Cla: Claflin through Clayton

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


CLAFLIN, Horace Brigham, 1811-1885, Milford, Massachusetts, merchant, philanthropist, opponent of slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 618; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 110)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 618:

CLAFLIN, Horace Brigham, merchant, born in Milford, Massachusetts, 18 December, 1811; died in Fordham, New York, 14 November, 1885. He was the son of John Claflin, a general country storekeeper, farmer, and justice of the peace, and received his education at the common school and Milford academy. His first business experience was as a clerk in his father's employ, and in 1831, with his brother Aaron and his brother-in-law, Samuel Daniels, he succeeded to his father's business. In 1832 they opened a dry-goods store in Worcester, in connection with their establishment in Milford. This venture proved successful, and in 1833 Aaron took the Milford store, leaving the other partners in exclusive possession of the Worcester business. In 1843 Horace removed to New York, and, with William F. Bulkley, organized the house of Bulkley & Claflin and began a wholesale dry-goods business at No. 46 Cedar street. In 1850 the firm built a store at No. 57 Broadway, which they occupied from January, 1851, until 1853. Mr. Bulkley retired from the partnership in July, 1851, when, with William H. Mellen and several of his principal clerks, he continued his business as Claflin, Mellen & Co. Meanwhile their trade increased very rapidly, and larger accommodation became necessary. Mr. Claflin, with others, then erected the Trinity building, at No. 111 Broadway, whither the business was transferred. In 1861 another change was necessary, and the enormous warehouse on Worth street, extending from Church street to West Broadway, was secured. The beginning of the civil war, coming suddenly at this time, found the firm's assets largely locked up and rendered almost worthless, and they were compelled to ask from their creditors an extension of time in which to settle their accounts. These liabilities were subsequently paid with interest long before maturity, and the house entered upon a career of unparalleled prosperity. At the beginning of 1864 Mr. Mellen retired from the firm, which then adopted the style of H. B. Claflin & Co. The panic of 1873 again caused the firm to ask their creditors for an extension of five months, with interest added in settlement of their open accounts. Notwithstanding the enormous amounts that they were unable to collect at that time, no paper with their name on it went to protest, and their notes were all paid in three months, sixty days before maturity. During a single year the sales of this house have amounted to $72,000,000; and the ability of Mr. Claflin may be judged by the magnitude of the business, which from 1865 to the time of his death far exceeded that of any other commercial house in the world. He was a man of domestic habits and of exemplary life, fond of books and of horses. Almost daily, no matter what the weather might be, he drove from ten to twenty miles. He was prominently associated with Mr. Beecher's church in Brooklyn, where he resided during the winter. His acts of charity were frequent and unostentatious, and to many of the benevolent institutions of Brooklyn he was a liberal donor. It was a great satisfaction to him to assist young men, and probably no other person in the United States aided so many beginners with money and credit until they were able to sustain themselves. In politics he was a strong republican until the canvass of 1884, when he supported the democratic candidate for the presidency. Mr. Claflin was a man of very strong convictions, and in 1850, when it cost something to be known as an opponent of slavery, he was an uncompromising friend of freedom. See “Tribute of the Chamber of Commerce to the Memory of Horace B. Claflin” (New York, 1886). Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


CLAFLIN, Jehiel C., abolitionist, West Brookfield, Vermont, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1855-1853.  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice President, 1841-1860.


CLAFLIN, William H., 1818-1903, Newton, Massachusetts, Church Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1859-62.


CLAPP, Richard, abolitionist, Dorchester, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1852-60.


CLARK, Ambrose W., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


CLARK, Daniel, 1809-1891, lawyer, jurist, organizer and founder of the Republican Party, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire, ardent supporter of the Union.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 625; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 125; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 125:

CLARK, DANIEL (October 24, 1809-January 2, 1891), politician, jurist, was the son of Benjamin and Elizabeth (Wiggin) Clark. He was born at Stratham, New Hampshire, and educated in the district school, Hampton Academy, and Dartmouth College, graduating from the latter in 1834. His father was a farmer and blacksmith and because of limited means, Daniel, like many other young men of that period, was obliged to pay for his own education by teaching school during the winter months. After graduation he studied law, was admitted to the bar, began practise at Epping, and in 1839 moved to Manchester. This town was about to enjoy a prolonged period of industrial development, and he soon acquired a considerable practise. For the rest of his life he was active in Manchester affairs, holding several local offices and trusteeships and between 1842 and 1855 serving five times as representative in the legislature, being in charge of the bill for the incorporation of the city in 1846. He was also active in various business enterprises and was for some years a director of the Amoskeag Corporation. Politically, he was a Whig, and when that party disintegrated he was one of the active organizers of the Republican party. In 1857 he was chosen to serve out the unexpired term of Senator James Bell and, being reelected for a full term, was for nine years one of the prominent figures in Washington affairs. He was an accomplished speaker and debater, ranked by S. S. Cox, a veteran member of the lower house, with Sumner, Fessenden, Seward, Trumbull, and other notables in "a galaxy of ability" (Union-Disunion-Reunion: Three Decades of Federal Legislation, 1885). Early in his senatorial career, in the course of the Kansas debate, he declared, "We have had enough of bowing down, and the people in my region have got sick of it" (Congressional Globe, 35 Congress, 1 Session, App., p. 107). These words are the key to his subsequent course. He was an uncompromising foe of slavery and secession and his attitude in 1861 was criticized by many who believed that reconciliation was still possible. He was prominent throughout the war period and his service on the committees on finance, claims, and judiciary was especially important in view of their war-time responsibilities. In 1866 he failed to receive renomination, apparently largely because of New Hampshire's adherence to the doctrine of rotation in office. On July 27, 1866, President Johnson appointed him United States judge for the district of New Hampshire, although Gideon Welles remarked "On every Constitutional point that has been raised, Clark has opposed the President . . . and has been as mischievously hostile as any man in the Senate" (Diary, 19n, II, 565). Clark resigned from the Senate and spent the remainder of his life on the bench, declining at the age of seventy, because of excellent health, to take advantage of the provisions of the retirement act. He had an excellent standing as a jurist and frequently was called to sit in other courts on the New England circuit. His political activity was, of course, largely at an end but he served as president of the constitutional convention of 1876. He was married twice: on June 9, 1840, to Hannah W. Robbins, daughter of Maxcy Robbins of Stratham, who died in 1844; and on May 13, 1846, to Anne W., daughter of Henry Salter of Portsmouth.

[C. H. Bell, Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894); J.B. Clarke, Manchester (1875); I. W. Smith, Granite Missouri, July 1887; ]. 0. Lyford, Life of Edward H. Rollins (1906).]

W.A.R.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 625:

CLARK, Daniel, senator, born in Stratham, Rockingham county, New Hampshire, 24 October, 1809. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1834 with the highest honors of his class, studied law, and began practice at Epping, New Hampshire, in 1837. He removed to Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1839, and was a member of the legislature for five years. He was elected U. S. senator in 1857 for the unexpired term of James Bell, deceased, and was re-elected in 1861, serving till he resigned in July, 1866. He was president pro tem. of the senate for some time in 1864-'5. On 11 July, 1861, Senator Clark offered a resolution, which was adopted, expelling from the senate the southern senators who had left their seats on the secession of their states. He took an active part in the debates of the senate, and was a steadfast supporter of the government during the civil war. On his resignation, he was appointed by President Johnson U. S. judge for the district of New Hampshire. He was president of the New Hampshire constitutional convention of 1876. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 625.  


CLARK, Dexter, New York, American Abolition Society.

(Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855)


CLARK, John, 1758-1833, clergyman, born Inverness, Scotland. Anti-slavery Activist. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 628)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 628:

CLARK, John, clergyman, born in Petty, near Inverness, Scotland, 29 November, 1758; died in St. Louis. Missouri, 11 October, 1833. He received a common-school education, worked for a few years as a copyist in public offices in Inverness, and in 1778 shipped as a sailor on board a transport. He then served one year on a privateer, sailed as second mate to the West Indies, and was impressed into the British navy at Barbadoes. He deserted and shipped on board a merchantman, which was captured by the Spanish, and Clark was for nineteen months a prisoner at Havana. Soon after he was released he was again impressed, but escaped by swimming two miles to shore, when the vessel was off Charleston. South Carolina. After various adventures, he taught a backwoods school in South Carolina, and then in Georgia, where he was also appointed a class-leader among the Methodists. After a visit to his home, which he reached by working his way before the mast, he returned to the United States in 1789 and became an itinerant Methodist preacher in Georgia. He had scruples on the subject of slavery, and once refused his yearly salary of $60 because it was the proceeds of slave labor. He withdrew from the Methodist church in 1796 on account of doctrinal differences, and went to Illinois, where he taught, preached, and finally joined the anti-slavery Baptists calling themselves “The Baptized Church of Christ: Friends of Humanity.” When not teaching, “Father Clark,” as he was called, made long preaching tours. One of these, in 1807, was to the “Florida Parishes” in Louisiana, a journey of 1,200 miles, which was performed alone, in a frail canoe. He returned to Illinois on foot, and revisited Louisiana in 1811. Father Clark preferred to travel on foot, and on one occasion, when he was seventy years old, walked all night to fulfil an appointment, going sixty-six miles over a muddy road. Unlike many western pioneer preachers, he was neat in his dress and quiet in his manner. A sketch of him has been published by an old pioneer (New York, 1855). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 628. 


CLARK, John G., clergyman, anti-slavery activist, S. Kingston, Rhode Island, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1836-40.


CLARK, Myron Holley, 1806-1892, Governor of New York State. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 630; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 138)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 630:

CLARK, Myron Holley, governor of New York, born in Naples, Ontario county, New York, 23 October, 1806. His grandfather, Colonel William Clark, removed from Berkshire county, Massachusetts, to Ontario county, New York, in 1790. Myron was educated in a district school at Naples, attending from three to four months annually, when between six and seventeen years old. After filling several offices in his native town, and becoming lieutenant-colonel of state militia, he was sheriff of Ontario county for two years, and, having removed to Canandaigua, was president of that village in 1850 and 1851, and state senator from 1852 till 1854. During Mr. Clark's first term as senator in 1852-'3, the law was passed consolidating the several railroads now forming the New York central, and it was largely by his persistent firmness that the provision limiting passenger fares to two cents a mile was adopted. As chairman of the committee on the subject, he was influential in securing the passage of the prohibitory liquor law that was vetoed by Governor Seymour. In 1854 the anti-slavery wings of both the whig and democratic parties, the prohibitionists, and several independent organizations separately nominated Mr. Clark for governor, and he was elected by a small majority, his supporters in some of their state organizations taking the name of “republicans,” thus making him the earliest state candidate of that party. During his administration a new prohibitory law was passed, and signed by him. It remained in force about nine months, when it was set aside by the court of appeals. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


CLARK, Peter H., 1829-1925, free African American, Ohio, abolitionist, publisher, editor, writer, orator.  Published anti-slavery newspaper, The Herald of Freedom, in Ohio.

(Rodriguez, 2007, p. 58)


CLARKE, Augustine, 1771-1841, Danville, Vermont, attorney, banker, politician, abolitionist.  Manager, 1833-1836, and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.

(Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)


CLARKE, E. W., New York, abolitionist leader.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 50)


CLARKE, Freeman, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Congressional Globe; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)


CLARKE, George L., 1813-1890, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island.  Member of Free-Soil and Liberty Parties.


CLARKE, J. C., New York, American Colonization Society, Director, 1840-1841. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)


CLARKE, James Freeman, 1779-1839, jurist, lawyer, opponent of slavery.  Governor of Kentucky.  U.S. Congressman. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 628; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)


CLARKE, James Freeman (April 4, 1810-June 8, 1888), Unitarian clergyman.  He was active in behalf of temperance, anti-slavery, and woman suffrage. Such labor he refused to regard as "outside activity," deeming it rather his part, as minister of the church, of its due contribution to the life of the city.  

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 153-154)  

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 153-154:

CLARKE, JAMES FREEMAN (April 4, 1810-June 8, 1888), Unitarian clergyman, was named after his step-grandfather, Dr. James Freeman, minister of King's Chapel, Boston (1787-1835), who had married the widow of Samuel Clarke. His mother, Rebecca Parker Hull, was a daughter of General William Hull [q.v.]. His father, Samuel Clarke, seems to have been a "handy man," able to do many things passably but to make a living at none. Shortly after the birth of his son in Hanover, New Hampshire, he removed to Newton, Massachusetts, and established himself near the families of James Freeman and the Hulls so that although the boy was brought up in Dr. Freeman's household, there was scarcely any separation from his immediate family. His grandfather also took charge of his early education, kindling intellectual interests and teaching him right methods of study. He entered the Boston Latin School in 1821 and there prepared for Harvard, from which he graduated in the class of '29 celebrated in the poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes. After graduating from the Harvard Divinity School in 1833, and receiving ordination in Boston (July 21, 1833), he went directly to Louisville, Kentucky, where he was minister of a Unitarian church from August 4, 1833, to June 16, 1840. During his residence in Louisville he was editor from April 1836 to October 1839 of the Western Messenger in which appeared notable contributions from many of Clarke's eastern friends, including Dr. Channing and Emerson. Returning to Boston, he founded there a new Unitarian church modestly named The Church of the Disciples, of which he became pastor on February 28, 1841. The founding of this church made almost as much stir in Boston as that of the Brattie Street Church nearly a century and a half earlier and for similar reasons, the chief of which was its exceptional recognition of the power of the laity. The value of this innovation was signally shown during the period from August 11, 1850, to January 1, 1854, when notwithstanding the sale of the church property and the absence of the minister on account of ill health, the organization held together with occasional ser, vices, especially the communion services, conducted by lay members of the church. These years, broken by a trip abroad, were spent by Clarke in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he acted as minister of the local Unitarian church which had been founded in 1825 principally by Harm Jan Huidekoper whose daughter Anna he had married in August 1839. With restored health, he returned to Boston in 1854 and resumed his duties as minister of the Church of the Disciples. In this position he speedily won the full and unbroken confidence not only of his clerical colleagues, but also of the community which he served in various ways. He was a member of the State Board of Education (1863-69); trustee of the Boston Public Library (187g-S8); non-resident professor in the Harvard Divinity School (1867-71), and lecturer on ethnic religions (1876-77); member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College (1863-72, 1873-85, 1886- 88). In addition, he was active in behalf of temperance, anti-slavery, and woman suffrage. Such labor he refused to regard as "outside activity," deeming it rather his part, as minister of the church, of its due contribution to the life of the city. Dr. Clarke's most notable characteristic was a remarkable balance and wisdom. He was rightly numbered among the Transcendentalists, but his thought was simple and his style lucid. His Transcendentalism appeared chiefly in his confidence in the universality of truth and goodness among men, and in his earnest efforts to discover it in all persons, sects, and religions. A convinced and devout Christian, he studied appreciatively other religions also (Ten Great Religions, pt. I, 1871, pt. II, 1883); a loyal Unitarian, he was sympathetic with other denominations, aiming to give full credit to all that his fellow Christians of whatever name were contributing to human welfare. The same discriminating insight taught him to discern the best in individuals and to labor to free it from base entanglements. He was a wise, discriminating, sympathetic and irenic friend and teacher; quick to praise, slow to blame; more eager to cherish good than to crush evil; a rare combination of particular loyalties and universal sympathies. He was a prolific writer: sermons, newspaper and review articles streamed from his facile pen almost beyond enumeration. Besides Ten Great Religions, he published: The Christian Doctrine of Forgiveness of Sin (1852); The Christian Doctrine of Prayer (1854); Orthodoxy: Its Truths and Errors (1866); Common Sense in Religion (1874); Essentials and Non-Essentials in Religion (1878); Self-Culture (1882); Anti-Slavery Days (1884); The Problem of the Fourth Gospel (1886).

[The beginning of an Autobiography is contained in the first six chapters of las. Freeman Clarke (1891) by Edward Everett Hale. See also the sketch by Clarke's daughter Lilian Freeman Clarke, in Heralds of a Liberal Faith, III, 67-75; a memoir by Andrew Preston Peabody in Massachusetts History Society Proc., March 1889; tributes from friends and contemporaries in the Christian Register, June 14, 1888.]

W.W.F.


CLARKE, Lewis G., 1815-1897, African American, anti-slavery lecturer, author, escaped slave.  Dictated his recollections of slavery to abolitionist Joseph C. Lovejoy in 1845.  Published as Narratives of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke…

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 3, p. 100; American National Biography, 2002, Volume 4, p. 979)


CLARKE, Matthew E., Washington, DC, American Colonization Society, Manager, 1835-39, Executive Committee, 1839-1840. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)


CLARKE, Peleg C., abolitionist, Coventry, Rhode Island, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1838-40, 1840-42.


