For his namesake son, see Henry Clay, Jr..
| Henry Clay |
|
|
In office
March 7, 1825 – March
3, 1829 |
| President |
John Quincy Adams |
| Preceded by |
John Quincy Adams |
| Succeeded by |
Martin Van Buren |
|
In office
November 4, 1811 – January 19, 1814 |
| Preceded by |
Joseph Bradley Varnum |
| Succeeded by |
Langdon Cheves |
|
In office
December 4, 1815 – October 28, 1820 |
| Preceded by |
Langdon Cheves |
| Succeeded by |
John W. Taylor |
|
In office
December 1, 1823 – March
4, 1825 |
| Preceded by |
Philip Pendleton Barbour |
| Succeeded by |
John W. Taylor |
|
| Born |
April 12 1777(1777--)
 Hanover County, Virginia |
| Died |
June 29 1852 (aged 75)
 Washington, D.C. |
| Political party |
Democratic-Republican, National Republican, Whig |
| Spouse |
Lucretia Hart Clay |
| Profession |
Politician, Lawyer |
| Religion |
Baptist |
Henry Clay, Sr. (April 12, 1777 – June 29, 1852) was a nineteenth-century American statesman and orator who represented Kentucky in both the House of Representatives and Senate. He was a dominant figure in both the First Party
System to 1824, and the Second Party System
after that. Known as "The Great Compromiser" for his ability to bring others to agreement, he was the founder and leader of the
Whig Party and a leading advocate of programs for modernizing the economy,
especially tariffs to protect industry, a national bank, and internal improvements to promote canals, ports and railroads. As a
War Hawk in Congress demanding the War of 1812, Clay made
an immediate impact in his first congressional term, including becoming Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In his early
involvement in Illinois politics, Abraham Lincoln was a great admirer of Clay.
Although his multiple attempts at the presidency were unsuccessful, to a large extent he defined the issues of the
Second Party System. He was a major supporter of the American System, and had success in brokering compromises on the slavery issue, especially in 1820 and 1850. He was part of the "Great Triumvirate" or "Immortal Trio," along
with his colleagues Daniel Webster and John C.
Calhoun. In 1957, a Senate committee chaired by John F.
Kennedy named Clay as one of the five greatest senators in American history.[1]
Early life
Henry Clay was born on April 12, 1777 at the Clay homestead in
Hanover County, Virginia. He was the seventh of nine children of the Reverend
John Clay and Elizabeth Hudson Clay.[2] His father died
three years later, leaving his mother in a difficult situation trying to support six children. She soon married Capt. Henry
Watkins, who proved himself to be an affectionate stepfather to Clay.
Clay received an elementary education from a British teacher before being hired as a shop assistant in Richmond, Virginia after his family had relocated to Kentucky,
leaving him with a boys club that educated him and helped raise him. He later gained employment in the office of the Court of
Chancery, where he displayed an adeptness for understanding the intricacies of law and became friends with Theodore Wythe, the
chancellor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. While Clay was employed as Wythe's amanuensis, the chancellor took an active interest in Clay's future and arranged a position for him with the
Virginia attorney general, Robert Brooke. Clay
received formal legal education at the College of William and Mary in
Virginia, studying under George Wythe. Under Brooke, Clay prepared for the bar, to which he
was admitted in 1797.
Seeking to establish a lucrative law practice, Clay relocated in November 1797 to Lexington, Kentucky, near where his family then resided in Woodford County. He soon established a reputation for his legal skills and courtroom
oratory.[3]
Speaker of the House
In 1812, at the age of thirty-four, Henry Clay was elected to the United States House of Representatives and was chosen
Speaker of the House on the very first day of the
session, something that has never been done before and has yet to be repeated. During the fourteen years following his first
election, he was re-elected five times to the House and to the speakership.
Before Clay's entrance into the House, the position of Speaker had been that of a rule enforcer and mediator. Clay turned the
speakership into a position of power second only to the President. He immediately appointed members of the War Hawk faction (of which he was the leader) to all the important committees, effectively giving him control
of the House.
As the Congressional leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, Clay took charge of the agenda, especially as a
"War Hawk," supporting the War of 1812 with the
British Empire. Later, as one of the peace commissioners,
Clay helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent and signed it on December 24, 1814. In 1815, while still in Europe, he helped negotiate a
commerce treaty with Great Britain. Also during his early House service, he strongly opposed the creation of a National Bank, in part because of his personal ownership in several small banks in his
hometown of Lexington. This is ironic, given his strong support for the Second National Bank when he was seeking the presidency.
