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Henry Clay (April 12, 1777June 29, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He was the seventh House speaker as well as the ninth secretary of state. Clay unsuccessfully ran for president in the 1824, 1832, and 1844 elections. He helped found both the National Republican Party and the Whig Party. For his role in defusing sectional crises, he earned the appellation of the " Great Compromiser" and was part of the "Great Triumvirate" of Congressmen, alongside fellow Whig Daniel Webster and Democrat John C. Calhoun.
Clay was born in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1777, and began his legal career in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1797. As a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, he won election to the Kentucky state legislature in 1803 and to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1810. Clay was chosen as Speaker of the House in early 1811 and, along with President James Madison, led the United States into the War of 1812 against Great Britain. In 1814, he helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which brought an end to the War of 1812, and then after the war, Clay returned to his position as Speaker of the House and developed the American System, which called for federal infrastructure investments, support for the national bank, and high protective tariff rates. During 1820, Clay helped bring an end to a sectional crisis over slavery for many years by leading the passage of the Missouri Compromise. He finished with the fourth-most electoral votes in the multi-candidate 1824–1825 presidential election and used his position as speaker to help John Quincy Adams win the contingent election held to select the president. President Adams then appointed him to the prestigious position of Secretary of State. As a result, critics alleged that the two had agreed to a "corrupt bargain".
Adams was defeated by Democrat Andrew Jackson in the bitter 1828 presidential election. Clay won election to the U.S. Senate in 1831 and ran as the National Republican nominee in the 1832 presidential election. Clay was defeated decisively by President Jackson primarily due to his support for the Bank War, which Jackson vehemently opposed. After the 1832 election, Clay helped bring an end to the nullification crisis by leading passage of the Tariff of 1833. During Jackson's second term, opponents of the president including Clay, Webster, and William Henry Harrison created the Whig Party, and through the years, Clay became a leading congressional Whig.
Clay sought the presidency in the 1840 election but was passed over at the Whig National Convention in favor of Harrison. When Harrison died and his vice president John Tyler ascended to office in 1841, Clay clashed with Tyler, who broke with Clay and other congressional Whigs. Clay resigned from the Senate in 1842 and won the 1844 Whig presidential nomination, but he was narrowly defeated in the general election by Democrat James K. Polk, who made the annexation of the Republic of Texas his top issue. Clay strongly criticized the subsequent Mexican–American War and sought the Whig presidential nomination in 1848 but was passed over in favor of General Zachary Taylor who went on to win the election. After returning to the Senate in 1849, Clay played a key role in passing the Compromise of 1850, which postponed a crisis over the status of slavery in the territories. Clay was one of the most important and influential political figures of his era.D. A. Smith, Presidents from Adams Through Polk, 1825–1849 (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2005), p. 12.
The British raided Clay's home shortly after the death of his father, leaving the family in a precarious economic position. However, the widow Elizabeth Clay married Captain Henry Watkins, a successful Planter class and cousin to John Clay. Elizabeth would have seven more children with Watkins, bearing a total of sixteen children. Watkins became a kind and supportive stepfather and Clay had a very good relationship with him. After his mother's remarriage, the young Clay remained in Hanover County, where he learned how to read and write. In 1791, Watkins moved the family to Kentucky, joining his brother in the pursuit of fertile new lands in the West. However, Clay did not follow, as Watkins secured his temporary employment in a Richmond emporium, with the promise that Clay would receive the next available clerkship at the Virginia Court of Chancery.
After Clay had worked at the Richmond emporium for a year, he obtained a clerkship that had become available at the Virginia Court of Chancery. Clay adapted well to his new role, and his handwriting earned him the attention of College of William & Mary professor George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, mentor of Thomas Jefferson, and judge on Virginia's High Court of Chancery. Hampered by a crippled hand, Wythe chose Clay as his secretary and amanuensis, a role in which Clay would remain for four years. Clay began to reading law under Wythe's mentorship. Henry Clay - Encyclopedia Virginia Wythe had a powerful effect on Clay's worldview, with Clay embracing Wythe's belief that the example of the United States could help spread human freedom around the world. Wythe subsequently arranged a position for Clay with Virginia attorney general Robert Brooke, with the understanding that Brooke would finish Clay's legal studies. After completing his studies under Brooke, Clay was admitted to the Virginia Bar in 1797.