CLARKSON, Matthew, 1758-1825, Regent of the State University of New York, member of the New York Manumission Society.  Petitioned Congress against slavery on behalf of the New York Manumission Society.  Introduced bill to end slavery in New York Assembly.

(Goodell, 1852, p. 95; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 160, 166; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 166)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 166:

CLARKSON, MATTHEW (October 17, 1758- April 25, 1825), Revolutionary soldier, New York philanthropist, was the son of David and Elizabeth (French) Clarkson, and the great-grandson of Matthew Clarkson, who came from good family connections in England to New York in 1690, as secretary of the province. The descendants of the Secretary intermarried with leading provincial families and otherwise won a strong position in the mercantile and political affairs of the community. In the Revolutionary period they early took a strong patriotic stand, and young Matthew participated as a volunteer in the battle of Long Island. Later he was aide-de-camp to Arnold, was wounded at Fort Edward, and behaved with gallantry in the battle of Saratoga. (His likeness is among the figures in Trumbull's painting in the Capitol rotunda at Washington.) Following his chief to Philadelphia, he became involved in a heated newspaper controversy with Thomas Paine over the Silas Deane affair, his precise relationship to the matter in dispute being somewhat obscure. In the early part of 1779, owing to his refusal in disrespectful terms of a summons from the President and Executive Council of Pennsylvania, he received a reprimand from Congress, which body, however, at the same time granted his request for opportunity to serve in southern territory. He was attached to the staff of General Lincoln, and served with him until the end of the war, and also as assistant to the latter during his term as secretary of war. Clarkson's military career included later service as brigadier-general and then as major-general of New York state militia. Naturally he was called General Clarkson and was an early member of the Cincinnati. He was married twice: first, on May 24, 1785, to Mary Rutherford; second, on February 14, 1792, to Sarah Cornell. His life after retirement from active military service was that of a public-spirited citizen of means and leisure. He was a regent of the State University of New York; a member of the Assembly for one term (1789-90), during which he introduced a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in the state; United States marshal (1791-92); a member of the state Senate for two terms (1794 and 1795); one of the commissioners to build a new prison (1796---97); president of the New York Hospital (I 799); and president of the Bank of New York (1804-25). He was the Federalist candidate for the United States Senate in 1802, but was defeated on the joint ballot by DeWitt Clinton.

Aside from his military record perhaps the most characteristic aspect of his career concerns his connection with the numerous societies and "movements" for public improvement which were coming into existence in New York City in the half-century after independence. His integrity, his high social position, personal amiability, and ample means all combined to give him prominence in this relation. The long and extremely varied list of organizations in which he was a leading figure quite justifies DeWitt Clinton's remark: "Whenever a charitable or public-spirited institution was about to be established Clarkson's presence was deemed essential. His sanction became a passport to public approbation."

[W. W. Spooner, ed., Historic Families of America (1907), pp. 282-85; The Clarksons of New York (2 volumes, privately printed, 1876); Journals Continental Congress, Volume XIII; Martha J. Lamb, History of City of New York (1881).]

C.W.S.


CLARKSON, Thomas, abolitionist

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 3, 57, 128, 132, 148, 162, 169 170, 241; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 79, 145, 314; Goodell, 1852, pp. 56-59, 66, 355-360, 393, 444)


CLARY, Dr. Lyman, abolitionist, indicted in the rescue of fugitive slave, Jerry.


CLAY, Cassius Marcellus, 1810-1903, Madison County, Kentucky, anti-slavery political leader, emancipationist, large landowner, statesman, lawyer, diplomat, soldier, newspaper publisher. Prominent anti-slavery activist with Kentucky State legislature and member of the Free-Soil and Republican Party.  Published anti-slavery paper, True American, in Lexington, Kentucky.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 151, 171; Clay, 1896; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 258; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 213, 221, 248, 256, 272; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 4, 237, 258-259, 327, 336, 372; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 5, 63, 64, 71, 107, 147, 156, 199; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 380, 619; Smiley, 1962; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 503, 577, 639-640; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 18; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 171-173; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 4; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 311-312)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 18:

CLAY, CASSIUS MARCELLUS (October 19, 1810--July 22, 1903), abolitionist, the youngest son of Green Clay [q.v.], and Sally (Lewis) Clay, was born on his father's estate, "White Hall," in Madison County, Kentucky. His ancestry was Scotch, English, and Welsh; and in him was so strange a mixture of manly vigor, unfaltering honesty, indiscreet pugnacity, and the wild spirit of the crusader, as to make him one of the most remarkable of the lesser figures in American history. When very young he fought his mother, his schoolmaster, and a slave companion; the day before his wedding he caned a rival in the streets of Louisville; and when ninety-three years old, suffering under the hallucination that people were plotting against his life, he converted his ancestral mansion into a fortified castle, protected by a cannon. His career was turbulent in politics, in the army, within the circle of his family, and in all his social and diplomatic relations. In 1841 he fought a duel in Louisville with Robert Wickliffe, Jr.; four years later he so mutilated with a bowie knife Sam M. Brown as to be indicted for mayhem; in 1850 he stabbed to death Cyrus Turner; and in his old age he shot and killed a negro. In all his early political campaigns he carried a bowie knife and two pistols.

Clay was given the best opportunities of his day for an education, first receiving instruction from Joshua Fry in Garrard County, and later under the same master at Danville. He was then sent to the Jesuit College of St. Joseph in Nelson County. He attended Transylvania University for a time, and in 1831 with letters of introduction to President Jackson and to the principal men of note in the East he entered the junior class in Yale College, where he was graduated the next year. He returned to Kentucky and studied law at Transylvania but never took out license to practise. Wealthy and. ambitious for a political career, he was elected to the state legislature from Madison County in 1835 and in 1837, being defeated in 1836 on his advocacy of internal improvements. He now moved to Lexington and in 1840 was elected to the legislature to represent Fayette County. The following year he again ran, contrary to the advice of his distant kinsman, Henry Clay, and was defeated on the question of slavery. Though his father had been a large slaveholder, Clay had early developed a bitter hatred toward the institution, and, inspired by William Lloyd Garrison whom he had heard at Yale College, this hatred became a crusading passion. In his defeat for the legislature he saw the blatant tyranny and implacable opposition of the slaveholders, and he resolved to rid Kentucky of the evil. In June 1845 he set up in Lexington a newspaper which he called the True American and began his campaign. Foreseeing trouble he fortified his office with two four-pounder cannon, Mexican lances, and rifles, and strategically placed a keg of powder to be set off against any attackers. In August a committee of sixty prominent Lexingtonians visited his establishment while he was absent, boxed up his equipment, and sent it to Cincinnati. He continued to publish his paper from this new location, and later, changing its name to the Examiner, he moved it to Louisville.

Although Clay had opposed the annexation of Texas, in 1846 he volunteered among the first of those who were to invade Mexico, believing that since his country was at war it was his duty to fight, and feeling that a military record would help him politically. He fought with bravery in a number of engagements and was taken prisoner at Encarnacion in January 1847. After many harrowing experiences he was set free, returning to Kentucky to share in a resolution of commendation by the legislature and to receive a sword presented by his fellow citizens. In politics he began a strong follower of Henry Clay, but, during the campaign of 1844, became estranged from him on the issue of abolitionism. In the next presidential campaign he supported Taylor from the beginning, and in 1849 he made a determined effort to build up an emancipation party in Kentucky by holding a convention in Frankfort and running for governor. In the election he received 3,621 votes, enough to defeat the Whig candidate. On the birth of the Republican party he joined it, voting for Fremont in 1856 and for Lincoln in 1860. In this latter year he had a considerable following for the vice-presidency. He was on terms of close friendship with Lincoln, and, having been led to understand that he might have the secretaryship of war, was greatly chagrined when he did not receive it. To pacify him Lincoln offered him the diplomatic post at Madrid, which he refused. Later he accepted the Russian post. On his way east he reached Washington in April, at the time when it was cut off and undefended. He quickly grasped the situation and raised 300 men for the protection of the city and government, for which service he might have received appointment as major-general in the Federal army had he not preferred to continue to Russia. In 1862 he was recalled and made a major-general, but he refused to fight until the government should abolish slavery in the seceded states. He returned to Kentucky in the fall of 1862 on a mission to the legislature, did some fighting, and left for Russia again in 1863, where he remained until 1869. He fell out with President Grant and joining the Liberal Republicans supported Greeley in 1872. Disagreeing with the policy of reconstruction, he supported Tilden in 1876, but in 1884 he was for Blaine. After returning from Russia he retired to his estate in Madison County and in his old age, a few weeks before his death, the Richmond court adjudged him a lunatic. He was married to Mary Jane Warfield of Lexington in 1832, but was divorced from her in 1878. On his final return from Russia he brought to his home a Russian boy, whom he named Launey Clay, refusing to disclose his parentage. Shortly before his death he married a young girl from whom he soon secured a divorce.

