On April 12, 1777, the Kentucky politician Henry Clay was born. His remarkable career included a long stint as Speaker of the House and several failed presidential campaigns.
Clay was born near Richmond, Virginia, to a Baptist clergyman and his wife, the seventh of their nine children. Clay’s father passed away when the boy was only four years old, leaving Clay and his siblings to help their widowed mother tend to the family farm—all in the midst of a colonial war for independence.
At age 14, Clay began work at a local store, where he copied legal documents and did other general writing as needed. He was soon hired by George Wythe—a powerful lawyer whose friends and students included George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Marshall—as a personal assistant; Clay served him ably for several years before a brief stint with the state attorney general. By age 20, Clay was admitted to the Virginia bar as a practicing lawyer, having taught himself everything he needed to know through reading and work experience.
Shortly thereafter, Clay moved to Lexington, Kentucky, which would remain his home until his death in 1852. In 1799, Clay met and married his wife, Lucretia Hart, with whom he would father 11 children, most of whom did not live into adulthood. For several years, Clay maintained a respectable, if modest, legal practice. His clients included Aaron Burr, who was accused of treason for conspiring to establish an independent country in the western United States.
Yet as early as 1798, Clay spoke out against the Alien and Sedition Acts and advocated for amending the Kentucky state constitution to abolish slavery, indicating a strong interest in public affairs. In 1803, Clay was elected to the Kentucky state legislature as a Jeffersonian Republican. Just three years later, he was chosen by the legislature to complete an unfinished term in the U.S. Senate, where he advocated early and often for his burgeoning “American System,” featuring higher tariffs, investments in infrastructure, and, later in his career, a national bank. Clay was also appointed in 1810 to complete another unfinished Senate term.
In 1811, Clay joined the House of Representatives, where he served almost continuously until 1825. Upon taking his seat, he was elected Speaker of the House almost immediately; he would be elected again several times, holding that office throughout nearly his entire tenure. Addressing his fellow lawmakers soon after his first selection, Clay said:
I am sensible of the imperfections which I bring along with me, and a consciousness of these would deter me from attempting a discharge of the duties of the chair, did I not rely confidently upon your support. Should the rare and delicate occasion present itself when your speaker should be called upon to check or control the wanderings or intemperances in debate, your justice will, I hope, ascribe to his interposition the motives only of public good and a regard to the dignity of the house.
As a member of the House, Clay took a hawkish stance on relations with Britain and was one of the leading proponents of the War of 1812. Yet he jumped at the opportunity to secure peace: in 1814, President James Madison sent Clay abroad with four other delegates, including John Quincy Adams, to negotiate what would become the Treaty of Ghent.
Clay became a full-throated advocate for the establishment of a national bank in 1816 and for liberating South American colonies from Spanish rule. He was also instrumental in crafting and passing the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which proved a short-lived solution to the growing national debate over slavery. In order to preserve the balance of power between “free” states and “slave” states, Congress admitted Missouri and Maine to the Union as free and slave, respectively, and banned slavery everywhere else north of the 36°30′ latitude line. Clay’s work on this and other issues earned him the nickname “The Great Compromiser,” with which he is still strongly associated today.
In 1824, Clay made his first run at the presidency in what amounted to an internal squabble among the Democratic-Republicans. With no single candidate obtaining a majority of votes in the Electoral College, Clay was eliminated as the lowest vote-getter, and the race was thrown to the House of Representatives. There, Clay wielded enormous influence as Speaker of the House; his support for John Quincy Adams proved decisive, leading to accusations of a “corrupt bargain” in which he backed Adams over Andrew Jackson in exchange for a cabinet appointment.
Sure enough, Adams made Clay his Secretary of State in 1825, fueling a steady slew of accusations and criticism from Jackson and others that would dog him throughout his career. He also found many of his initiatives, including support for South American independence, thwarted by an obstinate Congress that did not trust him. Though he ultimately negotiated more treaties than all of his predecessors combined, Clay was mostly dissatisfied in the post.
Upon Adams’ fall to Jackson in the 1828 contest, Clay considered leaving public life for good and retiring to private life in Kentucky. It was not to be: he was elected to the Senate in 1830, where he spent more than a decade engrossed once more in the most pressing issues facing the country. Almost immediately, he faced an irate South Carolina calling for “nullification” of a federal tariff law. Clay made clear his opposition, but true to his moniker, he sought compromise. In 1833, Clay introduced a moderate tariff bill that drew the support of Senator John C. Calhoun and the other nullifiers, thus avoiding a constitutional crisis—at least for the time being.
Clay also returned to the struggle over the national bank, forcing the issue of its renewal into the 1832 presidential campaign as nominee for the National Republican Party. It became clear, however, that a majority of voters opposed the bank, and Jackson trounced Clay. Soundly defeated, Clay returned to the Senate and became head of the newly formed Whig Party.
The decade and a half that followed featured many years out of the Senate and more failed attempts to win the presidency. Clay sought the Whig Party’s nomination in 1840, 1844, and 1848; only in 1844 was he successful, meeting frustrating losses to William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, respectively. And in his 1844 race against James Polk, Clay opposed the annexation of Texas, sealing his defeat in the face of national obsession with manifest destiny.
For his last hurrah, Clay returned to the issue of slavery. Together with Senators Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Calhoun—the trio known as the Great Triumvirate—Clay put together an omnibus bill addressing several heated disputes, among them the admission of California as a state; the creation of the Utah and New Mexico territories; and the status of the Fugitive Slaves Act. Although the Compromise of 1850 did not prevent civil war, it delayed confrontation for several years.
Henry Clay died of tuberculosis on June 29, 1852, still serving as a United States Senator from his beloved home state of Kentucky. He was laid in state at the Capitol—the first to be honored as such—and ultimately laid to rest in Lexington. Speaking in Springfield, Illinois, just days after Clay’s passing, Abraham Lincoln concluded his eulogy with these words:
Henry Clay is dead. His long and eventful life is closed. Our country is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been quite all it has been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay? Such a man the times have demanded, and such, in the providence of God was given us. But he is gone. Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence, trusting that, in future national emergencies, He will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.
Amen.
Nicandro Iannacci is a web content strategist at the National Constitution Center.
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