Clay and Lucretia had eleven children (six daughters and five sons): Henrietta (born in 1800), Theodore (1802), Thomas (1803), Susan (1805), Anne (1807), Lucretia (1809), Henry Jr. (1811), Eliza (1813), Laura (1815), James (1817), and John (1821). By 1835, all six daughters had died of varying causes, two when very young, two as children, and the last two as young mothers. Henry Jr. was killed while commanding a regiment at the Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican–American War. Clay's oldest son, Theodore Wythe Clay, spent the second half of his life confined to a psychiatric hospital. When a young child, Theodore was injured by a blow to his head that fractured his skull. As he grew older his condition devolved into insanity, and from 1831 until his death in 1870 he was confined to an asylum in Lexington. Thomas (who had served some jail time in Philadelphia in 1829–1830) became a successful farmer, James established a legal practice (and later served in Congress), and John (who in his mid-20s was also confined to the asylum for a short time) became a successful horse breeder.
Clay was greatly interested in gambling, although he favored numerous restrictions and legal limitations on it. Famously, he once won $40,000 (approximately $970,000 as of 2020). Clay asked for $500 (approximately $12,000 today) and waived the remainder of the debt. Shortly afterward, Clay fell into a debt of $60,000 (approximately $1.5 million today) while gambling with the same man, who then asked for the $500 back and waived the rest of the debt.
They initially lived in Lexington, but in 1804 they began building a plantation outside of Lexington known as Ashland. The Ashland estate eventually encompassed over , with numerous outbuildings such as a smokehouse, a greenhouse, and several barns. There were 122 enslaved people at the estate during Clay's lifetime, with about 50 people needed for farming and the household. He planted crops such as corn, wheat, and rye, as well as hemp, the chief crop of the Bluegrass region. Clay also took a strong interest in thoroughbred racing and imported livestock such as , , and Hereford cattle. Though Clay suffered some financial issues during economic downturns, he never fell deeply into debt and ultimately left his children a large inheritance. After the deaths of Anne and Susan, Clay and Lucretia raised several grandchildren at Ashland.
Clay's client Aaron Burr was indicted for treason in the Burr conspiracy. Clay and his law partner John Allen successfully defended Burr without a fee in 1807.Maurice G. Baxter, Henry Clay the lawyer (2000) pp 26–36. Thomas Jefferson later convinced Clay that Burr had been guilty of the charges. Clay's legal practice was light after his election to Congress. In the 1823 case Green v. Biddle, Clay submitted the Supreme Court's first amicus curiae. However, he lost that case.Baxter, pp 38–54.
In 1803, Clay won election to the Kentucky House of Representatives. His first legislative initiative was the partisan gerrymander of Kentucky's Electoral College districts, which ensured that all of Kentucky's presidential electors voted for President Jefferson in the 1804 presidential election. Clay clashed with legislators who sought to reduce the power of Clay's Bluegrass region, and he unsuccessfully advocated moving the state capitol from Frankfort to Lexington. Clay frequently opposed populist firebrand Felix Grundy, and he helped defeat Grundy's effort to revoke the banking privileges of the state-owned Kentucky Insurance Company. He advocated for the construction of internal improvements, which would become a consistent theme throughout his public career. Clay's influence in Kentucky state politics was such that in 1806 the Kentucky legislature elected him to the United States Senate. During his two-month tenure in the Senate, Clay advocated for the construction of various bridges and canals, including a canal connecting the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River.
After Clay returned to Kentucky in 1807, he was elected as the speaker of the state house of representatives. That same year, in response to attacks on American shipping by Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars, President Jefferson arranged passage of the Embargo Act of 1807. In support of Jefferson's policy, which limited trade with foreign powers, Clay introduced a resolution to require legislators to wear homespun suits rather than those made of imported British broadcloth. The vast majority of members of the state house voted for the measure, but Humphrey Marshall, an "aristocratic lawyer who possessed a sarcastic tongue," voted against it. In early 1809, Clay challenged Marshall to a duel, which took place on January 19. While many contemporary duels were called off or fought without the intention of killing one another, both Clay and Marshall fought the duel with the intent of killing their opponent. They each had three turns to shoot; both were hit by bullets, but both survived. Clay quickly recovered from his injury and received only a minor censure from the Kentucky legislature.