[A vivid account of Clay' s career is set forth in his Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay; Memoirs, Writings and Speeches (1886), volume I. A second volume was projected but never published. Biographical Memoranda Class of 1832 Yale College (1880) contains sketch "communicated by himself." In 1848 his speeches were brought out by Horace Greeley under the title of Speeches and Writings of C. M. Clay. All of Clay's papers prior to the Civil War were burned during the conflict. Incomplete sketches of him may be found in R. H. and L. R. Collins, History of Kentucky (1874), and Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky (1877). A short sketch is in Who's Who in America, 1901-02. An account of the last days of his life and an obituary appear in Lexington (Kentucky) Leader, July 6-8, 23, 1903. Files of his True American are preserved in the Lexington Public Library]

E. M. C.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 503, 577, 639-640:

CLAY, Cassius Marcellus, politician, born in Madison county, Kentucky, 19 October, 1810, studied at Transylvania university, but afterward entered the junior class at Yale, and was graduated there in 1832. While in New Haven he heard William Lloyd Garrison, and, although his parents were slave-holders, became an earnest abolitionist. He began to practise law in his native county, and was elected to the legislature in 1835, but was defeated the next year on account of his advocacy of internal improvements. He was again elected in 1837, and in 1839 was a member of the convention that nominated General Harrison for the presidency. He then removed to Lexington, and was again a member of the legislature in 1840, but in 1841 was defeated, after an exciting canvass, on account of his anti-slavery views. The improved jury system and the common-school system of Kentucky are largely due to his efforts while in the legislature. Mr. Clay denounced the proposed annexation of Texas, as intended to extend slavery, and in 1844 actively supported Henry Clay for the presidency, speaking in his behalf in the northern states. On 3 June, 1845, he issued in Lexington the first number of an anti-slavery paper entitled “The True American.” Mob violence had been threatened, and the editor had prepared himself for it. He says in his memoirs: “I selected for my office a brick building, and lined the outside doors with sheet-iron, to prevent it being burned. I purchased two brass four-pounder cannon at Cincinnati, and placed them, loaded with shot and nails, on a table, breast high; had folding-doors secured with a chain, which could open upon the mob and give play to the cannon. I furnished my office with Mexican lances, and a limited number of guns. There were six or eight persons who stood ready to defend me. If defeated, they were to escape by a trap-door in the roof; and I had placed a keg of powder with a match, which I could set off and blow up the office and all my invaders; and this I should most certainly have done in case of the last extremity.” In August, while the editor was sick, his press was seized by the mob and taken to Cincinnati, and he himself was threatened with assassination; but, notwithstanding all opposition, he continued to publish the paper, printing it in Cincinnati and circulating it through Kentucky. This was not his only narrow escape. He was continually involved in quarrels, had several bloody personal encounters, and habitually spoke in political meetings, with a bowie knife concealed about him, and a brace of pistols in the mouth of his grip-sack, which he placed at his feet. When war with Mexico was declared, Mr. Clay entered the army as captain of a volunteer infantry company that had already distinguished itself at Tippecanoe in 1811. He took this course because he thought a military title necessary to political advancement in a “fighting state” like Kentucky. On 23 January, 1847, while in the van, more than 100 miles in advance of the main army, he was taken prisoner, with seventy-one others, at Encarnacion, and marched to the city of Mexico. On one occasion, after the escape of some of the captives, the lives of the remainder were saved by Captain Clay's gallantry and presence of mind. After being exchanged, he returned to Kentucky, and was presented by his fellow-citizens with a sword in honor of his services. He worked for General Taylor's nomination in the convention of 1848, and carried Kentucky for him. He called a convention of emancipationists at Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1849, and in 1850, separating from the whig party, was an anti-slavery candidate for governor, receiving about 5,000 votes. He labored energetically for Frémont's election in 1856, and for Lincoln's in 1860, but took pains to separate himself from the “radical abolitionists,” holding that all interference with slavery should be by legal methods. On 28 March, 1861, he was appointed minister to Russia. He returned to this country in June, 1862, having been commissioned major-general of volunteers, and shortly afterward made a speech in Washington, declaring that he would never draw his sword while slavery was protected in the seceding states. He resigned on 11 March, 1863, and was again sent as minister to Russia, publicly supported the revolutionary movement in Cuba, and became president of the Cuban aid society. In 1871 he delivered an address by invitation at the St. Louis fair, urging speedy reconciliation with the north, and at the same time attacking President Grant's administration. He was identified with the liberal republican movement in 1872, and supported his old friend Horace Greeley for the presidency. He afterward joined the democratic party, and actively supported Samuel J. Tilden in 1876, but advocated Blaine's election in 1884. In 1877 Mr. Clay shot and killed a negro, Perry White, whom he had discharged from his service and who had threatened his life. Mr. Clay was tried, and the jury gave a verdict of “justifiable homicide.” A volume of his speeches was edited by Horace Greeley (1848), and he has published “The Life, Memoirs, Writings, and Speeches of Cassius M. Clay” (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 503, 577, 639-640.

Chapter: “Vermont and Massachusetts. --John P. Hale. -- Cassius M. Clay,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

While Mr. Hale was making his gallant and successful fight in New Hampshire, by which he placed himself at once among the foremost advocates of liberty, freedom found another champion, on the very soil of slavery itself, in the person of Cassius M. Clay. Belonging to an eminent family, reared under the influences of slavery, he was identified with it by birth, inheritance, and position. From personal knowledge and his affiliations of family, party, and business, he had spoken during the presidential canvass of 1844 with authority upon the subject of slavery, revealing to thousands the inner life and workings of the system.

Mr. Clay was a native of Kentucky. Educated at Yale; he had soon learned to recognize the difference between the slave and the free States, while the antislavery discussions that were rife during his stay in New England greatly excited his feelings and changed his sentiments; and at an early day he determined to emancipate his slaves. Entering the Kentucky legislature in 1835, he at once introduced and became the champion of a common-school system for his native State. But he soon learned that such a system was incompatible with the presence and power of slavery wherever the latter was established, and was giving tone to the thought and feeling of society.
In 1841 an act was introduced into that legislature for the repeal of a law adopted in 1833 to prevent the importation of slaves into the State. He, of course, arrayed himself against the repeal, and denounced in fitting language this reactionary measure. Such a demonstration from one occupying his position naturally excited surprise, and provoked that kind and style of opposition in which the slave-masters were accustomed to indulge toward any who opposed their policy or condemned their cherished system. But he declared that denunciation could not silence him; that epithets and the cry of abolition had no terrors for him; and that bowie-knives, pistols, and mobs could not force him to desist. He said that his blood was ready for the sacrifice, though he warned gentlemen that he should not be "a tame victim of either force or denunciation." He affirmed that there was a party in the country which was .the advocate of perpetual slavery, and in favor of destroying the Union. He protested against what he termed the treasonable scheme of the disunionists; and he asserted that on the day when this should be seriously attempted or consummated there should be "one Kentuckian shrouded under the stars and stripes; one heart undesecrated with the faith that slavery is the basis of civil liberty; one being who could not exist in a government denying the right of petition, the liberty of speech and of the press; one man who would not be the outlaw of nations or the slave of a slave."

