There was no responsible name for this charge; but at the ensuing session of Congress, a member from Pennsylvania, George Creemer, uttered from his seat the charge in direct terms.  This seemed to give assurance of the truth of this damaging accusation.  There was no public denial from Mr. Clay.  The press in his support had from the first treated the story as too ridiculous to be noticed other than by a flat denial; but the circumstances were sufficiently plausible to predicate such a slander, and the effect upon Mr. Clay was beginning to be felt seriously by his friends.  In the mean time, rumors reached the popular ear that the proofs of its veracity were in the hands of General Jackson, whose popularity was running through the country with the warmth and rapidity of a fire upon the prairies.

There was now a responsible sponsor, and Mr. Clay at once addressed a note to Creemer, demanding his authority for the charge.  This was answered, and General Jackson’s was the name given, as his authority.  Mr. Clay sent his friend, General Leslie Combs, with a note to Jackson, with a copy of Creemer’s communication.  Combs was a weak, vain man, and so full of the importance of his mission that he made no secret of his object in visiting Jackson at the Hermitage; and it was soon running through the country in the party press, each retailing the story as he had heard it, or as his imagination and party bias desired it.  It was soon current that Mr. Clay had challenged General Jackson, and a duel was soon to occur between these distinguished men.  General Jackson, however, gave as his author, James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania.  In turn, Mr. Buchanan was called upon by Clay, but he denied ever having made any such communication to General Jackson; at the same time, making certain statements under the seal of secrecy to Mr. Letcher, Clay’s friend.  What these revelations were will never be known:  death has set his seal on all who knew them; and no revelation disclosed them in time.  Long after this interview between Letcher and Buchanan, the former called on the latter, and asked to be relieved from this imputation, and for permission to give to the public these statements; but Mr. Buchanan peremptorily refused.  Mr. Letcher insisted that they were important to the reputation of more than Mr. Clay:  still Buchanan refused; and to this day the question of veracity remains unsettled between Jackson and Buchanan.  The public have, however, long since declared that General Jackson was too brave a man to lie.

Toward the close of Mr. Clay’s life, one Carter Beverly, of Virginia, wrote Mr. Clay some account of the part he himself had taken in the concoction of this slander, craving his forgiveness.  This letter was received by Mr. Clay while a visitor at the home of the writer, and read to him:  it dissipated all doubts upon the mind of Mr. Clay, if any remained, of the fact of the whole story being the concoction of Buchanan.  Creemer was a colleague of Buchanan, and was a credulous Pennsylvanian, of Dutch descent; honest enough, but without brains, and only too willing to be the instrument of his colleague in any dirty work which would subserve his purposes.