Section 20:  Politics & Panic

In the campaign of 1844 I mixed some in politics; went out through the county occasionally and made speeches for Henry Clay. This was by no means popular in this county, for the Democrats were largely in the majority, but it afforded me pleasure to expose what I believed to be the hypocrisy of the party in this county who claimed that Polk was a better Tariff man than Clay. On many of their flags and banners were in glaring capitals "folk, Dallas, Wonck and the Tariff of 1842." I contended that this was deception and flying false colors and was not slow in denouncing it off the stump, and wherever I made speeches over the county.

Lathy and I made a good many stump speeches that fall and incurred the hostility of many noisy Democrats, but I don't know that it hurt either of us as lawyers, and when, contrary to the assertions of the Democrats, the Tariff of 1842 was repealed by the Act of 1846, we were completely vindicated and some of the men who had fought us the hardest came over to our side and became our warmest political friends. But it was too late to avert the disaster that followed the Tariff of 1846, and I believe no county in the State or perhaps in the United States suffered as much as the County of Clarion.