Entertaining such sentiments, and believing that the proposed annexation of Texas was for “the extension of slavery among men," he interposed a most determined opposition. In a speech in December, 1843, in reply to ex-Vice-President Richard M. Johnson, he made an impassioned appeal to the people of Kentucky to enter their solemn protest against this most unholy scheme. He reminded them, if this project was carried out for the purposes for which it was formed, they could no longer cover themselves, when reproached for the existence of slavery, under the plea that it was an entailed evil for which they could not be held responsible. If they supported this scheme, with this the real and avowed object, they would commit themselves anew to the system it was thus proposed to strengthen and extend.
Holding these ideas of annexation, and deeply impressed with the magnitude of the interests at stake and the gravity of the impending peril, he entered with great earnestness into the presidential contest of 1844. He traversed the free States, urging the claims of Henry Clay. He was especially urgent that antislavery men should give him their votes, as the only way by which annexation could be prevented. Affirming that Mr. Clay had virtually pledged himself to oppose the admission of Texas, by making the conditions of his “support such as could not be fulfilled, he contended that they themselves held the power in their hands to prevent it. Among those conditions was the “common consent of the Union." " So long, then," he said, in one of his speeches, "as the vestal flame of liberty shall burn in your bosoms, eternal and inextinguishable, so long is Mr. Clay, three several times, in the most solemn manner, before the nation and all mankind, irrevocably bound to oppose the annexation of Texas to the United States." " Of all men," he continued, " now present I have the greatest cause to take care that I am not deceived in this matter; but I can go --I say it before God and man -- with a good conscience for him, because I believe it will save my country from ruin if we shall secure his election." His labors in the canvass were arduous, his feelings were deeply enlisted in the issues at stake, and his consequent disappointment in view of defeat was very great.

The defeat of Mr. Clay, however, while it made annexation certain, did not discourage him. His spirit rose with the occasion, and his purpose to war against the cause of all this scheming and plotting seemed to be strengthened.  Returning to Kentucky, he issued, in January, 1845, an address to the people of his State, in which he portrayed the baleful effects of slavery, even upon that " young and beautiful Commonwealth," to whose " Italian skies " and " more than Sicilian verdure" he mournfully referred as being blighted and clouded by this terrible curse. " Her fields," he says, " relapse into primitive sterility; her population wastes away, manufactures recede from her infected border, trade languishes, decay trenches upon her meagre accumulations of taste or utility, gaunt famine stalks into the portals of the homestead, sullen despair begins to display itself in the careworn faces of men, the heavens and the earth cry aloud, the eternal laws of happiness and existence have been trampled underfoot …Agriculture drags along its slow pace with slovenly, ignorant, and reckless labor. Science, literature, and art are strangers here. Poets, historians, artists, and machinists; the lovers of the ideal, the great, the beautiful, the true, and the useful,--flourish where thought and action are untrammeled… A loose and inadequate respect for the rights of property, of necessity, follows in the wake of slavery. Duelling, bloodshed, and lynch-law leave but little security to person. A general demoralization has corrupted the first minds in the nation, its hot contagion has spread among the whole people; licentiousness, crime, and bitter hate infest us at home; repudiation and the forcible propagandism of slavery is arraying against us the world in arms."

He urged upon them to choose delegates to a convention for amending the Constitution, and to repeat the attempt "until victory shall perch on the standard of the free."
While the struggle was in progress in both Congress and the country for the expansion of slavery, he issued proposals for the establishment of a paper to advocate its “overthrow “in Kentucky. Its publication was commenced at Lexington, and on the 3d of June was issued the first number of the “True American." In it he discussed with great vigor the evils and remedies existing and proposed. The general tone and character of its utterances were very offensive to the slaveholders of the State, whose course he condemned, and whose interests, they felt, he was putting in peril. This indignation was specially increased and intensified by articles that appeared 11 the 12th of August, in which the writer referred not only to the general principles of the contest, but to certain contingencies and possibilities, and which very naturally and very greatly excited their ire.

In those articles not only was emancipation advocated, but the securing of the civil and political rights to the colored people was vindicated. The pride and selfishness of the slave-master, too, was referred to; and the charge was made that, in his esteem, national character, conscience of the people, and sense of duty weighed nothing against that pride and selfishness. The warning, too, was given that the Abolitionists were becoming quite as reckless as the slaveholders themselves; and, when provoked by injustice and wrong, they might manifest something of the same spirit. “It is in vain," it was said,” for the master to try to fence his dear slaves in from all intercourse with the great world, to create his little petty and tyrannical kingdom on his own plantation, and keep it for his exclusive reign. He cannot shut out the light of information any more than the light of heaven. It will penetrate all disguises, and shine upon the dark night of slavery. He must recollect that he is surrounded. The North, the East, the West, and the South border on him, --the free West-Indian, the free Mexican, the free Yankee, the more than free Abolitionists of his own country. Everything trenches upon his infected district, and the wolf looks calmly in upon his fold."

The slaveholders were greatly exasperated, too, by these words: "But we are told the enunciation of the soul-stirring principles of Revolutionary patriots is a lie; that slavery the most unmitigated, the lowest, basest that the world has seen; is to be substituted forever for our better, more glorious, holier aspirations. The Constitution.is torn and trampled underfoot, justice and good faith in a nation are divided, brute force -is substituted in the place of high moral tone, all the great principles of national liberty which we inherited from our British, ancestry are yielded up, and we are left without God or help in the world. When the great-hearted of our land weep, and the man of reflection maddens in the contemplation of our national apostasy, there are men, pursuing gain and pleasure, who smile with contempt and indifference at their appeals. But remember, you who dwell in marble palaces, that there are strong arms and fiery hearts and iron pikes in the streets, and panes of glass only between them and the silver plate on the board and the smooth-skinned woman on the ottoman. When you have mocked at virtue, deified the agency of God in the affairs of men, and made rapine your honeyed faith, tremble, for the day of retributio1ds at hand, and the masses will be avenged."

The establishment of such a paper by such a man, with views so radical and a purpose so determined, was naturally regarded by the slaveholders as a challenge to them to come to the defence of their cherished and menaced system. It was, therefore, doomed from the start. Probably no journal, however mildly and courteously conducted, that contemplated and advocated emancipation, would have remained unmolested. Certainly one with sentiments so decided and uncompromising might naturally expect resistance. It came in the form of a committee, which waited upon him on the 14th of' August, while confined to a bed of sickness, requiring him to suspend the publication of his paper, "as," they say in their note, "its further continuance, in our judgment, is dangerous to the peace of the community, and to the safety of our homes and families."

His reply was very decided and defiant. Alluding to the phrase in their letter that they had “been appointed as a committee on the part of a number of the respectable citizens of the city of Lexington," he wrote: "I say, in reply to your assertion that you are a committee appointed by a respectable portion of the community, that it cannot be true. Traitors to the laws and Constitution cannot be deemed respectable by any but assassins, pirates, and highway robbers." After reminding them that their meeting was unknown to the laws and Constitution, and that its “proceedings" were secret, and its purposes were “in direct violation of every known principle of honor, religion, or government," he added: "I treat them with the burning contempt of a brave heart and a loyal citizen. I deny their power and defy their action …Your advice with regard to my personal safety is worthy of the source whence it emanated, and meets with the same contempt from me which the purposes of your mission excite. Go, tell your secret conclave of cowardly assassins that Cassius M. Clay knows his rights, and how to defend them."

He then issued an appeal to the people of Kentucky to stand by him in his conflict with the enemies of law in the defence of the civil and political rights of all. On the 18th of August a meeting was called to consider the question of suppressing the “True American." To this meeting he sent a communication, in which he endeavored to remove some false constructions which had been placed upon the articles in question, and in which he made some further statements concerning the purposes and plans of his paper, concluding with the solemn and unequivocal averment that his constitutional rights he should never "abandon." 

The meeting, unmoved by his appeal, proceeded to the consummation of the purpose for which it was convened, by choosing a committee of sixty, which proceeded to the office of the offending journal, boxed up its press, and sent it out of the State. It also unanimously adopted an address to the people of Kentucky, reported by Thomas F. Marshall. In this address it was charged that a formidable party had arisen in the North which held that slavery was "opposed to religion, morals, and law," and that the negro was entitled to his freedom. It asserted, too, that the aim of this party was the abolition of slavery in America. It charged Mr. Clay with being in full sympathy with this party; that he had visited the North, and, having been "received there in full communion by the abolition party, caressed and flattered and feasted, hailed in the stages of his triumphal progress by discharges of cannon, and heralded in the papers devoted to the cause as the boldest, the most intrepid, the most devoted of its champions, he returned to his native State, the organ and agent of an incendiary sect, to force upon her principles fatal to her domestic repose, at the risk of his own life and the peace of the community."

Stigmatizing an abolition paper in a slave State as a " nuisance of the most formidable character," a blazing brand in the hands 1of an incendiary or madman, which might scatter ruin, conflagration, revolution, crime unnamable over everything dear in domestic life, sacred in religion, or respectable in modesty, it denounced the " True American " as an example of the worst type of such papers. Representing Abolitionists as traitors to the Constitution, and abolition principles in a slave State as "fire in a magazine of powder," the address urged these considerations as the justification of its authors for the summary measures they adopted.