In 1810, U.S. Senator Buckner Thruston resigned to accept appointment to a position as a federal judge, and Clay was selected by the legislature to fill Thruston's seat. Clay quickly emerged as a fierce critic of British attacks on American shipping, becoming part of an informal group of "" who favored expansionist policies. He also advocated the annexation of West Florida, which was controlled by Spain. On the insistence of the Kentucky legislature, Clay helped prevent the re-charter of the First Bank of the United States, arguing that it interfered with state banks and infringed on states' rights. After serving in the Senate for one year, Clay decided that he disliked the rules of the Senate and instead sought election to the United States House of Representatives. He won election unopposed in late 1810.
Between 1810 and 1824, Clay was elected to seven terms in the House. His tenure was interrupted from 1814 to 1815 when he was a commissioner to peace talks with the British in Ghent, United Netherlands to end the War of 1812, and from 1821 to 1823, when he left Congress to rebuild his family's fortune in the aftermath of the Panic of 1819. Elected speaker six times, Clay's cumulative tenure in office of 10 years, 196 days, is the second-longest, surpassed only by Sam Rayburn.
As speaker, Clay wielded considerable power in making committee appointments, and like many of his predecessors he assigned his allies to important committees. Clay was exceptional in his ability to control the legislative agenda through well-placed allies and the establishment of new committees and departed from precedent by frequently taking part in floor debates. Yet he also gained a reputation for personal courteousness and fairness in his rulings and committee appointments. Clay's drive to increase the power of the office of speaker was aided by President James Madison, who deferred to Congress in most matters. John Randolph, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party but also a member of the "tertium quids" group that opposed many federal initiatives, emerged as a prominent opponent of Speaker Clay. While Randolph frequently attempted to obstruct Clay's initiatives, Clay became a master of parliamentary maneuvers that enabled him to advance his agenda even over the attempted obstruction by Randolph and others.
Clay left the country on February 25, but negotiations with the British did not begin until August 1814. Clay was part of a team of five commissioners that included Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, Senator James Bayard, ambassador Jonathan Russell, and ambassador John Quincy Adams, the head of the American team.Richard Archer, "Dissent and peace negotiations at Ghent." American Studies 18.2 (1977): 5–16 online. Clay and Adams maintained an uneasy relationship marked by frequent clashes, and Gallatin emerged as the unofficial leader of the American team. When the British finally presented their initial peace offer, Clay was outraged by its terms, especially the British proposal for an Indian barrier state on the Great Lakes. After a series of American military successes in 1814, the British delegation made several concessions and offered a better peace deal. While Adams and Gallatin were eager to make peace as quickly as possible even if that required sub-optimal terms in the peace treaty, Clay believed that the British, worn down by years of fighting against France, greatly desired peace with the United States. Partly due to Clay's hard-line stance, the Treaty of Ghent included relatively favorable terms for the United States, essentially re-establishing the status quo ante bellum between Britain and the U.S. The treaty was signed on December 24, 1814, bringing a close to the War of 1812. After the signing of the treaty, Clay briefly traveled to London, where he helped Gallatin negotiate a commercial agreement with Britain.
Clay returned to the United States in September 1815; despite his absence, he had been elected to another term in the House of Representatives. Upon his return to Congress, Clay won election as Speaker of the House. The War of 1812 strengthened Clay's support for interventionist economic policies such as federally funded internal improvements, which he believed were necessary to improve the country's infrastructure system. He eagerly embraced President Madison's ambitious domestic package, which included infrastructure investment, tariffs to protect domestic manufacturing, and spending increases for the army and navy. With the help of John C. Calhoun and William Lowndes, Clay passed the Tariff of 1816, which served the dual purpose of raising revenue and protecting American manufacturing. To stabilize the currency, Clay and Treasury Secretary Alexander Dallas arranged passage of a bill establishing the Second Bank of the United States (also known as the national bank). Clay also supported the Bonus Bill of 1817, which would have provided a fund for internal improvements, but Madison vetoed the bill on constitutional concerns. Beginning in 1818, Clay advocated for an economic plan known as the "American System," which encompassed many of the economic measures, including protective tariffs and infrastructure investments, that he helped pass in the aftermath of the War of 1812.
