his authority. Now Buchanan had to rise and explain. Accordingly, in a public letter, he denied having spoken to General Jackson on behalf of Mr. Clay or his friends; he had said nothing that General Jackson could have so understood; had he seen reason for suspecting that the General had so understood him at the time, he would have set himself right immediately. He even suggested that the whole story of the attempted bargain might have been an afterthought on the part of the General. Thus Jackson's only witness utterly failed him. Not only that, but Buchanan's letter, together with the correspondence which followed, left ample room for the suspicion that, if bargaining was thought of and attempted, it was rather in the Jackson camp than among Clay's friends.
Clay now felt as if he had the slander under his heel. To make its annihilation quite complete, he called all his friends upon the witness stand. If their votes in Congress had been transferred to Mr. Adams by a corrupt bargain, many persons must have known of it. One after another they came forward in public letters, declaring that, while the election was pending, they had never heard of any attempt at bargaining to control their votes in favor of Mr. Adams, and that, had the attempt been made, they would have refused to be controlled. All these things were elaborately summed up and set forth in another address to the people published by Clay in December.
The case appeared perfect. Clay and his friends