Mr. Clay also issued several appeals to the people of Kentucky, calling upon them to vindicate their rights, stricken down in his person. But though overpowered, he exhibited the same defiant spirit and unconquerable purpose, as he, dedicated himself anew to the liberty of his country and of mankind, and called upon Americans to “rise up in the omnipotency of the ballot, and peaceably overthrow the slave despotism of the nation."

He re-established his paper, which, though published in Lexington, was printed in Cincinnati. But when the war with Mexico opened, he, to the great regret of many and the sharp censures of others, entered the army; and, under the plea of standing by the flag of his country in the day of battle, volunteered his services for that most indefensible war. After his return he renewed and continued his warfare on slavery until it ceased to exist.

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 1.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 628-635.


CLAY, Henry, 1777-1852, U.S. congressman, senator, secretary of state, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 12th, 13th, and 18th Congress, Presidential candidate.  Founder of the American Colonization Society and its President from 1837-1852, Vice President, 1833-1837. 

(See “Life of Henry Clay,” by George D. Prentice (Hartford, Connecticut, 1831); “Speeches,” collected by R. Chambers (Cincinnati, 1842); “Life and Speeches of Henry Clay,” by J. B. Swaim (New York, 1843); “Life of Henry Clay,” by Epes Sargent (1844, edited and completed by Horace Greeley, 1852); “Life and Speeches of Henry Clay,” by D. Mallory (1844; new ed., 1857); “Life and Times of Henry Clay,” by Reverend Calvin Colton (6 volumes, containing speeches and correspondence, 1846-'57; revised ed., 1864); and “Henry Clay,” by Carl Schurz (2 volumes, Boston, 1887). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 173-179; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 173-179:

CLAY, HENRY (April 12, 1777-June 29, 1852), congressman, senator, secretary of state, was descended from English ancestors who came to Virginia shortly after the founding of Jamestown but did not rise to any position of importance in the colony. His father, John Clay, was a Baptist minister, who moved from Henrico County to the frontiers of Hanover County in search of a district more hospitable to the practise of his religion. His mother was Elizabeth Hudson, who came of a family of no greater prominence than the Clays. Henry Clay was born in the midst of the Revolution in a region overrun by war, in that part of Hanover County generally referred to as The Slashes. He was the fourth son, and next to the youngest child, in a family of eight-three daughters and five sons. Of these children only two sons besides Henry lived far beyond the age of maturity. His father died in 1781 leaving the family little more than the respectability of his name. As Henry was only four years old at the time the influence of his father could have affected him very little. To his mother he owed much. He always held her in affectionate remembrance. His formal education consisted of three years before the master of The Slashes log school, Peter Deacon, whom Clay always pleasantly recalled. In 1791 Clay's mother married Henry Watkins, a man who came to regard his step-children kindly and who took a particular interest in Henry. He moved the family to Richmond where he was a resident, and soon secured for Henry a position in a retail store kept by Richard Denny, where the young clerk remained for a year. Feeling that Henry's capacities recommended him for a higher position, his step-father secured work for him in the office of the clerk of the High Court of Chancery, and here Clay remained for the next four years, until 1796. Though somewhat ungainly in appearance, he attracted attention by his open countenance and industry, and thereby recommended himself to Chancellor George Wythe. who made him his amanuensis to copy the court's decisions when not busied in the clerk's office. In his contact with Wythe, Clay secured good counsel and intelligent direction of the reading which he had begun in Denny's store. All his surroundings and his proclivities suggested to him the 3tudy of law. This he began in 1796 in the office of Attorney-General Robert Brooke, and within a year he secured his license to practise. During this time he lived in the home of the Attorney-General and had unusual opportunities to meet the people of prominence in the Virginia capital. While his introduction to Richmond had been far more fortunate than he could have had reason to expect, he felt that conditions were settled there and competition too keen. The same lure that had drawn so many others to the new state of Kentucky also tempted him. Added to this was the fact that his mother was now living there, having left Virginia the year Kentucky became a state. In 1797 Clay moved to Lexington, the outstanding city of all the West in culture and influence. His reputation as an attorney-at-law was soon made and his clients became numerous. As a criminal lawyer, he came by common consent to have no equal in Kentucky. It has been repeatedly stated that no person was ever hanged in a trial where Clay appeared for the defense. He used every trick in argument and procedure in addition to his great skill as an orator. Infrequently he appeared as prosecutor for the state, once serving under protest for a short time as attorney for Fayette County, but by preference he usually acted for the defense. It was not long before the law became to him the means to a much more important end, the regulation of the political and constitutional relations of Kentucky. His first appearance in a political capacity was in 1798 when he followed George Nicholas in a denunciation of the sedition law before a great throng in Lexington. This speech, which was never forgotten by those who heard it, was a fitting introduction to his new constituents. In 1803 in a contest against Felix Grundy, he was elected to the legislature, where he continued until 1806. He had by this time become typically Western in his point of view, and when it seemed that the United States might at the last moment be cheated by Spain out of the prize of Louisiana, he became as greatly excited as any other Kentuckian over the possibility of marching on New Orleans. In this new community, so little acquainted with the sanctity of law and of established usages, Clay generally took a conservative stand. In 1804 when a fight was made to repeal the charter of the Kentucky Insurance Company in which banking powers had been secured by a stratagem, he championed the cause of the corporation by arguing that a contract was involved and could not be broken except by the agreement of both parties; and in 1807 when the animosity against […].

In the Missouri Compromise debate the dangers of a divided country first rudely shocked the nation, and propelled Clay into a new role, which he was to play thereafter. The essence of the struggle to him was not the extension or restriction of slavery, but the continuance of the Union of equal states. If Congress could lay restrictions on slavery in Missouri, its power might extend to any subject. Herein lay the fundamental danger to the Union. Through the compromise suggested by Senator Thomas, Clay saw the question practically settled, and in 1820 he returned to Kentucky to look after his private affairs, and to be absent from much of the session beginning in the fall. Trouble broke out anew when Missouri sought to exclude free negroes from her boundaries. Clay hastened back to Washington in January 1821 and succeeded in pushing through the House a compromise plan, substantially the same as that which Senator Eaton had introduced in the Senate. He returned to Kentucky at the end of the session, in March 1821, not to reappear in Congress until he should come as an avowed candidate for the presidency. His private affairs in Kentucky engaged his attention for the next two years, during which time he enjoyed the almost universal acclaim of Kentuckians. In 1822 a joint meeting of the legislature nominated him for the presidency, and other states soon followed. He was also reelected to Congress, where he served from 1823 to 1825, being again the choice of that body for speaker. He now set about consolidating a national program calculated to secure his election. It was during this period that he developed fully his American system of protective tariffs and internal improvements. The tariff bill of 1820 had., failed, but in 1824 he secured the passage of the highest protective tariff enacted up to that time. In the presidential election of 1824 he received the smallest number of votes cast for any of the four candidates and was thereby eliminated by the Constitution from those to be voted upon by the House, which body chooses the president when no one receives a majority of the electoral college. Clay had carried Kentucky by an overwhelming vote against Jackson, his nearest competitor, who had received a plurality in the nation. Jackson had grievously wounded the feelings of Kentucky in 1815 when he had accused the Kentucky troops at New Orleans of cowardice, but even so he was much more attractive to Kentuckians than Adams, whose enmity shown at Ghent was well known. The legislature instructed Clay to vote for Jackson when the House should take up the election of the president, instructions which Clay ignored by voting for Adams and effecting his election. For this rebellious conduct Clay suffered his first eclipse in Kentucky, temporary though it was. Jackson and his friends were furious, charged Clay with making a bargain with Adams, and when Clay accepted the secretaryship of state were irretrievably convinced of his duplicity. Clay and his friends labored throughout the rest of their lives to disprove this slander, but it dogged his tracks in every subsequent campaign. When he returned to Kentucky he found considerable hostility, but the warmth of the welcome extended by his friends soon convinced him of the solidarity of his position. He bitterly attacked Jackson, and repeatedly asked how the winning of a military victory and the possession of an imperious and dictatorial spirit could possibly be a recommendation for the civil leadership of the nation. Yet many of Clay's friends could never shake off the feeling that the alliance with Adams was a most unnatural one.

