“…I will hand you the dollars as a compensation for your serving when I need you, which I trust will be at the Federal Court. Our people formed a pretty good ticket last Saturday and success is possible. Levi Whippple for Senator, David Peairs and Appleton Downer for the House.”  In this, the third year of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, newspapers referred to the Whig ticket as “Clay men”, as opposed to the “Jackson men” and Anti-Masonic candidates. Whipple lost, while Pearis and Downer were elected.

Goddard, a Zanesville attorney and himself a state senator, was a prominent Ohio Whig, but less notable than his correspondent: John Hough James was a personal friend of Henry Clay and William Henry Harrison, a Whig power-house both in Ohio and Washington, DC, as well as a banker and railroad builder instrumental in the development of “western” finance and transportation. He was also the founder of Urbana University, the first Swedenborgian college in the world.