Washington sentinel. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1853-1855, 1854-08-30
HENRY CLAY AND THE WING PARTY

HENRY CLAY AND THE WHIG PARTY.
We are indebted to the Detroit Free Press
for the following extract from one of the
speeches of Henry Clay, which cannot fail to
have its influence with those who still look
back upon his career as the great embodiment
of their principles, and upon him as the great
expounder of political truth
But if it 1.-THE Wing party is to be merged
into contemplate Abolition party, and if
abolitionism is to be engrafted upon the whig
creed, from that moment renounce the party
and cease to be a whig. / 90 yet step far
Their. If / am alive, will give my humble
support to that man for the presidency, who
to whatever party be may belong is not con
taminated by fanatcism, rather than to one
who, crying out all the time that he is Wing,
maintains doctrines utterly subversive Of the
Constitution and the Union"
Had Mr.. Clay been gifted with the spirit Of
prophecy, and had he intended to delineate the
future course of the Northern Wing party be
could not have done it more faithfully than in
these few remarkable words. Allied as he was
to the Wing party, and feeling as he did all the
parental pride in its success that a father could
feel in the success of his child, he could still
see that it was tending, rapidly and surely
tending, towards the corruption of sectional
fanaticism. Facts have proven the truth Of
his prediction. In all the struggles which
have occurred on this fanatical subject Of
slavery, the Wings of the North have sided
almost to aman with the opposers of the Con-
stitution and of the rights of the States
Whenever the question has manifested itself
whether in the reception of incendiary petit
tons, in the systematic attempt to exclude
slavery from the District of Columbia, in the
more odious attempt to deprive the South of q
participation in the acquired territory Of the
Union, in open opposition to the fugitive
slave law, and, finally, in the late glorious
struggle to restore all sections Of the Union to
their constitutional rights by repeal Of the
Missouri compromise, the Wing party of the
North have been found arrayed on the side of
fanaticism against justice, of error against
truth, of abolition against the Constitution.
These statements cannot be denied. The
cotemporaneous records prove them, and they
prove, on the contrary, that almost all, if not
all of the conservatism and patriotism which
existed at the North, was to be found in the
ranks of the republican party. Nor has this
tendency of the Wings been confined to fede-
raj legislation. Wherever in the northern
States there has been an organized opposition
to the consistent course Of those honest states
men who have been true to the Constitution,
we find the Wing party allied with the fanatics;
and even now while we write that alliance has
proven fatal to many gallant supporters oftruth,
and is arraying itself in most formidable hos
tility to them all.
If this be true, and that it is true, no one
can deny, then we call upon all those who re-
spect the memory and opinions of the great
father Of the Wing party to withdraw their sup
port from an organization, which throughout the
whole northern section Of the Union has shown
itself to be the ally Of corrupt fanaticism. We
call upon them in the language Of Henry Clay
"to renounce the party, and cease to be
Wings"