As secretary of state, Clay was thoroughly loyal throughout to the Administration. He served the full term and perhaps never spent a more miserable and uninteresting four years in all his life. He was by nature opposed to the routine of administrative work, finding his chief delight in the excitement of debate and parliamentary maneuvers. Much of the time he was ill, and but for his loyalty would have resigned. No problems of great importance in foreign affairs arose, though he made a host of minor commercial treaties. The best-known incident of his incumbency was the Pan-American Congress, in which he sought to have the United States participate. The enemies of the Administration started an acrimonious debate in Congress over the

If Clay had revived the idea of retiring to Ashland and settling down to the stock farming which he so much enjoyed, he was soon dispossessed of the thought, for his reception in Kentucky was, so vigorous as to constitute a mandate for the presidency in 1844. Enthusiasm for him was equally marked throughout the rest of the country. The. year he retired from the Senate, two years before the election, various states began to nominate him. He made a few trips out of Kentucky, notably one to the states north of the Ohio. In Dayton it was estimated that 100,000 people gathered to hear him. Long before 1844 it was conceded that Clay would be the Whig nominee, and it was no less an accepted fact in Clay's mind that Van Buren would receive the Democratic nomination. When Van Buren chanced to visit Ashland, the two prospective candidates appear to have agreed to eliminate the question of Texas from the campaign. Accordingly, on the same day in the latter part of April, after Clay had made a trip through the lower South, both he and Van Buren issued statements opposing immediate annexation (for Clay's letter, see Niles' Register,LXVI,152-53). A few days later Clay was nominated by acclamation in the Whig national convention. Van Buren, however, lost the Democratic nomination to Polk, as the Democrats were determined on expansion. The apparent enthusiasm of the country for annexation and the widespread impression that he was favoring the abolitionists, led Clay to restate his position in what came to be called the "Alabama letters." In these he declared that slavery was not involved one way or the other in the Texas question, and that he would be glad to see Texas annexed, if it could be done "without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just and fair terms" (Ibid., LXVI, 439). Owing to this ill-advised maneuver, Clay lost New York, and thereby the election, to Polk. "Never before or since has the -defeat of any man in this country brought forth such an exhibition of heartfelt grief from the educated and respectable classes of society as did this defeat of Clay" (James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States, 1902, I, 84).

Polk's success brought annexation, at the hands of Tyler, and war with Mexico. Clay felt that the declaration of war was an outrage, yet after war was declared he supported it. His favorite son, Henry, was killed at Buena Vista. Much concerned over the ultimate outcome of the war, Clay made a speech in Lexington on November 13, 1847, in which he called upon Congress to disclaim any intention of annexing Mexico and to announce the purposes of the war. During this period of retirement he made two trips to the East and was received with almost unbounded enthusiasm in New York, Philadelphia, and in other cities. Again the clamor began to arise for his nomination in 1848. Convinced of support, he announced his candidacy in April 1848. But there were many Whigs who felt that he could not be elected, and some of these were in Kentucky. A Kentucky Whig wrote John J. Crittenden, January 2, 1847, that "the Whig party cannot e:icist, or with any hope of success, so long as Mr. Clay continues his political aspirations" (Mrs. C. Coleman, Life of John J. Crittenden, 1871, I, 266). Crittenden's desertion brought to an end a long-standing friendship. General Zachary Taylor was nominated, and Clay, disconsolate because he did not control even the Kentucky delegation, felt that the Whig party had destroyed itself by its own act. The folly of nominating a military hero who had no qualifications for civil leadership had been repeated. Clay definitely refused to take part in the campaign.

After Taylor's election, when the problems growing out of the war and the sectional struggle had nearly driven the country to disunion, he returned to the Senate (1849) in a last effort to ward off disaster. Spurning Taylor's weak course, he set forth in detail his plan for gradual emancipation in the Pinde letter of 1849 and introduced in the Senate his well-known series of resolutions. In the debate in the Senate he made his greatest and last effort to save the Union, begging the radicals, in both North and South, to abandon a course which could mean only disruption. He particularly warned the South against secession, declaring that no such right existed and that 'he would advocate force in opposing it. Clay hoped that the compromise measures would definitely settle the sectional struggle; but to make doubly sure he with forty-four other members of Congress signed a pledge to oppose for public office anyone who did not accept the settlement. In the summer of 1851 he returned to Kentucky by way of Cuba, hoping the Southern climate would help a racking cough with which he was now afflicted, but he found no relief. In the fall he was back in Washington, determined, it seemed, to die in the service of his country. On the following June 29, death-closed his career. His remains were taken to Lexington by way of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, amid national mourning. He was buried in the Lexington cemetery.

No man in American public life has had more ardent supporters or more bitter enemies than Clay, and no one has depended more for his happiness on the friendship of the people. His mastery of Kentucky's emotions and reason was complete and lasting on every public question except that of slavery. Kentucky absorbed his strong Unionism but refused to adopt his plan of emancipation. Clay obtained much pleasure from his Ashland home with its six hundred acres and fifty slaves; but however often he might resolve to abandon public life, the importunities of his friends and his love of debate changed his mind. When his home was in danger of being sold for his debts, unknown friends throughout the country raised $50,000 with which they settled his obligations. He was not by nature a religious man, though he joined the Episcopal Church in later life (1847). He fought duels, but he afterward came strongly to oppose that method of vindicating honor. In common with his contemporaries, he played cards, was fond of horse-racing, and liked good liquors, though he did not drink to excess. Jn appearance he was tall, with a high forehead, gray eyes, and a large mouth. His voice was engaging, and in debate he employed every movement of his body with grace and skill, even using his snuff box to great advantage. His personal magnetism was remarkable; he seemed never to be without a proper word or expression, and always seemed to be perfectly at ease. Enthusiasm and warmth characterized his speaking, getting the best of his reason at times and leading him into untenable positions. His knowledge was not characterized by the profundity of Webster's, nor did he have the philosophical powers of Calhoun or the acquaintance with the classics which Adams and Sumner possessed. But in his understanding of human nature, in his ability to appeal to the common reason, and in his absolute fearlessness in stating his convictions, he was unexcelled by any of his contemporaries. He was married in 1799 to Lucretia Hart, a daughter of Colonel Thomas Hart of Henderson's Transylvania Company, by whom he had eleven children-six daughters and five sons. All his daughters and one son died before him. Another son became insane from an .accident. Of the others, Thomas H. Clay was minister to Guatemala •under Lincoln and died in 1871; James B. Clay was charge d'affaires at Lisbon under an appointment from Taylor, was later elected to Congress, and died in 1863; and John M. Clay became a farm.er and was the last surviving member of the family, dying in 1887.

[The letters and papers of Henry Clay are voluminous. Many of them have been scattered among his descendants, but the largest single collection is in the Library of Congress Among his published letters and speeches are the following: Richard Chambers, ed., Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, in the (Congress of the U. S. (1842); Daniel Mallory, ed., Life and Speeches of Henry Clay (2 volumes, 1843); Galvin Colton, ed., Private Correspondence of Henry Clay (1856); Works of Henry Clay (6 volumes, 1856, republished, with additional, matter, in 7 volumes, 1896),. and Monument to the Memory of Henry Clay (1857). The principal biographies of Clay are: Geo. D. Prentice, Biography of Henry Clay (1831); -Epes Sargent, Life and Public Service of Henry Clay (1842, republished with additions, 1848); Cahrin Colton, Life and Times of Henry Clay (2 volumes, 18 46); Calvin Colton, The Last Seven Y ears of the Life of Henry Clay (1856); Carl Schurz, Henry Clay (2 volumes, 1887); Thos. H. Clay and E. P. Oberholtzer, Henry Clay (1910); Jos. M. Rogers, The True Henry Clay (1902). An estimate of Clay's service as speaker of the House of Representatives is in M. P. Follett, The Speaker of the House of Representatives (1909) and H. B. Fuller, Speakers of the House (1909). The ancestry of Clay has been most fully set forth by Zachary F. Smith and Mrs. Mary Rogers Clay in The Clay Family (1899), being no. 14 of the Filson Club Publications.]

