Who Is The Great Compromiser

Portrait by Matthew Harris Jouett, 1818 (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

On April 12, 1777, the Kentucky politico Henry Clay was built-in. His remarkable career included a long stint as Speaker of the House and several failed presidential campaigns.

Clay was born nigh Richmond, Virginia, to a Baptist clergyman and his wife, the 7th of their nine children. Dirt'south father passed away when the male child was only four years old, leaving Clay and his siblings to help their widowed mother tend to the family unit farm—all in the midst of a colonial state of war for independence.

At age 14, Clay began work at a local store, where he copied legal documents and did other full general writing as needed. He was before long hired by George Wythe—a powerful lawyer whose friends and students included George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Marshall—equally a personal banana; Clay served him ably for several years earlier a brief stint with the state attorney general. By historic period twenty, Clay was admitted to the Virginia bar as a practicing lawyer, having taught himself everything he needed to know through reading and work experience.

Shortly thereafter, Clay moved to Lexington, Kentucky, which would remain his home until his death in 1852. In 1799, Clay met and married his wife, Lucretia Hart, with whom he would father 11 children, most of whom did non live into adulthood. For several years, Clay maintained a respectable, if modest, legal practice. His clients included Aaron Burr, who was accused of treason for conspiring to establish an independent country in the western United States.

Yet as early on as 1798, Clay spoke out confronting the Alien and Sedition Acts and advocated for amending the Kentucky land constitution to cancel slavery, indicating a potent interest in public affairs. In 1803, Clay was elected to the Kentucky country legislature as a Jeffersonian Republican. Just three years later, he was chosen by the legislature to complete an unfinished term in the U.Southward. Senate, where he advocated early and often for his burgeoning "American Arrangement," featuring higher tariffs, investments in infrastructure, and, later in his career, a national bank. Clay was also appointed in 1810 to complete another unfinished Senate term.

In 1811, Clay joined the Business firm of Representatives, where he served nearly continuously until 1825. Upon taking his seat, he was elected Speaker of the Business firm almost immediately; he would be elected again several times, property that office throughout nearly his entire tenure. Addressing his fellow lawmakers before long later on his kickoff selection, Clay said:

I am sensible of the imperfections which I bring along with me, and a consciousness of these would deter me from attempting a belch of the duties of the chair, did I not rely confidently upon your back up. Should the rare and delicate occasion nowadays itself when your speaker should be called upon to cheque or command the wanderings or intemperances in fence, your justice will, I hope, ascribe to his interposition the motives just of public proficient and a regard to the dignity of the house.

As a member of the House, Clay took a hawkish stance on relations with Great britain and was one of the leading proponents of the State of war of 1812. Still he jumped at the opportunity to secure peace: in 1814, President James Madison sent Clay abroad with iv other delegates, including John Quincy Adams, to negotiate what would go the Treaty of Ghent.

Clay became a full-throated advocate for the establishment of a national bank in 1816 and for liberating South American colonies from Spanish dominion. He was also instrumental in crafting and passing the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which proved a short-lived solution to the growing national contend over slavery. In order to preserve the balance of power between "gratuitous" states and "slave" states, Congress admitted Missouri and Maine to the Spousal relationship as complimentary and slave, respectively, and banned slavery everywhere else north of the 36°30′ breadth line. Clay'southward work on this and other problems earned him the nickname "The Great Compromiser," with which he is notwithstanding strongly associated today.

In 1824, Dirt made his first run at the presidency in what amounted to an internal squabble amid the Democratic-Republicans. With no unmarried candidate obtaining a bulk of votes in the Balloter College, Clay was eliminated every bit the lowest vote-getter, and the race was thrown to the Firm of Representatives. There, Dirt wielded enormous influence equally Speaker of the House; his support for John Quincy Adams proved decisive, leading to accusations of a "corrupt bargain" in which he backed Adams over Andrew Jackson in commutation for a cabinet appointment.

Sure enough, Adams made Clay his Secretary of State in 1825, fueling a steady slew of accusations and criticism from Jackson and others that would dog him throughout his career. He also found many of his initiatives, including support for South American independence, thwarted by an obstinate Congress that did not trust him. Though he ultimately negotiated more treaties than all of his predecessors combined, Dirt was mostly dissatisfied in the postal service.

Upon Adams' autumn to Jackson in the 1828 contest, Clay considered leaving public life for good and retiring to private life in Kentucky. Information technology was not to be: he was elected to the Senate in 1830, where he spent more a decade engrossed once again in the most pressing issues facing the country. Almost immediately, he faced an irate Southward Carolina calling for "nullification" of a federal tariff law. Clay made clear his opposition, but truthful to his moniker, he sought compromise. In 1833, Dirt introduced a moderate tariff bill that drew the support of Senator John C. Calhoun and the other nullifiers, thus avoiding a ramble crisis—at least for the time being.

Dirt also returned to the struggle over the national bank, forcing the outcome of its renewal into the 1832 presidential campaign equally nominee for the National Republican Party. It became clear, however, that a bulk of voters opposed the bank, and Jackson trounced Clay. Soundly defeated, Clay returned to the Senate and became head of the newly formed Whig Political party.

The decade and a half that followed featured many years out of the Senate and more failed attempts to win the presidency. Clay sought the Whig Party's nomination in 1840, 1844, and 1848; only in 1844 was he successful, meeting frustrating losses to William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, respectively. And in his 1844 race against James Polk, Dirt opposed the annexation of Texas, sealing his defeat in the face up of national obsession with manifest destiny.

For his last hurrah, Clay returned to the issue of slavery. Together with Senators Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Calhoun—the trio known equally the Bang-up Triumvirate—Clay put together an omnibus pecker addressing several heated disputes, among them the admission of California every bit a land; the cosmos of the Utah and New Mexico territories; and the status of the Avoiding Slaves Act. Although the Compromise of 1850 did not prevent civil war, it delayed confrontation for several years.

Henry Clay died of tuberculosis on June 29, 1852, still serving as a U.s. Senator from his beloved home state of Kentucky. He was laid in country at the Capitol—the first to exist honored equally such—and ultimately laid to rest in Lexington. Speaking in Springfield, Illinois, just days later Clay'southward passing, Abraham Lincoln ended his eulogy with these words:

Henry Clay is expressionless. His long and eventful life is closed. Our country is prosperous and powerful; merely could information technology have been quite all information technology has been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay? Such a homo the times have demanded, and such, in the providence of God was given us. But he is gone. Permit us strive to deserve, as far equally mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence, trusting that, in future national emergencies, He volition not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.

Amen.

Nicandro Iannacci is a web content strategist at the National Constitution Center.

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