Henry Clay's tenure as Speaker of the House shaped the history of Congress. Evidence from committee assignment and roll call
records shows that Clay's leadership strategy was highly complex and that it advanced his public policy goals as well as his
political ambition. [Strahan et al. 2000]
Henry Clay helped establish the American Colonization Society, a group
that wanted to send freed slaves to Africa and that founded Monrovia in Liberia for that purpose. Clay presided at the founding meeting of the ACS on December 21, 1816, at the Davis Hotel in
Washington, D.C. Attendees also included Robert
Finley, James Monroe, Bushrod
Washington, Andrew Jackson, Francis Scott
Key, and Daniel Webster.
The American System
-
Clay and John C. Calhoun helped to pass the Tariff of
1816 as part of the national economic plan Clay called "The American
System," rooted in Alexander Hamilton's American School. Described
later by Friedrich List, it was designed to allow the fledgling American manufacturing
sector, largely centered on the eastern seaboard, to compete with British manufacturing.
After the conclusion of the War of 1812, British factories were overwhelming American ports with inexpensive goods. To
persuade voters in the western states to support the tariff, Clay advocated federal government support for internal improvements
to infrastructure, principally roads and canals. These internal improvements would be financed by the tariff and by sale of the
public lands, prices for which would be kept high to generate revenue. Finally, a national bank would stabilize the currency and
serve as the nexus of a truly national financial system.
The American System was supported by many in both the North and the South at first. Only later, with the Tariff of 1828, did the South break away from their support, leading to the Nullification Crisis. It was ultimately both a cause and a casualty of the increasing sectionalism
between north and south (and to some extent between east and west) that was continually to worsen in the decades leading up to
the American Civil War. It would take defeat of the South to restore the nation's
protectionist policies, which then continued through the early 20th century.
The Missouri Compromise and 1820s
In 1820 a dispute erupted over the extension of slavery in Missouri Territory. Clay helped settle this dispute by gaining
Congressional approval for a plan called the "Missouri Compromise." It brought in
Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state (thus
maintaining the balance in the Senate, which had included 11 free and 11 slave states), and except for Missouri it forbade
slavery north of 36º 30' (the northern boundary of Arkansas).
In national terms, the old Republican Party caucus had ceased to function by 1820. Clay ran for president in 1824 and came in
fourth place. However, none of the candidates had received a majority of the votes, so the House of Representatives chose the
victor. Clay used his influence to support John Quincy Adams, a fellow nationalist,
who won despite having trailed Andrew Jackson in both the popular and electoral votes.
Adams then appointed Clay as U.S. Secretary of State in what Jackson
partisans termed "the corrupt bargain." Clay, undeterred, then used his influence to build a national network of supporters,
called National Republicans.
Andrew Jackson, outmaneuvered for the Presidency in 1824, combined with
Martin Van Buren to form a coalition that defeated Adams in 1828. That new coalition
became a full-fledged party that, by 1834, called itself the Democrats. By 1832, Clay had merged the National Republicans with other
factions to form the Whig Party.
In domestic policy Clay promoted the American System, with a high tariff to encourage manufacturing, and an extensive program
of internal improvements (such as roads and canals) to build up the domestic market. After a long fight he did secure a high
tariff in 1828, but did not get the spending for internal improvements. In 1822, President James
Monroe vetoed a bill to build the Cumberland Road (crossing the Allegheny mountains).
In foreign policy, Clay was the leading American supporter of independence movements and revolutions in Latin America after 1817. Between 1821 and 1826, the U.S. recognized all the new countries, except
Uruguay (whose independence was debated and recognized only later). When in 1826 the U.S. was
invited to attend the Columbia Conference of new nations, opposition emerged, and the American delegation never arrived. Clay
supported the Greek independence revolutionaries in 1824 who wished to separate from the
Ottoman Empire, an early move into European affairs.
After the passage of the Tariff Act of 1828, which raised tariffs considerably in an attempt to protect fledgling factories
built under previous tariff legislation, South Carolina attempted to nullify U.S. tariff laws. It threatened to secede from the Union if the
Federal government tried to enforce the tariff laws. Furious, President Jackson threatened to lead an army to South Carolina and
hang any man who refused to obey the law.
The crisis worsened until 1833 when Clay, again a U.S. Senator re-elected by Kentucky in
1831, helped to broker a deal to lower the tariff gradually. This measure helped to preserve the supremacy of the Federal
government over the states, but the crisis was indicative of the developing conflict between the northern and southern United
States over economics and slavery.
Candidate for president
As the Whig Party emerged in 1832-34, Clay immediately became its dominant
leader, centering its program around the "American System," a program designed to unify all portions of the country through the
economic policies of Alexander Hamilton in his Report on Manufactures. The Democratic Party, which emerged from the old
Democratic-Republican Party at the same time as the National
Republican Party, opposed the American System of the Whig Party in each successive election until the emergence of the
Republican Party of Abraham
Lincoln in the late 1850s.
