Henry Clay

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Henry Clay

Henry Clay (April 1, 1777 in Hanover County, Virginia – June 29, 1852 in Washington, D.C.) was an American statesman and orator who served in both the House of Representatives and Senate. He also made five failed bids for the presidency, but was nevertheless extremely influential in U.S. politics. He was known as the "Western Star" and the "Millboy of the Slashes". He was a dominant figure of the Second Party System from the 1820s to his death and he was a pornstar.

From the beginning of his career, he was in favor of internal improvements as a means of opening up the fertile but inaccessible West, and he opposed the spoils system as an abuse of official patronage. But Clay applied himself most to the struggles of slavery, politics, and protecting domestic industries. Throughout his public life, he proved his passionate devotion to the Union and his willingness to compromise in order to save it.

Early career

As a young man, Clay apprenticed himself in the Richmond, Virginia office of renowned jurist George Wythe -- George Wythe had been appointed the nation's first Law Professor at the College of William and Mary at the behest of Thomas Jefferson (also a former student). After Clay's admission to the bar in 1797, he relocated to Lexington, Kentucky, where he developed his own law practice. He quickly earned both a reputation for brilliance and a lucrative income.

In 1799, at the age of twenty-two, he was elected to a constitutional convention in Kentucky; at twenty-six, to Kentucky's state legislature; and at twenty-nine—despite being under the 30-year minimum age required by the United States Constitution—he was appointed to fill a vacant unexpired term (1806–1807) in the United States Senate. Being a representative of seniority, he plunged into the business of Congress as though he had been there all his life. After leaving, he again served in the Kentucky House of Representatives (1808–1809), and was chosen Speaker of the House. There he achieved distinction by defeating an intense and widespread anti-British reform campaign, which sought to exclude the common law from the Kentucky code. A year later, he was elected to another unexpired term in the United States Senate, serving 1810–1811.

Congress

As Speaker of the House, Clay was regarded as the leader of the War Hawks.

In 1811, at the age of thirty-four, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives and was chosen Speaker of the House on the first day of the session. As the Congressional leader of the Republican party, he took charge of the agenda, especially as a "War Hawks," promoting the war with the United Kingdom in 1812. Later, as one of the peace commissioners, he reluctantly signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814.

During the fourteen years following his first election, he was re-elected five times to the House and to the speakership; retiring for one term (1821–1823) to resume his law practice and retrieve his fortune. He served as Speaker in 1811–1814, in 1815–1820 and in 1823–1825. One time he was unanimously elected by his constituents, and another nearly defeated for having at the previous session voted to increase congressional salaries. The old Republican party had virtually ceased to function by 1820, so Clay built a national network of supporters, using Kentucky as a base.

From 1825 to 1829, he served ass Secretary of State in President John Quincy Adams's Cabinet. Jacksonians charged that Clay's appointment to the State Department was won through a corrupt bargain between Clay and Adams which squeezed out Andrew Jackson. Clay asked his suporters in the House of Representatives to vote for Adams, and was immediately appoint Secretary of State. Clay's term as Secretary of State ended when Adams lost his reelection bid to Andrew Jackson. In 1831 Clay returned from Kentucky to the United States Senate, where he served until 1842, and again from 1849 until his death.

In foreign policy, Clay supported the Spanish-American revolutionists (1818) and the Greek insurgents (1824).

Personality

According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, 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, too, 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.'"

Henry Clay's American System was a plan to strengthen the nation's economy by tying the North, South, and West together. It called for:

• Federal funding of infrastructure improvements (such as the Erie Canal and a series of highways) funded by a raised tariff on imported goods.
• Using protective tariffs to encourage development of domestic industry.
• Reliance on domestic financial resources.

In spite of the opposition of Daniel Webster and other prominent statesmen, Clay succeeded in convincing the congress to enact a tariff which the people of the Southern states denounced as a "Tariff of Abominations." As it over-inflated revenue, in 1832 he vigorously favored reducing the tariff rates on all articles not competing with American products. His speech on behalf of the measure was for years a protectionist textbook; but the measure reduced the revenue so little and provoked such serious threats of nullification and secession in South Carolina, that, to prevent bloodshed and to forestall a free trade measure from the next Congress, Clay brought forward in 1833 a compromise gradually reducing the tariff rates to an average of 20%. To the Protectionists, this was "like a crash of thunder in winter," but it was received with such favor by the country generally, that its author was hailed as "The Great Pacificator," as he had been thirteen years before at the time of the Missouri Compromise (see below). However, the discontent with the tariff in the South was only a symptom of the real trouble there: the sensitivity of the slave-power. Clay subsequently confessed his serious doubts of the polity of his interference.

