"  I  am,  with  great  respect,  your  servant  and  friend,

"  RuFUS  Choate."

The  treatment  which  Mr.  Webster  received  at  the
Baltimore  Convention  had  alienated  many  "Whigs  at
the  North,  and  inclined  them  to  vote  for  the  Demo-
cratic electors.  Mr.  Choate's  position  will  be  Indicated
by  the  following  letter  :  —

"  To  Habtet  Jewell,  Esq.,  President  of  the  Young  Men's  Whig  Club.
"  Boston,  30th  October,  1852.
"  Dear  Sir,  —  I  certainly  can  have  no  unwillingness  to
repeat  quite  formally,  what  I  have  informally  said  so  many
times  to  so  many  of  our  friends.
266  MEMOIR  OF  EtHFUS   CHOATE.        [Chap.  VUI.
"  That  I  regretted  very  keenly  our  failure  to  place  Mr.
Webster  in  nomination,  I,  of  course,  have  never  disguised.
So  much,  too,  did  I  love  him,  and  so  much,  so  filially  —  per-
haps for  him  so  unnecessarily  —  desire,  that  in  all  things  his
feelings  might  be  respected,  his  claims  acknowledged,  and  the
eflfect  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Convention  on  him  mitigated,
that,  although  I  have  ever  deemed  those  proceedings  as  oblig-
ing my  vote  as  a  "Whig,  yet  I  had  decided  that  it  would  not
be  decorous  or  right,  having  respect  to  those  relations  with
him,  which  have  been  and  are  in  their  memory  so  dear  to  me,
to  take  any  active  part  in  setting  on  the  head  of  any  other
the  honors  which  he  had  earned.