Clay ran for president five times but was never able to win.
- In 1824 Clay ran together with John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and William H. Crawford, all as Democratic-Republican candidates. There was no clear majority in the Electoral College. In 1823, Crawford suffered a stroke. Even though he recovered in 1824, this
crippled his bid for the presidency.
- The election was thrown to the U.S. House of Representatives. As per the Twelfth Amendment, only the top three candidates in
the electoral vote were candidates in the House: Jackson, Adams, and Crawford. Clay was left out, but as Speaker of the House,
would play a crucial role in deciding the presidency. Clay detested Jackson and had said of him, “I cannot believe that killing
2,500 Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies for the various, difficult, and
complicated duties of the Chief Magistracy.”[4] Moreover, Clay's American System was far closer to Adams's position on tariffs
and internal improvements than Jackson's or Crawford's, so Clay threw his support to Adams. John Quincy Adams was elected
President on February 9, 1825, on the first ballot. [5]
[6]
- Adams's victory shocked Jackson, who expected that, as the winner of a plurality of both the popular and electoral votes, he
would be elected President. When President Adams appointed Clay his Secretary of State, essentially declaring him heir to the
Presidency — Adams and his three predecessors had all served as Secretary of State — Jackson and his followers accused Adams and
Clay of striking a "corrupt bargain." The Jacksonians would campaign on this claim for the next four years, ultimately leading to
Jackson's victory in the Adams-Jackson rematch in 1828. Clay denied that any bargain had been struck, and no evidence has ever
been found to show that there was.
- In 1840, Clay was a candidate for the Whig nomination, but
he was defeated in the party convention by supporters of war hero William Henry
Harrison. Harrison was chosen because his war record reminded people of Jackson and he was seen as more electable than
Clay. If the Whigs had been more aware of the political weakness of President Van
Buren, they would have probably selected Clay.
- In 1844, Clay was nominated by the Whigs against
James K. Polk, the Democratic candidate. Clay lost due in part to national sentiment for
Polk's program "54º40' or Fight" campaign which was to settle the northern
boundary of the United States with Canada then under the control of the British Empire. Clay also opposed admitting
Texas as a state because he felt it would reawaken the Slavery
issue and provoke Mexico to declare war. Polk took the opposite view and public sentiment was
with him, especially in the Southern United States. Nevertheless, the election was close; New
York's 36 electoral votes proved the difference, and went to Polk by a slim 5,000 vote margin. Liberty Party candidate James G. Birney won a
little over 15,000 votes in New York and may have taken votes from Clay.
- Clay's warnings came true as annexation led to the Mexican-American War
(1846-1848) while the North and South came to heads over the extending slavery into Texas and
beyond during Polk's Presidency.
Henry Clay lost his first two presidential bids by wide margins, due mainly to his failure to form a national coalition or to
build political organization that could match the Jacksonian Democrats. And although the Whigs had become as adept at political
organizing as the Democrats by the time of Clay's final presidential bid, Clay himself failed to connect to the people, partly
because of his unpopular views on slavery and the American System in the South. When Clay was warned not to take a stance against
slavery or be so strong for the American System, he was quoted as saying, "I'd rather be right than be President!" This remark
has been quoted or paraphrased by several presidential candidates since, as a statement of principle over ambition.
The Compromise of 1850
After losing the Whig Party nomination to Zachary Taylor in 1848, Clay decided to retire to his Ashland estate in Kentucky.
Retired for less than a year, he was in 1849 again elected to the U.S. Senate from Kentucky. During his term, the Northern and
Southern states were again wrangling over slavery extension, as Clay had predicted they would, this time over the admission or
exclusion of slavery in the territories recently acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War. Always the "Great Compromiser," Clay helped work out what historians have
called the Compromise of 1850.
This plan allowed slavery in the New Mexico and Utah territories while admitting California to the
Union as a free state. It included a new Fugitive Slave Act* and banned the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in the
District of Columbia. This compromise may have helped to delay the Civil War for an
additional eleven years.
