WHEREAS, the Party of the First Part Loves the Party of the Second Part

In their newly-published biography, Henry Clay: The Essential American, David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler report that John Calhoun's courtship of his future wife, Floride Bonneau Colhoun, was "ardent, although the one love poem that John had written to her oddly began every stanza with a lawyerly 'Whereas.'"