Henry Clay and a Protective Tariff. Fourth of July Celebration. THE WHIGS of Germantown, Roxborough, and Bristol, Will welcome the Sixty-Eighth Anniversary of their Country’s Independence by a Pic Nic Celebration, In Physick’s Grove, Highfield. Entrance Washington Lane. The Friends of HENRY CLAY, and Of A Protective Tariff, And the Citizens of the surrounding Country, generally, are respectfully invited to be present. The Grove is cool, sequestered and pleasant: contains several Springs of excellent water, and every arrangement has been completed for the reception, convenience, and enjoyment of the assemblage. The Declaration of American Independence will be Read, and an Oration Will be pronounced, at 11 o’clock, A.M.,

Folio broadside, measuring 19 x 13 ⅜ inches, formerly folded into eighths, small hole at central fold intersection, paper slightly browned, some ruffling to edges of sheet, otherwise very good. Large, attractive campaign broadside, printed in a variety of fonts and typefaces with a large woodcut of an eagle at top edge. The broadside advertises a 4th of July celebration and Picnic put on by the Whig Party in support of Henry Clay, their candidate for president in 1844, held in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Henry Clay (1777-1852) was a three-time presidential candidate, the 1844 election was his final run for the office. Clay had resigned from the Senate in 1842, only to find himself nominated by several states as Whig presidential candidate. Both he and Van Buren, who expected to be the Democratic nominee, agreed to oppose the immediate annexation of Texas, but as the Democrats were determined on expansion, Van Buren lost the nomination to James K. Polk. Clay who had been nominated by acclamation, then declared that slavery was not an issue in the Texas question and endorsed Texan annexation “without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just and fair terms. This maneuver lost him New York and thereby the election. He supported the war with Mexico after it was declared. John Stockton Little (1806-1875) the orator at this celebration, was a publisher and author, he published The Clay Minstrel in 1844, his brother Eliakim Littell (1797-1870) was the editor and publisher of the long-lived periodical Littell’s Living Age, which ran from 1844-1941. Not listed in American Imprints, OCLC, Library Company of Philadelphia online catalog, not in American Antiquarian Society Catalog.…