Clay, Henry (1777-1852)

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Henry Clay (1777-1852)

Senator and presidential candidate

Early Years. Henry Clay was born in April 1777 in Henrico County, Virginia. The seventh of eight children, his parents John and Elizabeth had ties to the earliest settlers but were of modest means. Henry’s father died when he was four, and his only formal education took place in a local log school. Fortunately, Clay’s mother married a kind man who took an interest in Clay’s future. After working briefly as a court clerk, Clay began to study law with Virginia’s attorney general, Robert Brooke. He was licensed within a year and moved to Lexington, Kentucky. He became the city’s most successful criminal defense attorney. In 1799 he married Lucretia Hart, and the two had eleven children. He outlived six daughters and one son.

Politician. Clay was politicized by the Alien and Sedition Acts and firmly supported the Kentucky Resolutions. He served in the Kentucky legislature from 1803 to 1809, interrupted by a few months in 1806 and 1807 in the United States Senate, filling in the remainder of another senator’s term. He returned to the Senate in 1809, where he supported programs that favored the West, including territorial expansion, internal improvements, and banking, but he also praised Thomas Jefferson’s embargo. In 1810 Clay was elected to the House of Representatives and was chosen Speaker. There he advocated his “American System.” Intended to make the country’s sections interdependent, Clay’s system was based on a central bank, internal improvements, and a protective tariff. Clay also became the leader of the nationalist “War Hawk” faction, and during the War of 1812 James Madison selected him to help negotiate a peace treaty with Britain. He returned to Congress after completing the treaty and pushed his American System, passing several key portions, including a new bank charter, a protective tariff, and an internal improvements bill. In 1820 he was instrumental in arranging the Missouri Compromise that established the 36° 30′ line across the Louisiana Purchase territory, separating future free and slave states.

Ambition. Clay believed that his experience and talent qualified him to be president, but his ambition went unfulfilled. In 1824 he ran for the office but polled fourth of four candidates. As Speaker of the House, Clay influenced the outcome of the election by throwing his support to John Quincy Adams instead of the more popular Andrew Jackson, contrary to the instructions of his constituents. Adams immediately made him secretary of state, and Clay subsequently fought several duels in defense of his honor against those who charged that he and Adams had made a “corrupt bargain.” These four years apparently bored Clay, who missed debating and parliamentary maneuvering. Adams’s defeat in 1828 left Clay without a post, but he returned to the Senate in 1831 to oppose what he considered Jackson’s arbitrary exercise of power and to fight for tariffs, internal improvements, and the Second Bank of the United States. He proposed the rechartering of the bank four years ahead of schedule in order to make the bank an issue in the 1832 election, when he challenged Jackson for the presidency as the candidate of the nascent Whig Party and lost again. In 1833 he returned to his role as the “Great Compromiser” by working out a compromise tariff that helped to defuse the nullification crisis.

Union Whig. As the leader of the anti-Jacksonians, Clay continued to oppose Democratic initiatives, including Jackson’s removal of federal deposits into “pet banks” and Martin Van Buren’s independent treasury plan. He argued that Jackson had become far too powerful and was a threat to the people’s liberty. He refused to run for president in 1836, sensing that Van Buren would win the contest on the strength of Jackson’s popularity. The collapse of the economy during Van Buren’s administration, following the Panic of 1837, seemed to ensure a Whig victory in 1840, and Clay fully expected his party’s nomination. He was disappointed by the Whig decision to run a Democratic-style campaign replete with a war hero, William Henry Harrison, as candidate. Clay refused to join the administration and remained in the Senate to engineer the Whig economic program, but Harrison’s sudden death and John Tyler’s vetoes ended Clay’s efforts. Clay resigned from the Senate in 1841, but eager for another run at the presidency, he accepted the Whig nomination in 1844. He opposed Texas’s annexation, however, because he feared a war with Mexico. His opposition to expansion cost him his best chance at victory, and he lost to James K. Polk, who vigorously favored adding Texas to the Union. Clay’s fear that annexation would lead to war proved accurate, but once the war was under way he supported it, even after the death of his son, Henry Jr., at the Battle of Buena Vista. Clay returned to the Senate in 1849, hoping to end sectional conflict over the Mexican Cession. In 1850 his last great attempt at compromise initially failed (later to be revived by Stephen Douglas), and he left Washington to recover his health. He died on 29 June 1852.