Henry Clay, the most famous Kentuckian ever born, first saw the light
in the "Slashes," Hanover county, Virginia, April 12, 1777. When
twenty years of age, he settled in Lexington, Kentucky, as a lawyer;
and Lexington was his home henceforth. In 1803 Henry Clay was elected
to the State legislature; and before he was thirty years old he was
filling an unexpired term in the United States Senate. In 1811 he was
sent to the National House of Representatives from the old Lexington
district. He was immediately chosen Speaker of that body, a position
to which he was subsequently elected five times. This was the period
of his greatest speeches. His utterances upon American rights did much
to bring about the War of 1812. In 1814 Henry Clay went to Europe as a
peace commissioner, and the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24,
1814. He had resigned the Speakership in order to go to Ghent, but on
his return in 1815, he found himself reëlected; and he presided as
Speaker until 1820, declining two diplomatic posts and two cabinet
offices in order to continue in the chair. In 1820 Henry Clay
advocated the Missouri Compromise, and a short time afterwards he
retired from public life to devote his attention to his private
affairs. He was, however, in 1823, again elected to the lower House of
Congress, and was again chosen Speaker, serving as such until 1825. In
1824 he announced himself as a candidate for president, but he was
defeated by John Quincy Adams, who made him his Secretary of State.
Andrew Jackson was elected president, in 1828, and Mr. Clay--to give
him the name he was always known by, regardless of the many positions
he held--once more retired from American politics. In 1831 the people
elected him United States Senator from Kentucky, and in that body he
fought Jackson's policies so strenuously that the Whig party was born,
with Mr. Clay as its legitimate parent. The Whigs nominated him as
their first candidate for president, but he was overwhelmingly
defeated by his old-time enemy, Andrew Jackson. He was the author of
the Compromise tariff of 1832-1833, which did much toward winning him
the sobriquet of the "Great Compromiser." Mr. Clay was reëlected to
the Senate, in 1837; and two years later his great debates with John
C. Calhoun took place. Late in this year of 1839, the Whig political
bosses set him aside and nominated William Henry Harrison for
president and he was elected. In 1842 Henry Clay was retired to
private life for the third time, but two years later he was again the
candidate of the Whigs for president, and he was defeated by a
comparatively unknown man, James K. Polk of Tennessee--the only
Speaker of the House who has ever been elected president of the United
States. The year of 1849 found Henry Clay once more in the Senate, but
he was now old and very feeble. The great Compromise of 1850 sapped
his rapidly waning strength, though it greatly added to his fame as a
statesman. On June 29, 1852, Henry Clay died at Washington City, in
the seventy-sixth year of his age. His body was brought back to the
land he loved so well, and to which he had brought world-wide fame,
and was buried at Lexington, where a grateful people have erected a
cloud-tipped monument to his memory. He is one of the American
immortals, though it is not at all difficult to quarrel with many of
his public acts. He carried the name and fame of Kentucky into the
remotest corners of the universe, and it would be indeed surprising if
it were not possible to find flaws in a record that was as long as
his. His connection with the Graves-Cilley duel in 1838 appears
unpardonable at this time, but perhaps the whole truth regarding this
infamous affair has not yet been brought out. Considering the patent
fact that few orators can stand the printed page, and that the methods
by which Clay's addresses were preserved were crude and
unsatisfactory, many of the speeches are very readable even unto this
day. They undoubtedly prove, however, that the man behind them, and
not the manner or matter of them, was the thing that made Henry Clay
the most lovable character in American history.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. There are many biographies of Clay, and numerous
collections of his speeches. Carl Schurz's _Henry Clay_ (Boston,
1887, two vols.), is the best account of the statesman; _Henry
Clay_, by Thomas H. Clay (Philadelphia, 1910), is adequate for
Clay the man; and Daniel Mallory's _Life and Speeches of the Hon.
Henry Clay_ (New York, 1844), is the finest collection of his
speeches made hitherto.