- The Fugitive Slave Act was an act passed by Congress, pursuant to the United
States Constitution's Art. IV, Sec. 2, cl. 3, forcing citizens to turn in runaway slaves (North or South) or they can be
sentenced to 6 years of prison or fined 1,000+ dollars. Also, it set up courts to handle disputes of runaway slaves. The judges
in these courts were paid $5 to let a slave go and $10 to send him back to his owner.*
Clay in court
According to former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor:
- Some of the cases Clay argued continue to be cited as precedent today. In Osborn v. United
States [34 U.S. 573 (1824)], Clay argued on behalf of the Bank of
the United States, which was a nationwide bank chartered by Congress. Clay challenged the constitutionality of an
Ohio tax levied upon the bank and sought an injunction to force the state's auditor to
return the improperly seized taxes. The Supreme Court agreed with Clay and ordered the auditor to return the taxes. In doing so,
the Court found that the Eleventh Amendment — which
bars lawsuits against the states — did not apply to the state auditor. Osborn is still relevant today: It has been cited
twenty-six times since I took the bench in 1981, and was cited just last term by Justice
David Souter in a dissent. [See Seminole Tribe.] Nor is Osborn the only case argued by
Clay to be cited in recent times. Clay also argued on behalf of a Kentucky creditor who sought to collect a debt from a person
who declared bankruptcy under New York law. In that case, Ogden v. Saunders [25 U.S. 213 (1827)], the Court concluded that the New York bankruptcy law was
constitutional, so that the debtor was no longer liable to the Kentucky creditor. The case has been cited 86 times since it was
decided, three times since I came on the bench.[2]
Other cases of note include: Groves v. Slaughter and Green
v. Biddle.
Personality
According
to Carl Schurz, Clay succeeded for the following reasons:
"Clay's quick intelligence and sympathy, and his irreproachable conduct in youth, explain his precocious prominence in
public affairs. In his persuasiveness as an orator and his charming personality lay the secret of his power. He early trained
himself in the art of speech-making, in the forest, the field and even the barn, with horse and ox for audience. By
contemporaries his voice was declared to be the finest musical instrument that they ever heard. His eloquence was in turn
majestic, fierce, playful, insinuating; his gesticulation natural, vivid, large, powerful."
"In public he was of magnificent bearing, possessing the true oratorical temperament, the nervous exaltation that makes the
orator feel and appear a superior being, transfusing his thought, passion and will into the mind and heart of the listener; but
his imagination frequently ran away with his understanding, while his imperious temper and ardent combativeness hurried him and
his party into disadvantageous positions. The ease, also, with which he outshone men of vastly greater learning lured him from
the task of intense and arduous study. His speeches were characterized by skill of statement, ingenious grouping of facts,
fervent diction, and ardent patriotism; sometimes by biting sarcasm, but also by superficial research, half-knowledge and an
unwillingness to reason a proposition to its logical results."
"In private, his never-failing courtesy, his agreeable manners and a noble and generous heart for all who needed protection
against the powerful or the lawless, endeared him to hosts of friends. His popularity was as great and as inexhaustible among his
neighbors as among his fellow-citizens generally. He pronounced upon himself a just judgment when he wrote: 'If any one desires
to know the leading and paramount object of my public life, the preservation of this Union will furnish him the key.'"
Death
Clay continued to serve both the Union he loved and his home state of Kentucky until June 29,
1852, when he passed away in Washington, D.C., at the age
of 75. Clay was the first person to lie in state in the United States Capitol. He was buried in Lexington
Cemetery and the eulogy was provided by Theodore Frelinghuysen. [7] His headstone reads simply: "I know no North - no South - no
East - no West."
Estate
Clay's Lexington home for many years was his farm and mansion, Ashland, named for the many ash trees on the property. He owned as many as 60 slaves at
once. Rebuilt and remodeled by his heirs, Ashland is now a museum. The museum includes about 20 acres (81,000 m²) of the original
estate grounds and is located on Richmond Road (US 25) in Lexington. It is open to the public (admission charged). For several
years, the mansion was used as a residence for the regent of the University of
Kentucky.
U.S. Senator Henry Clay introduced the Mint Julep drink to Washington, D.C. at the famous
Willard Hotel during his residence in the city. [8]
Monuments and memorials
- Henry Clay monument in Pottsville, Pennsylvania http://www.schuylkillhistory.org/henryclay.html
- Clay Street in New Haven, Connecticut
was named in his honor.
- Ashland Ave. in Chicago, Illinois was named after his estate.
- Mount Clay in the Presidential Range of
New Hampshire was named for Clay.
- The town of Clay in upstate New York is named for Henry Clay and includes Henry Clay Avenue.
- Fifteen Clay counties in the United States are named for him: Clay County, Alabama, Clay
County, Florida, Clay County,
Georgia, Clay County
Illinois, Clay County, Indiana, Clay County, Kansas,
Clay County, Minnesota, Clay County, Mississippi, Clay County, Missouri, Clay County, Nebraska, Clay County, North Carolina, Clay County, South Dakota, Clay County, Tennessee, Clay County, Texas, and Clay County, West Virginia.
- The town of Ashland, Virginia located in the county of Clay's birth,
Ashland County, Ohio and Ashland County, Wisconsin were named for his estate, as was
the cities of Ashland, Kentucky and
