Henry Clay
| Henry Clay | |
 | |
9th United States Secretary of State
| |
| In office March 7, 1825 – March 3, 1829 | |
| Under President | John Quincy Adams |
|---|---|
| Preceded by | John Quincy Adams |
| Succeeded by | Martin Van Buren |
8th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
| |
| In office November 4, 1811 – January 19, 1814 | |
| Preceded by | Joseph Bradley Varnum |
| Succeeded by | Langdon Cheves |
10th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
| |
| In office December 4, 1815 – October 28, 1820 | |
| Preceded by | Langdon Cheves |
| Succeeded by | John W. Taylor |
13th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
| |
| In office December 1, 1823 – March 4, 1825 | |
| Preceded by | Philip Pendleton Barbour |
| Succeeded by | John W. Taylor |
| Born | April 4, 1777 Hanover County, Virginia |
| Died | June 29, 1777 Washington, D.C. |
| Political party | Democratic-Republican, National Republican, Whig |
| Spouse | Lucretia Hart |
| Profession | Politician, Lawyer |
| Religion | Baptist |
Henry Clay (April 12, 1777 – June 29, 1852) was a leading American statesman and orator who represented Kentucky in both the House of Representatives and Senate. He was a dominant figure in both the Second Party System to 1824 and later the Third Party System. 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 the Speaker of the House.
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 significant 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 the "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.
Early Life
Clay was born on April 12, 1777 at the family's homestead in Virginia, and was the seventh of nine children of John and Elizabeth Hudson Clay. His father passed away when Clay was only four years old. Clay found work as a court clerk in Richmond at the age of fifteen. Despite his limited formal education, he studied law in his spare time and in 1797 became an attorney. Clay decided to move to Kentucky and practice law. He was a gifted orator and became well respected and trusted. Clay soon won a seat on the state legislature. This was the beginning of his successful political career. During his early career he met and married Lucretia Hart, the couple had eleven children.
Speaker of the House
In 1812, at the age of 34, Henry Clay was elected to the United States House of Representatives and, because he had become known as an exceptional leader, was chosen Speaker of the House on the first day of the session. During the 14 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 to all the important committees. This effectively gave 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.
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.
Henry Clay sympathized with the plight of free blacks and believed that because of "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country."
Henry Clay tried to resolve racial integration through the American Colonization Society, a group that wanted to send freed slaves to Africa, specifically Monrovia in Liberia. On December 21, 1816, a group including Robert Finley, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Andrew Jackson, Francis Scott Key, and Daniel Webster met at the Davis Hotel in Washington, D.C., with Henry Clay presiding over the meeting.
The American System
After the war 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 both the North and the South at first. However, it affected the South negatively because other countries retaliated by raising tariffs on U.S. exports. This crippled the South because its economy was based on agricultural exports. When the additional Tariff of 1828 was requested, the South broke away from their support leading to the Nullification Crisis. It was ultimately a casualty of the increasing sectionalism between North and South (and to some extent between east and west) that was to continually worsen in the decades leading up to the American Civil War.
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 that was 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 been 11 free and 11 slave states), and except for Missouri it forbade slavery north of 36-30 (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. He threw his strength to John Quincy Adams, who won despite having trailed Andrew Jackson in both the popular and electoral votes. Adams then appointed Clay as Secretary of State in what Jackson partisans termed "the corrupt bargain." Clay 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 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 get a high tariff in 1828 but did not get the spending for internal improvements. In 1822 Monroe vetoed a bill to build the Cumberland Road (crossing the Allegheny mountains).
In foreign policy, Clay was the leading American supporter of the independence movements and revolutions in Latin America after 1817. Between 1821 and 1826 the US recognized all the new countries, except Uruguay (whose independence was debated and recognized only later). When in 1826 the US was invited to attend the Columbia Conference of new nations, opposition emerged, and the US 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.
The Nullification Crisis
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 United States government tried to enforce the tariff laws. Furious, President Andrew Jackson threatened in return to go to South Carolina and hang any man who refused to obey the law.
The crisis worsened until 1833 when Clay was re-elected by Kentucky in 1831. He helped to broker a deal to lower the tariff gradually. This measure helped to preserve the supremacy of the Federal government over the states and would be only one precursor to the developing conflict between the northern and southern United States over economics and slavery.
Candidate for president
As the Whig Party emerged in 1832-1834 he 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.” Moreover, Clay's American System was far closer to Adams' 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.
- Adams' victory shocked Jackson, who expected that, as the winner of a plurality of both the popular and electoral votes, he should have been 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 this and no evidence has been found to support this claim to date.
- 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. He lost by a wide margin to the highly popular Jackson (55 percent to 37 percent).
- 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 weakness of Martin Van Buren, they would have probably selected Clay.
- In 1844, he 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.
- In 1848, Zachary Taylor, a Mexican-American War hero, won the Whig nomination, again depriving Clay of the nomination.
Henry Clay's presidential bids were lost by wide margins, representing in his earlier presidential bids a failure to form a national coalition and a lack of 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 due to 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 in return, "I'd rather be right than be President!"
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 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. 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.
Later Life
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, DC, 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. His headstone reads simply: "I know no North-no South-no East-no West."
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 of the original estate grounds and is located in Lexington and is open to the public. For several years, the mansion was used as a residence for the regent of the University of Kentucky.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Baxter, Maurice G. Henry Clay the lawyer. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000. ISBN 9780813121475
- Clay, Henry, James F. Hopkins, and Robert Seager. Papers. [Lexington]: University of Kentucky Press, 1959. ISBN 9780813100562
- Remini, Robert Vincent. Henry Clay: statesman for the Union. New York: W.W. Norton 1991. ISBN 9780393030044
- Shankman, Kimberly C. Compromise and the Constitution: the political thought of Henry Clay. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 1999. ISBN 9780739100363
- Watson, Harry L. Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay: democracy and development in antebellum America. (The Bedford series in history and culture.) Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's 1998. ISBN 9780312177720
External links
- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress entry Retrieved April 9, 2007.
- From Revolution to Reconstruction Retrieved April 9, 2007.
- Ashland The Henry Clay Estate Retrieved April 9, 2007.
- Capital complex Retrieved April 9, 2007.
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