Difference between revisions of "Henry Clay"

Latest revision as of 08:51, 31 May 2017

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Henry Clay
United States Senator from Kentucky
In office
March 5, 1849 – June 29, 1852 November 10, 1831 – March 31, 1842 January 4, 1810 – March 4, 1811 December 29, 1806 – March 4, 1807
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Ninth United States Secretary of State
In office
March 4, 1825 – March 4, 1829
Preceded by	John Quincy Adams
Succeeded by	Martin Van Buren
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
In office
March 4, 1823 – March 4, 1825 March 4, 1815 – October 28, 1820 March 4, 1811 – January 19, 1814
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Personal details
Born	April 12, 1777
	Hanover County, Virginia
Died	June 29, 1852 (aged 75)
	Washington, D.C.
Resting place	{{{restingplace}}}
Residence(s)	{{{residence}}}
Education	Legal amanuensis for George Wythe
Alma mater
Profession	Statesman Lawyer
Spouse(s)	Lucretia Hart Clay
Relatives	{{{relatives}}}
Known for	The Missouri Compromise The Compromise of 1850
Signature	[[File:|left|200px]]

Henry Clay (April 12, 1777 – June 29, 1852) was born in Hannover County, Virginia in 1777.^[1] He received little formal education as a youth. When he was sixteen, Clay "began a four-year stint as private secretary to the most learned jurist in the state"^[2] of Virginia – George Wythe. Clay gained admission to both the Virginia and Kentucky bars in 1797 at the age of twenty-two,^[3] and became a well-respected real estate and business lawyer in Frankfort, Kentucky.^[4]

Clay’s political career began only five years after he gained admission to the bar.^[5] He was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1803 and served until 1806, when he was elected to fill the unexpired term of a United States senator who had resigned.^[6] Clay took the position despite the fact that he was four months younger than the constitutionally required age of thirty.^[7] He served as senator from Kentucky until the term expired in 1807, and then returned to the State House of Representatives where he served as Speaker of the House from 1807 to 1809. He returned to the Senate in 1810-1811 to fill the vacant seat of Senator Buckner Thruston.^[8]

Clay served as a U.S. Representative from 1811 to 1825. He was elected to serve as Speaker of the House on his first day in office and held the Speaker position for a majority of the years that he spent in the House of Representatives.^[9] In the House, Clay became a leader of an anti-British group of congressman known as the War Hawks.^[10] Clay’s role as a leader of the War Hawks ultimately contributed to the commencement of the War of 1812.^[11] Clay served on the Peace Commission that negotiated the Treaty of Ghent with Great Britain in 1814.^[12]

In 1822, in a speech to the Virginia General Assembly in Richmond, regarding the land compacts between Virginia and Kentucky, it was reported that Clay paid tribute to his former employer and mentor, George Wythe:

It was impossible, he said, to contemplate this Assembly without recollecting that it was here that the indignant and eloquent tongue of Patrick Henry first depicted the enormity and fatal consequences of British pretension, and stimulated the patriotic spirit of resistance; that it was in this very Hall, in that very form (pointing to the Speaker's chair) that the bland, the graceful, the accomplished and the enlightened Pendleton presided over one of the most august assemblies that the world ever saw; aided by that illustrious man [Wythe] who, to the stern virtues of Cato united the justice of Aristides — to whom, he hoped he should be excused, for making this public acknowledgment of his gratitude for his generous patronage of him, extended when he was an orphan, bereft alike of paternal and pecuniary assistance, and to whose memory he begged permission to pay the poor tribute of his highest veneration....^[13]

In 1825, after a failed presidential campaign, Clay was appointed Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams.^[14] He served in that position for four years before being elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1831 to 1842, and again from 1849 to 1852.^[15] Clay earned the moniker "The Great Compromiser" during this period due to his role in crafting three major legislative compromises.^[16]

The Missouri Compromise came about as a result of the tension between whether or not Missouri would be admitted to the union as a slave state or a free state.^[17] The tension almost brought about a civil war, but Clay worked to broker a compromise where Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, and Maine as a free state.^[18]

In 1833 South Carolina passed an ordinance that nullified a federally instituted protective tariff.^[19] President Jackson threatened to use military troops against South Carolina if they did not enforce the tariff.^[20] Once again the country was on the brink of civil war, but Clay stepped in and facilitated a compromise where South Carolina would collect the tariff in exchange for the tariffs automatic repeal in seven years.^[21]

The Compromise of 1850, authored by Clay, was designed to settle how slavery would be dealt with in the territory ceded to the United States after the conclusion of the Mexican-American War.^[22] This was Clay’s third legislative act that likely averted civil war.^[23]

Clay died in 1852 at age seventy-five.^[24] His dedication to the maintenance of the union was summed up later by Senator Henry S. Foote of Mississippi who suggested that, "Had there been one such man in the Congress in the United States as Henry Clay in 1860-’61 there would, I feel sure, have been no civil war."^[25] Clay was admired by those who agreed with him, and respected by his opponents. John C. Calhoun, whom Clay had bested in the Compromise of 1850, once declared, "I don't like Clay...I wouldn't speak to him, but, by God! I love him."^[26]

See also

• Henry Clay to B. B. Minor, 3 May 1851
• Life and Public Services of Henry Clay
• Wythe the Teacher

References

1. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. "Henry Clay," accessed April 07, 2014.
2. ↑ Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), 9-10.
3. ↑ Ibid.
4. ↑ U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian website, s.v. "Biographies of the Secretaries of State: Henry Clay," accessed April 7, 2014.
5. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. "Henry Clay."
6. ↑ United States Senate website, s.v. "Henry Clay," accessed April 7, 2014.
7. ↑ Ibid.
8. ↑ U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian website, s.v. "Biographies of the Secretaries of State: Henry Clay."
9. ↑ United States Senate website, s.v. "Henry Clay."
10. ↑ U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian website, s.v. "Biographies of the Secretaries of State: Henry Clay."
11. ↑ United States Senate website, s.v. "Henry Clay."
12. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. "Henry Clay."
13. ↑ Enquirer (Richmond, VA), 14 February 1822, 3. Cited in The Papers of Henry Clay, ed. James F. Hopkins, vol. 3, Presidential Candidate, 1821-1824 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 161, 170n.
14. ↑ United States Senate website, s.v. "Henry Clay."
15. ↑ Ibid.
16. ↑ Ibid.
17. ↑ Ibid.
18. ↑ Ibid.
19. ↑ Ibid.
20. ↑ Ibid.
21. ↑ Ibid.
22. ↑ Ibid.
23. ↑ Ibid.
24. ↑ Ibid.
25. ↑ Robert Vincent Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), 761-762.
26. ↑ Ibid., 578.