Henry Clay example essay topic

Henry Clay was a leading American statesman for nearly 50 years (Remini 02). Clay became known as the Great Compromiser because he repeatedly helped settle bitter disputes over slavery between the Northern and Southern states. His compromises did much to hold the nation together during the first half of the 1800's. Clay's charm, generosity, and eloquent speeches made him one of the most idolized figures of his time (Remini 04).

He served as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, a U.S. senator, and a U.S. secretary of state. He campaigned for President unsuccessfully five times. Through the years, Clay showed great devotion to principle. Once, after taking a controversial stand on slavery he told an associate, "I had rather be right than be President" (Eaton 56). Henry Clay, the son of a Baptists minister, was born on April 12, 1777, in Hanover County, Virginia. He received little formal schooling, but he had a sharp mind and liked to read.

He studied law and, at the age of twenty, set up a successful law practice in Lexington, Kentucky (Remini 01). In 1799, Henry Clay married Lucretia Hart, the daughter of a wealthy Lexington land speculator and merchant. The Clays suffered several tragedies in their home life. Their oldest son, Theodore, was confined to a mental institution.

Their six daughters died at young ages, and their son, Henry, was killed during the Mexican War (Remini 191). In 1803, Henry Clay was elected to Kentucky's state legislature. The legislature greatly admired him and elected him to fill an unexpired term in the U.S. Senate in 1806 (Eaton 99). At that time, state legislatures elected U.S. senators.

He was not quite thirty years old, the minimum age required by the Constitution of the United States (Eaton 103). But the Senate did not investigate his age. From 1810 to 1811, Henry Clay filled another unexpired term in the U.S. Senate (Eaton 106). Henry Clay was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1811. He had become known as an outstanding leader and was chosen speaker of the House on the first day of the session (Eaton 123). Mr. Clay was reelected to the House and the speaker ship five more times.

He became head of the "War Hawks", a group that helped influence Congress to declare war against Great Britain in 1812. But Henry also helped negotiate peace with Great Britain and was a signer of the Treaty of Ghent (Eaton 142). After the war, Henry Clay proposed a national economic plan called "The American System". The plan included a protective tariff to aid American manufacturers, a national bank, and government support of improvements in transportation. He became the most important leader of the National Republican Party, which endorsed his economic program (Remini 213). In 1820, Henry Clay helped settle a dispute between the North and South over the expansion of slavery.

He helped win congressional approval of a plan that became known as the Missouri Compromise. The compromise permitted slavery in the new state of Missouri and banned it in the new state of Maine. The compromise also prohibited slavery in most of the Louisiana Territory, a huge area west of the Mississippi River (Eaton 166). Mr. Clay also played a key role in settling a dispute over the federal tariff. The dispute arose in 1832, when South Carolina nullified two U.S. tariff laws. South Carolina threatened to secede from the United States if the federal government tried to enforce the tariff in the state.

But in 1833, Henry Clay persuaded Congress to pass a compromise bill that gradually lowered the tariff. His measure helped preserve the supremacy of the federal government over the states (Remini 228). Henry Clay ran for the presidency five times, but never one. In the presidential election of 1824, his first attempt, no candidate received a majority of the votes in the Electoral College.

As a result the U.S. House of Representatives had to choose the President from among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes. He had come in fourth in the voting, behind Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and William H. Crawford (Eaton 171). He gave his support to Adams, who was then elected President. Mr. Clay served as Adams's ecretary of the state from 1825 to 1829. In 1832, Henry Clay ran as the candidate of the National Republican Party (Remini 214). He opposed President Andrew Jackson, the Democratic-Republican candidate.

Jackson won easily, partly because Clay supported efforts to renew the charter of the unpopular Bank of the United States. Henry Clay and other National Republicans helped form the Whig Party in 1834. He ran for President again in 1840 as a Whig, but he dropped out of the race when the Whig Party made William Henry Harrison its nominee (Remini 220). Henry Clay became the Whig Party's presidential candidate in 1844 (Eaton 243).

He opposed James K. Polk of the Democratic Party. Annexation of the then independent Republic of Texas became a major campaign issue. Mr. Clay opposed annexation and warned that it would provoke war with Mexico and reawaken the controversy over slavery in the United States. Polk favored annexation and narrowly won the election. Clay's warnings came true. A border dispute led to the Mexican War (1846-1848), and the North and South later clashed over the question of extending slavery into the territory gained from the war (Eaton 256).

Mr. Clay sought the presidency again 1848. He ended his campaign when the Whigs nominated Zachary Taylor, a general who had become a national hero in the Mexican War. Henry Clay retired in Ashland, his plantation in Lexington, in 1848 (Remini 403). In 1849, the Kentucky legislature again elected him to the U.S. Senate. Clay helped settle another dispute between Northern free states and Southern slave states sponsoring a plan known as the Compromise of 1850. Parts of this plan allowed slavery in the New Mexico and Utah territories and prohibited it in California.

The Compromise of 1850 helped delay the Civil War for eleven years (Eaton 259). Mr. Clay died in Washington D.C., in June 1852 and was buried in Lexington. A marker by his grave has a quotation from one of his speeches: "I know no North - no South - no East - no West" (Remini 412).

Bibliography

Eaton, Clement. Henry Clay and the Art of American Politics. Canada: Little Brown & Company Limited, 1957.
Remini, Robert. Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1991.