In early 1819, a dispute erupted over the proposed statehood of Missouri after New York Congressman James Tallmadge Jr. introduced a legislative amendment that would provide for the gradual emancipation of Missouri's enslaved people. Though Clay had previously called for gradual emancipation in Kentucky, he sided with fellow Southerners in voting down Tallmadge's amendment. Clay instead supported Illinois Senator Jesse B. Thomas's compromise proposal in which Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, Maine would be admitted as a free state, and slavery would be forbidden in the territories north of 36° 30' parallel. Clay helped assemble a coalition that passed the Missouri Compromise, as Thomas's proposal became known. Further controversy ensued when Missouri's constitution banned free blacks from entering the state, but Clay was able to engineer another compromise that allowed Missouri to join as a state in August 1821.
In foreign policy, Clay was a leading American supporter of the independence movements and revolutions that broke out in Latin America beginning in 1810. Clay frequently called on the Monroe administration to recognize the fledgling Latin American republics, but Monroe feared that doing so would derail his plans to acquire Spanish Florida. In 1818, General Andrew Jackson crossed into Spanish Florida to suppress raids by Seminole Indians. Though Jackson was following Monroe's implied wishes in entering Florida, he created additional controversy in seizing the Spanish town of Pensacola. Despite protests from Secretary of War Calhoun, Monroe and Adams decided to support Jackson's actions in the hope that they would convince Spain to sell Florida. Clay, however, was outraged, and he publicly condemned Jackson's decision to hang two foreign nationals without a trial. Before the House chamber, he compared Jackson to military dictators of the past, telling his colleagues "that Greece had her Alexander, Ancient Rome her Julius Caesar, England her Oliver Cromwell, France her Napoleon, and, that if we would escape the rock on which they split, we must avoid their errors." Jackson saw Clay's protestations as an attack on his character and thus began a long rivalry between Clay and Jackson. The rivalry and the controversy over Jackson's expedition temporarily subsided after the signing of the Adams–Onís Treaty, in which the U.S. purchased Florida and delineated its western boundary with New Spain.
By 1824, with Crawford still in the race, Clay concluded that no candidate would win a majority of electoral votes; in that scenario, the House of Representatives would hold a contingent election to decide the election. Under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment, the top three electoral vote-getters would be eligible to be elected by the House. Clay was confident that he would prevail in a contingent held in the chamber he presided over, so long as he was eligible for election. Clay won Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri, but his loss in New York and Louisiana relegated him to a fourth-place finish behind Adams, Jackson, and Crawford. Clay was humiliated that he finished behind the invalid Crawford and Jackson, but supporters of the three remaining presidential candidates immediately began courting his support for the contingent election.
For various reasons, supporters of all three candidates believed they had the best chance of winning Clay's backing, but Clay quickly settled on supporting Adams. Of the three candidates, Adams was the most sympathetic to Clay's American System, and Clay viewed both Jackson and the sickly Crawford as unsuitable for the presidency. On January 9, 1825, Clay privately met with Adams for three hours, after which Clay promised Adams his support; both would later claim that they did not discuss Clay's position in an Adams administration. With the help of Clay, Adams won the House vote on the first ballot. After his election, Adams offered Clay the position of secretary of state, which Clay accepted, despite fears that he would be accused of trading his support for the Cabinet post. Jackson was outraged by the election, and he and his supporters accused Clay and Adams of having reached a "Corrupt bargain." Pro-Jackson forces immediately began preparing for the 1828 presidential election, with the Corrupt Bargain accusation becoming their central issue.
Adams proposed an ambitious domestic program based in large part on Clay's American System, but Clay warned the president that many of his proposals held little chance of passage in the 19th Congress. Adams's opponents defeated many of his proposals, including the establishment of a naval academy and a national observatory, but Adams did preside over the construction or initiation of major infrastructure projects like the National Road and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Followers of Adams began to call themselves National Republicans, and Jackson's followers became known as Democrats. Both campaigns spread untrue stories about the opposing candidates. Adams' followers denounced Jackson as a demagogue, and some Adams-aligned papers accused Jackson's wife Rachel Jackson of bigamy. Though Clay was not directly involved in these attacks, his failure to denounce them earned him the lifelong enmity of Jackson.
Clay was one of Adams's most important political advisers, but because of his myriad responsibilities as secretary of state, he was often unable to take part in campaigning. As Adams was averse to the use of patronage for political purposes, Jackson's campaign enjoyed a marked advantage in organization, and Adams' allies such as Clay and Daniel Webster were unable to create an equally powerful organization headed by the president. In the 1828 election, Jackson took 56% of the popular vote and won almost every state outside of New England; Clay was especially distressed by Jackson's victory in Kentucky. The election result represented not only the victory of a man Clay viewed as unqualified and unprincipled but also a rejection of Clay's domestic policies.
As the 1832 election approached, the debate over the re-authorization of the national bank emerged as the most important issue in the campaign. By the early 1830s, the national bank had become the largest corporation in the United States, and banknotes issued by the national bank served as the de facto legal tender of the United States. Jackson disliked the national bank because of a hatred of both banks and paper currency. The bank's charter did not expire until 1836, but bank president Nicholas Biddle asked for renewal in 1831, hoping that election year pressure and support from Secretary of the Treasury Louis McLane would convince Jackson to allow the re-charter. Biddle's application set off the "Bank War"; Congress passed a bill to renew the national bank's charter, but Jackson vetoed it, holding the bank to be unconstitutional. Clay had initially hoped that the national bank re-charter would work to his advantage, but Jackson's allies seized on the issue, redefining the 1832 election as a choice between the president and a "monied oligarchy." Ultimately, Clay was unable to defeat a popular sitting president. Jackson won 219 of the 286 electoral votes and 54.2% of the popular vote, carrying almost every state outside of New England.
Though Clay favored high tariff rates, he found Jackson's strong rhetoric against South Carolina distressing and sought to avoid a crisis that could end in civil war. He proposed a compromise tariff bill that would lower tariff rates, but do so gradually, thereby giving manufacturing interests time to adapt to less protective rates. Clay's compromise tariff won the backing of both manufacturers, who believed they would not receive a better deal, and Calhoun, who sought a way out of the crisis but refused to work with President Jackson's supporters on an alternative tariff bill. Though most members of Clay's own National Republican Party opposed it, the Tariff of 1833 passed both houses of Congress. Jackson simultaneously signed the tariff bill and the Force bill, and South Carolina leaders accepted the new tariff, effectively bringing the crisis to an end. Clay's role in resolving the crisis brought him renewed national stature in the wake of a crushing presidential election defeat, and some began referring to him as the "Great Compromiser."
The removal of deposits helped unite Jackson's opponents into one party for the first time, as National Republicans, Calhounites, former Democrats, and members of the Anti-Masonic Party coalesced into the Whig Party. The term "Whig" originated from a speech Clay delivered in 1834, in which he compared opponents of Jackson to the Whigs, a British political party opposed to absolute monarchy. Neither the Whigs nor the Democrats were unified geographically or ideologically. However, Whigs tended to favor a stronger legislature, a stronger federal government, a higher tariff, greater spending on infrastructure, re-authorization of the Second Bank of the United States, and publicly funded education. Conversely, Democrats tended to favor a stronger president, stronger state governments, lower tariffs, hard money, and expansionism. Neither party took a strong national stand on slavery. The Whig base of support lay in wealthy businessmen, professionals, the professional class, and large planters, while the Democratic base of support lay in immigrant Catholics and yeomen farmers, but each party appealed across class lines.
Partly due to grief over the death of his daughter, Anne, Clay chose not to run in the 1836 presidential election, and the Whigs were too disorganized to nominate a single candidate. Three Whig candidates ran against Van Buren: General William Henry Harrison, Senator Hugh Lawson White, and Senator Daniel Webster. By running multiple candidates, the Whigs hoped to force a contingent election in the House of Representatives. Clay personally preferred Webster, but he threw his backing behind Harrison who had the broadest appeal among voters. Clay's decision not to endorse Webster opened a rift between the two Whig party leaders, and Webster would work against Clay in future presidential elections. Despite the presence of multiple Whig candidates, Van Buren won the 1836 election with 50.8 percent of the popular vote and 170 of the 294 electoral votes.
Though he was widely regarded as the most qualified Whig leader to serve as president, many Whigs questioned Clay's electability after two presidential election defeats. He also faced opposition in the North due to his ownership of enslaved people and lingering association with the Freemasons, and in the South from Whigs who distrusted his moderate stance on slavery. Clay won a plurality on the first ballot of the Whig National Convention, but, with the help of Thurlow Weed and other backers, Harrison consolidated support on subsequent ballots and won the Whig presidential nomination on the fifth ballot of the convention. Seeking to placate Clay's supporters and to balance the ticket geographically, the convention chose former Virginia Governor and Senator John Tyler, a personal friend of Clay, whose previous career in the Democratic Party had practically come to an end, as the vice-presidential nominee. Clay was disappointed by the outcome but helped Harrison's ultimately successful campaign by delivering numerous speeches. With Whigs also winning control of Congress in the 1840 elections, Clay saw the upcoming 27th Congress as an opportunity for the Whig Party to establish itself as the dominant political party by leading the country out of recession.
After the second veto, congressional Whigs voted to expel Tyler from the party, and on Clay's request, every Cabinet member except for Webster, who wanted to continue negotiating the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain about the border to Canada, resigned from office. This made Tyler increasingly move closer to his former Democratic Party and, with Webster still serving in the Tyler administration, Clay emerged as the clear leader of the Whig Party. In early 1842, Clay resigned from the Senate after arranging for Crittenden to succeed him. Though he vetoed other Whig bills, Tyler did sign some Whig priorities into law, including the Preemption Act of 1841, which distributed the proceeds of land sales to the states, and the Bankruptcy Act of 1841, which was the first law in U.S. history that allowed for voluntary bankruptcy. Facing a large budget deficit, Tyler also signed the Tariff of 1842, which restored the protective rates of the Tariff of 1832 but ended the distribution policy that had been established with the Preemption Act of 1841.
Clay unanimously won the presidential nomination at the 1844 Whig National Convention, but a minority of expansionist Southern Democrats, encouraged by Tyler's alternative outline, blocked Van Buren's nomination at the 1844 Democratic National Convention for countless ballots, until Van Buren withdrew, making place for an unexpected compromise candidate: The party nominated former Speaker of the House James K. Polk of Tennessee, who favored annexation, but in order to calm anti-expansionists, promised to just run for a single term. Following the nomination of a pro-annexation Democrat, Tyler soon withdrew his incipient independent bid for re-election and endorsed Polk.
Clay was surprised by Van Buren's defeat but remained confident of his chances in the 1844 election. Polk was the first "dark horse" presidential nominee in U.S. history, and Whigs mocked him as a "fourth rate politician." Despite his relative lack of national stature, Polk proved to be a strong candidate capable of uniting the factions of the Democratic Party and winning the support of Southerners who had been reluctant to support Van Buren. Clay's stance on slavery alienated some voters in both the North and the South. Pro-slavery Southerners flocked to Polk, while many Northern abolitionists, who tended to align with the Whig Party, favored James G. Birney of the Liberty Party. Clay's opposition to annexation damaged his campaign in the South, as Democrats argued that he worked in unison with Northerners to stop the extension of slavery. In July, Clay wrote two letters in which he attempted to clarify his position on the annexation of Texas, and Democrats attacked his supposedly inconsistent position.
Polk narrowly won the election, taking 49.5% of the popular vote to Clay's 48.1% and winning 170 of the 275 electoral votes. Birney won several thousand anti-annexation votes in New York, and his presence in the race may have cost Clay the election. Most of Clay's contemporaries believed that annexation had been the decisive issue in the race, but Polk's savvy campaigning on the tariff may have also been decisive, as he narrowly won pro-tariff Pennsylvania after downplaying his anti-tariff views. After Polk's victory and the final indirect success of Tyler's strategy, Congress approved the annexation of Texas, which was signed by Tyler on his last day in office, and Texas gained statehood in late 1845.
