Aspinwall, head of the Pacific Railroad and Panama Steamship Company, had visited Clayton to seek government help in constructing a railroad across the isthmus. In his letter of introduction for Aspinwall, ChaFles du Pont reminded his Senator that for three hundred years the feasibility of a carrier road across the isthmus had been discussed. "This-' " he boasted, "Yankee enterprise can effect in three Years, with the proper furtherance of our Government." For Clayton, then, commercial expansion abroad as well as moderate poli­ tics at home was a major aim of an orderly republic. 74 During the months following the 1848 presidential election, reports circulated that John M. Clayton would receive an appointment to a prominent post in Zachary Taylor's Cabinet.