ter only of inference. Fortunately, however, his fealty does not
appear to have led him any great distance from the truth. He yielded
to the prevailing desire to pass along the responsibility to some one
else so far as to try to bring in a Mr. Markley, who, however, never
became more than a dumb figure in the drama in which Buchanan was
obliged to remain as the last important character. With obvious
reluctance this gentleman then wrote that if General Jackson had
placed any such construction as the foregoing upon an interview which
had occurred between them, and which he recited at length, then the
General had totally misconstrued--as was evident enough--what he, Mr.
Buchanan, had said. Indeed, that Jackson could have supposed him to
entertain the sentiments imputed to him made Mr. Buchanan, as he said,
"exceedingly unhappy." In other words, there was no foundation
whatsoever for the charge thus traced back to an originator who denied
having originated it and said that it was all a mistake. General (p. 187)
Jackson was left to be defended from the accusation of deliberate
falsehood only by the charitable suggestion that he had been unable to
understand a perfectly simple conversation. Apparently Mr. Adams and
Mr. Clay ought now to be abundantly satisfied, since not only were
they amply vindicated, but their chief vilifier seemed to have been
pierced by the point which he had sharpened for them. They had yet,
however, to learn what vitality there is in falsehood.

General Jackson and his friends had alone played any active part in
this matter. Of these friends Mr. Kremer had written a letter of
retraction and apology which he was with difficulty prevented from
publishing; Mr. Buchanan had denied all that he had been summoned to
prove; a few years later Mr. Beverly wrote and sent to Mr. Clay a
contrite letter of regret. General Jackson alone remained for the rest
of his life unsilenced, obstinately reiterating a charge disproved by
his own witnesses. But worse than all this, accumulations of evidence
long and laboriously sought in many quarters have established a
tolerably strong probability that advances of precisely the character
alleged against Mr. Adams's friends were made to Mr. Clay by the most
intimate personal associates of General Jackson. The discussion (p. 188)
of this unpleasant suspicion would not, however, be an excusable
episode in this short volume. The reader who is curious to pursue the
matter furth