Bids for the presidency

In 1832 Clay was unanimously nominated for the presidency by the National Republicans; Jackson, by the Democrats. The main issue was the policy of continuing the Second Bank of the United States, which in 1811 Clay had originally opposed, but favored warmly from 1816 onward. A majority of the voters approved of Jackson's fight against what Clay had once denounced as a dangerous and unconstitutional monopoly. Clay made the mistake of supposing that he could arouse popular enthusiasm for a moneyed corporation against the great military hero of The Battle of New Orleans.

In 1839, Clay was a candidate for the Whig nomination, but his enemies defeated him in the party convention and nominated William Henry Harrison. The result threw Clay into paroxysms of rage. Clay complained that his friends always used him as their candidate when he was sure to be defeated, and betrayed him when he or anyone could have been elected.

In 1844, he was nominated by the Whigs against James K. Polk, the Democratic candidate. By an audacious fraud that represented him as an enemy of protection, and Polk as its friend, Clay lost the vote of Pennsylvania. Clay then lost the vote of New York by his own letter abating the force of his previous opposition to the annexation of Texas.

In 1848, Zachary Taylor, a Mexican War hero—and hardly even a convert to the Whig party—defeated Clay for the nomination, with even Kentucky deserting her favorite son. In 1850 Clay was the leading spokesman for the Compromise of 1850; historians credit Stephen Douglas for pushung it through Congress. Clay died in Washington, D.C., four months before the next presidential election. He is buried in Lexington Cemetery.

Estate

Clay's home for many years was his farm and mansion, Ashland, at Lexington, Kentucky. Although rebuilt and remodeled by his heirs, it is now a museum. The museum includes about 20 acres (81,000 m²) of the original estate grounds and is located on Richmond Road 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. (Ashland was the namesake of a county in Ohio.) The city of Ashland, Kentucky, is also named in honour of Henry Clay's estate.

Monuments and memorials

• Clay Street in New Haven, Connecticut was named in his honor.
• Mt. Clay in the Presidential Mountain Range of New Hampshire is also named for Clay.
• Many U.S. counties are named for Clay, including Clay Counties in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.
• The history of the Henry Clay monument in Pottsville, Pennsylvania
• The Ashland Counties in both Ohio and Wisconsin are named for his farm.

Trivia

• Henry Clay was mauled by a dog in front of the Capitol Building near the end of his life.
• Clay is remembered as "The Great Compromiser" for his ability to bring others to agreement.

References

• Baxter, Maurice G. Henry Clay and the American System (1995)
• Brown, Thomas. Politics and Statesmanship: Essays on the American Whig Party (1985) ch 5
• Eaton, Clement. Henry Clay and the Art of American Politics (1957)
• Gammon, Samuel R. The Presidential Campaign of 1832 (1922)
• Holt, Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (1999) the standard history (over 1000 pages)
• Knupfer, Peter B. "Compromise and Statesmanship: Henry Clay’s Union." in Knupfer, The Union As It Is: Constitutional Unionism and Sectional Compromise, 1787-1861 (1991), pp. 119-57.
• Mayo, Bernard. Henry Clay, Spokesman of the West (1937)
• Peterson, Merrill D. The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (1987)
• Poage, George Rawlings. Henry Clay and the Whig Party (1936)
• Remini, Robert. Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom (1981)
• Remini, Robert. Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (1991)
• Schurz, Carl. Life of Henry Clay: American Statesmen. 2 vol. (1899)
• Van Deusen, Glyndon. The Life of Henty Clay (1937), a standard biography
• Watson, Harry L. Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay: Democracy and Development in Antebellum America (1998) brief collection of readings

Primary Sources

• Clay, Henry. The Papers of Henry Clay, 1797-1852. Edited by James Hopkins, Mary Hargreaves, Robert Seager II, Melba Porter Hay et al. 11 vols. University Press of Kentucky, 1959-1992. The standard scholarly edition.
• Clay, Henry. Works of Henry Clay, 7 vols. (1897)
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

See also

Places named for Henry Clay

• Clay County, several counties in different U.S. states

External links

• American Political History Online
• Clay's Ashland Home web site
• Works by Henry Clay at Project Gutenberg

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