Note 53 — Chapter XII · 1835–1837.

The writer has had occasion to treat of this occurrence more at length in his Life of Mr. Webster. He has there expressed the opinion that if the friends of the President, when they obtained a majority in the Senate, had contented themselves with adopting a resolution exonerating him from the censure passed in 1834, no one could have complained. Probably they would have done so, if the circumstances attending the adoption of Mr. Clay’s resolution had not provoked them to devise what they regarded as an imposing form of stigmatizing that act. All that is of any consequence now, in relation to this proceeding, turns upon the contradiction between the constitutional requirement to “keep” a legislative journal, and a subsequent obliteration or cancellation of any part of it, by any means whatever. On this subject, see the protest read in the Senate by Mr. Webster, in his Life, by the present writer, vol. I, p. 545, et seq.