E.M.C.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume I, p. 640:

CLAY, Henry, statesman, born in Hanover county, Virginia, in a district known as “The Slashes,” 12  April, 1777; died Washington, D. C., 29 June, introduced resolutions expressing approval of the 1852. His father, a Baptist clergyman, died when Henry was four years old, leaving no fortune.  Henry received some elementary instruction in a log school-house, doing farm and house work when not at school. His mother married again and removed to Kentucky. When fourteen years of age he was placed in a small retail store at Richmond, and in 1792 obtained a place in the office of Peter Tinsley, clerk of the high court of chancery. There he attracted the attention of Chancellor Whyte, who employed him as an amanuensis, and directed his course of reading. In 1796 he began to study law with Robert Brooke, attorney-general of Virginia, and in 1797, having obtained a license to practise law from the judges of the court of appeals, he removed to Lexington, Kentucky. During his residence in Richmond he had made the acquaintance of several distinguished men of Virginia, and became a leading member of a debating club. At Lexington he achieved his first distinction in a similar society. He soon won a lucrative practice as an attorney, being especially successful in criminal cases and in suits growing out of the land laws. His captivating manners and his striking eloquence made him a general favorite. His political career began almost immediately after his arrival at Lexington. A convention was to be elected to revise the constitution of Kentucky, and in the canvass preceding the election Clay strongly advocated a constitutional provision for the gradual emancipation of the slaves in the state; but the movement was not successful. He also participated vigorously in the agitation against the alien and sedition laws, taking position as a member of the republican party. Several of his speeches, delivered in mass meetings, astonished the hearers by their beauty and force. In 1799 he married Lucretia Hart, daughter of a prominent citizen of Kentucky. In 1803 he was elected to a seat in the state legislature, where he excelled as a debater. In 1806 Aaron Burr passed through Kentucky, where he was arrested on a charge of being engaged in an unlawful enterprise dangerous to the peace of the United States. He engaged Clay's professional services, and Clay, deceived by Burr as to the nature of his schemes, obtained his release.   In the winter of 1806 Clay was appointed to a seat in the U. S. Senate to serve out an unexpired He was at once placed on various committees, and took an active part in the debates, especially in favor of internal improvements. In the summer of 1807 his county sent him again to the legislature, where he was elected speaker of the assembly. He opposed and defeated a bill prohibiting the use of the decisions of British courts and of British works on jurisprudence as authority in the courts of Kentucky. In December, 1808, he introduced resolutions expressing approval of the embargo laid by the general government, denouncing the British orders in council, pledging the general government the active aid of Kentucky in anything determined upon to resist British exactions, and declaring that President Jefferson was entitled to the thanks of the country. He offered another resolution, recommending that the members of the legislature should wear only clothes that were the product of domestic manufacture. This was his first demonstration in favor of the encouragement of home industry. About this resolution he had a quarrel with Humphrey Marshall, which led to a duel, in which both parties were slightly wounded. In the winter of 1809 Clay was again sent to the U. S. senate to fill an unexpired term of two years. He made a speech in favor of encouraging home industries, taking the ground that the country should be enabled to produce all it might need in time of war, and that, while agriculture would remain the dominant interest, it should be aided by the development of domestic manufactures. He also made a report on a bill granting a right of pre-emption to purchasers of public lands in certain cases, and introduced a, bill to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes, and to preserve peace on the frontier, a subject on which he expressed very wise and humane sentiments. During the session of 1810-'1 he defended the administration of Mr. Madison with regard to the occupation of West Florida by the United States by a strong historical argument, at the same time appealing, in glowing language, to the national pride of the American people. He opposed the renewal of the charter of the U. S. bank, notwithstanding Gallatin's recommendation, on the ground of the unconstitutionality of the bank, and contributed much to its defeat.  On the expiration of his term in the senate. Clay was sent to the national house of representatives by the Lexington district in Kentucky, and immediately upon taking his seat, 4 November, 1811, was elected speaker by a large majority. Not confining himself to his duties as presiding officer, he took a leading part in debate on almost all important occasions. The difficulties caused by British interference with neutral trade were then approaching a crisis, and Clay put himself at the head of the war party in congress, which was led in the second line by such young statesmen as John C. Calhoun, William Lowndes, Felix Grundy, and Langdon Cheves, and supported by a strong feeling in the south and west. In a series of fiery speeches Clay advocated the calling out of volunteers to serve on land, and the construction of an efficient navy. He expected that the war with Great Britain would be decided by an easy conquest of Canada, and a peace dictated at Quebec. The Madison administration hesitated, but was finally swept along by the war furor created by the young Americans under Clay's lead, and war against Great Britain was declared in June, 1812. Clay spoke at a large number of popular meetings to fill volunteer regiments and to fire the national spirit. In congress, while the events of the war were unfavorable to the United States in consequence of an utter lack of preparation and incompetent leadership, Clay vigorously sustained the administration and the war policy against the attacks of the federalists. Some of his speeches were of a high order of eloquence, and electrified the country. He was re-elected speaker in 1813. On 19 January, 1814, he resigned the speakership, having been appointed by President Madison a member of a commission, consisting of John Quincy Adams, James A. Bayard, Henry Clay, Jonathan Russell, and Albert Gallatin, to negotiate peace with Great Britain. The American commissioners met the commissioners of Great Britain at Ghent, in the Netherlands, and, after five months of negotiation, during which Mr. Way stoutly opposed the concession to the British of the right of navigating the Mississippi and of meddling with the Indians on territory of the United States, a treaty of peace was signed, 24 December, 1814. From Ghent Clay went to Paris, and thence with Adams and Gallatin to London, to negotiate a treaty of commerce with Great Britain. 

After his return to the United States, Mr. Clay declined the mission to Russia, offered by the administration. Having been elected again to the house of representatives, he took his seat on December 4, 1815, and was again chosen speaker. He favored the enactment of the protective tariff of 1816, and also advocated the establishment of a U. S. bank as the fiscal agent of the government, thus reversing his position with regard to that subject. He now pronounced the bank constitutional because it was necessary in order to carry on the fiscal concerns of the government. During the same session he voted to raise the pay of representatives from $6 a day to $1,500 a year, a measure that proved unpopular, and his vote for it came near costing him his seat. He was, however, re-elected, but then voted to make the pay of representatives a per diem of $8, which it remained for a long period. In the session of 1816-'7 he, together with Calhoun, actively supported an internal improvement bill, which President Madison vetoed. In December, 1817, Clay was re-elected speaker. In opposition to the doctrine laid down by Monroe in his first message, that congress did not possess, under the constitution, the right to construct internal improvements, Clay strongly asserted that right in several speeches. With great vigor he advocated the recognition of the independence of the Spanish American colonies, then in a state of revolution, and severely censured what he considered the procrastinating policy of the administration in that respect. In the session of 1818-'9 he criticised, in an elaborate speech, the conduct of General Jackson in the Florida campaign, especially the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister by Jackson's orders. This was the first collision between Clay and Jackson, and the ill feelings that it engendered in Jackson's mind were never extinguished. At the first session of the 16th congress, in December, 1819, Clay was again elected speaker almost without opposition. In the debate on the treaty with Spain, by which Florida was ceded to the United States, he severely censured the administration for having given up Texas, which he held to belong to the United States as a part of the Louisiana purchase. He continued to urge the recognition of the South American colonies as independent republics. 

In 1819-'20 he took an important part in the struggle in congress concerning the admission of Missouri as a slave state, which created the first great political slavery excitement throughout the country. He opposed the “restriction” clause making the admission of Missouri dependent upon the exclusion of slavery from the state, but supported the compromise proposed by Senator Thomas, of Illinois, admitting Missouri with slavery, but excluding slavery from all the territory north of 36° 30, acquired by the Louisiana purchase. This was the first part of the Missouri compromise, which is often erroneously attributed to Clay. When Missouri then presented herself with a state constitution, not only recognizing slavery, but also making it the duty of the legislature to pass such laws as would be necessary to prevent free negroes or mulattoes from coming into the state, the excitement broke out anew, and a majority in the house of representatives refused to admit Missouri as a state with such a constitution. On Clay's motion, the subject was referred to a special committee, of which he was chairman. This committee of the house joined with a senate committee, and the two unitedly reported in both houses a resolution that Missouri be admitted upon the fundamental condition that the state should never make any law to prevent from settling within its boundaries any description of persons who then or thereafter might become citizens of any state of the Union. This resolution was adopted, and the fundamental condition assented to by Missouri. This was Clay's part of the Missouri compromise, and he received general praise as “the great pacificator.” 

After the adjournment of congress, Clay retired to private life, to devote himself to his legal practice, but was elected to the 18th congress, which met in December, 1823, and was again chosen speaker. He made speeches on internal improvements, advocating a liberal construction of constitutional powers, in favor of sending a commissioner to Greece, and in favor of the tariff law, which became known as the tariff of 1824, giving his policy of protection and internal improvements the name of the “American system.”

He was a candidate for the presidency at the election of 1824. His competitors were John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and William H. Crawford, each of whom received a larger number of electoral votes than Clay. But, as none of them had received a majority of the electoral vote, the election devolved upon the house of representatives. