Henry Clay – Encyclopedia of U.S. History

Henry Clay was one of the leading American statesmen in the first half
of the nineteenth century. He served in the U.S. House of
Representatives and the U.S. Senate and also as secretary of state. He ran
for the presidency five times and lost each time. Although Clay was a
slave owner and often supported the South, he helped craft the compromise that kept slavery out of new U.S. territories and played a key role
in postponing the Civil War (1861–65).
Early years
Henry Clay was born on April 12, 1777, the son of a Baptist minister.
His father died in 1781, and Clay’s formal education was cut short when
his mother remarried and the family moved to Richmond, Virginia.
There, Clay began working as a store clerk at his stepfather’s recommendation. From 1793 to 1797, Clay worked as secretary to a judge, copying and transcribing records. In 1796, he took up the study of law. At
age twenty, he moved to Kentucky, where he
began a practice as a defense attorney. He married into a leading family and prospered, eventually owning a six-hundred-acre estate. Clay
became well known for his skill as an orator. He
lived the life of a frontiersman in Kentucky and
was prone to drinking and gambling.
Political career begins
Clay eventually became involved in politics, and
in 1803 he was elected to the Kentucky legislature. He briefly served in the U.S. Senate from
November 1806 to March 1807 and January
1810 to March 1811, filling vacancies following
resignations. Clay was elected to the U.S. House
of Representatives in 1811 and was immediately
chosen to be Speaker of the House (presiding officer), a position he held six times during his tenure in the House, which lasted until 1821. In that year, Clay made his
first bid for the presidency. From 1825 to 1826, he served as secretary of
state for President John Quincy Adams (1767–1848; served 1825–29).
He was elected to the U.S. Senate again in 1831, serving until 1842.
In his early career in Congress, Clay was a leading “war hawk,”
someone who supported going to war with Britain in the War of 1812
(1812–1814). He was not always pro-war, however. He later opposed the
Mexican-American War (1846–48), but he supported the government
nonetheless, losing one of his sons to the war.
Clay was a lifetime supporter of business interests and championed
protectionism, an economic policy that protects U.S. producers of goods
by placing restrictions on foreign competition. He also pushed for federal support of roads and canals. It was Clay’s intention to unite the commercial and manufacturing interests of the East with the agricultural and
small business interests of the West. He also called for centralizing the
country’s economy in a federal bank.
Clay’s protectionism reached its peak in the so-called tariff of abominations in 1828, an act that placed an extremely high tax on goods coming into the United States from other countries. By making foreign
goods less competitive, the act raised demand for goods produced within
the country. Southerners strongly objected to the tariff of 1828 because
it protected only goods manufactured in the industrial North and damaged the European market for the agricultural goods of the South.
The issue of slavery
Clay was divided in his attitudes about slavery, on the one hand defending the Southern states and owning slaves himself, but on the other hand
working hard for slavery’s abolition. Clay took part in the failed attempt
by the Kentucky constitutional convention to abolish slavery in the new
state. In 1816, he founded the American Colonization Society (ACS),
an organization that advocated freeing slaves and sending them to live in
an African colony.
Clay was an expansionist, one who believed in broadening the nation’s borders, so he worked for the addition of states and territories to
the Union. He strongly believed in preserving the Union. Both of these
positions put him at odds with other Southerners, who feared that
adding new states would tip the balance of free states (states that did not
allow slavery) and slave states.
Two historic compromises
The free state–slave state controversy came to a head when the territory
of Missouri applied for admission to the Union as a slave state early in
1819. Clay, earning his nickname as the Great Compromiser, supported
a plan known as the Missouri Compromise. This compromise allowed
Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state while at the same time admitting Maine as a free state, thus preserving the balance of free and
slave states. It also prevented slavery in states north of the present-day
southern border of Missouri. To ensure that free blacks would be allowed
to enter Missouri, Clay personally acquired the assurance of the Missouri
legislature that it would not pass any laws that would restrict the rights
and privileges of U.S. citizens.
In 1849, aligned with statesman Daniel Webster (1782–1852),
Clay advocated the Compromise of 1850, a series of proposals that admitted California to the Union as a free state, abolished slavery in
Washington, D.C., set up the territories of New Mexico and Utah
without slavery, and established a more rigorous fugitive slave law. The
Compromise of 1850 is credited with postponing the American Civil
War (1861–65) for a decade.
Clay was a fearless fighter for his political ideas. He was devoted to
the Union, even if his compromises only postponed an inevitable clash
between the North and the South. He died in Washington, D.C., on
June 29, 1852.

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