By 1847, General Zachary Taylor, who commanded the American forces at Buena Vista, had emerged as a contender for the Whig nomination in the 1848 presidential election. Despite Taylor's largely unknown political views, many Whigs believed he was the party's strongest possible candidate due to his martial accomplishments in the Mexican–American War. One of Clay's most trusted allies and advisers, John J. Crittenden, was Taylor's de facto campaign manager. Clay had initially told his allies that he would not run in the 1848 presidential election, but he was unwilling to support Taylor, a "mere military man." On April 10, 1848, he announced his candidacy for the Whig nomination. Although Webster and Winfield Scott each commanded a limited base of support in the party, Taylor and Clay each saw the other as their lone serious rival for the Whig nomination. As Taylor commanded the support of most Southern Whigs, Clay focused his efforts on courting Northern Whigs, emphasizing his opposition to the Mexican–American War and his life-long support for the gradual emancipation of enslaved people in Kentucky. Clay presented a strong challenge to Taylor at the 1848 Whig National Convention, but Taylor won the presidential nomination on the fourth ballot. Partially in an attempt to please the Clay wing of the party, the convention nominated Millard Fillmore as Taylor's running mate. Clay was embittered by his failure at the convention, and he did not campaign on behalf of Taylor. Nonetheless, Taylor won the election, taking 47.3 percent of the popular vote and 163 of 290 electoral votes.
President Taylor, who favored the immediate admission of California and New Mexico as free states without any attached conditions, opposed the plan, and Clay openly broke with the president in May 1850. Debate over Clay's proposal continued into July when Taylor unexpectedly died of an illness. After Taylor's death, President Fillmore, who supported Clay's compromise bill, consulted with Clay in appointing a new Cabinet. Exhausted by the debate in the Senate, Clay took a leave of absence shortly after Taylor's death, but Fillmore, Webster, and Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas took charge of pro-compromise forces. By the end of September 1850, Clay's proposal, which became known as the Compromise of 1850, had been enacted. Though contemporaries credited Fillmore, Douglas, and Webster for their role in passing the Compromise of 1850, Clay was widely regarded as the key figure in ending a major sectional crisis.
His headstone reads: "I know no North—no South—no East—no West". Hymn writer Fanny Crosby penned this line of lament on Clay's death:
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In 1816, Clay helped establish the American Colonization Society, a group that wanted to establish a colony for free American blacks in Africa. The group was made up of abolitionists who wanted to end slavery and slaveholders who wanted to deport free blacks. Clay's support for colonization reflected his belief that a multiracial society was ultimately unworkable, both for whites and free blacks. Under Clay's plan, all enslaved children born after 1860 would be freed at age 25. At that time, they were to work for three years in order to finance their own importation. During this period, enslavers could still sell or mortgage their human property. Some abolitionists did not view this plan favorably. In 1849, Frederick Douglass denounced this plan in a speech to the New England Anti-Slavery Society at Faneuil Hall. He objected to the three years when the enslaved were in jeopardy as they were still held as property. The date of 1860 would lead to family separations as those born before 1860 would remain enslaved and those born after were subjected to a mandatory importation. Those gathered first applauded at the mention of Clay; however, once Douglass made these points, those gathered change their response to hisses and cries of shame. Later in his career, Clay became increasingly concerned about abolitionism, remarking that "the ultraism of the South on the one hand ... and the ultraism of abolition on the other" represented the greatest threat to the Union. Nonetheless, he consistently defended the right of abolitionists to send materials through the mail and opposed the gag rule, which limited congressional debate on slavery.
On his 600-acre plantation, there were 122 enslaved people held over the course of his life. Clay's status as a slave owner and his anti-slavery views occasionally led to conflicts in his political career. During a visit to Indiana in the 1840s, Clay was confronted at a political meeting by a Quaker abolitionist, Hiram Mendenhall, who presented Clay with a petition calling on him to free his enslaved people. Clay dismissed Mendenhall out of hand, stating that the petition was no different from if it demanded he give up his farm. Many of his contemporaries, including anti-slavery activist James G. Birney, believed that Clay's home state of Kentucky had the laws most permissive to enslaved people of any slave state. Clay considered himself to be a "good" master. Biographer James C. Klotter concludes that Clay took actions, such as keeping families together, to mitigate the harshness of slavery; however, showing the opposite is his treatment of the family of Lewis Hayden. Klotter also states that there is no evidence that Clay ever had sex with any of his enslaved people. Others state quite the contrary of his punitive and sexual practices.Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (2026). 9781469675237, The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9781469675237
In 1844, Clay's wife discovered that he was having relations with the "yellow girl that attended his poultry and fowls". The young woman and her children were then sent to Louisiana to be sold. While in Washington, D.C., Clay acquired an Quadroon to serve as Concubinage. Phoebe Moore, age 16, was purchased by Henry Clay from his wife's cousin, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, according to her obituary in New Orleans Times-Picayune . When he was in Washington, she resided with Clay in his Washington home and bore him two children. After he emancipated her, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
Regarding keeping families together, Clay applied the opposite to the family of Lewis Hayden. Around 1836. Clay had an enslaved mother, Esther Harvey, and her son sold South. They were the family of Lewis Hayden, a waiter at the upscale Phoenix Hotel. Around 1842, Hayden was threatened, also by Clay, with the sale of his second wife, Harriet Bell Hayden and her son Joseph who he had adopted. Hayden secured the aid of Vermont resident Delia Webster and Oberlin College student Rev. Calvin Fairbank through the assistance of John Mifflin, AME minister and resident of Oberlin, Ohio. They crafted a successful escape plan via the Underground Railroad through Maysville, Kentucky, across the Ohio River to the free states of Ohio and Michigan. The Haydens became residents of Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada. On January 4, 1845, Webster received a sentence of two years hard labor for her part in the escape; she was pardoned on February 24, 1845. Also during February, Fairbank was sentenced to 15 years. The Kentucky governor pardoned him in 1849. However, he was imprisoned again in 1852 and served 12 years for aiding in another escape.
Another example is Lewis Richardson, Clay's self-emancipated enslaved person. He gave a speech that belies Clay's self-portrayal as a "good master". Richardson had been enslaved at Ashland for 20 years, and after a beating escaped via the Underground Railroad in January, 1846. By May of that year, Richardson was also living in Amherstburg, Ontario. In a speech he gave at Union Chapel there, he told not only of continual sparse food and lack of warm clothing but of 150 lashes from overseer Ambrose Brice for the offense of being an hour late returning from a visit to his wife. Brice later denied this claim, stating it was 16 lashes, and the offense was drunkenness. Clay was away on business when this occurred. Richardson's speech was published in the abolitionist newspaper Signal of Liberty. The text of his speech is available at the following reference.
In 1829, Charlotte Dupuy, who was enslaved by Clay, sued Freedom suit while visiting relatives in Maryland. Dupuy's attorney gained an order from the court for her to remain in Washington until the case was settled, and she worked for wages for 18 months for Martin Van Buren, Clay's successor as secretary of state. The case embarrassed Clay politically and personally, but he ultimately prevailed in court. After winning the case, Clay sent Dupuy to New Orleans, causing her to be away from her own family, but he later freed Dupuy and two of her children. Aaron Dupuy, Charlotte's husband, was ordered by Clay to be whipped, at the behest of Clay's wife, Lucretia. Dupuy's infraction was a late return as Lucretia's carriage driver. The overseer attempted the whipping, but Dupuy managed to wrest the whip away and began beating the overseer. He was not freed at the time of Clay's death, but became freed after the Civil War. Clay himself wrote, "here in Kentucky slavery is in its most mitigated form, still it is slavery." Clay's will provided for the gradual emancipation of the slaves he held at the time of his death in 1852. Aaron Dupuy was an exception. Clay also stipulated that several of those enslaved people were bequeathed to his son, John.
Clay is generally regarded as one of the important political figures of his era. Most historians and political scientists consider Clay to be one of the most influential speakers of the house in U.S. history. In 1957, a Senate Committee selected Clay as one of the five greatest U.S. senators, along with Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert La Follette, and Robert A. Taft. A 1986 survey of historians ranked Clay as the greatest senator in U.S. history, while a 2006 survey of historians ranked Clay as the 31st-most influential American of all time. A 1998 poll of historians ranked Clay as the most qualified unsuccessful major party presidential nominee in U.S. history. In 2015, political scientist Michael G. Miller and historian Ken Owen ranked Clay as one of the four most influential American politicians who never served as president, alongside Alexander Hamilton, William Jennings Bryan, and Calhoun. Noting Clay's influence over the United States in the last three decades of his life, biographer James Klotter writes that "perhaps posterity should no longer call it the Jacksonian Era ... and instead term it the Clay Era."
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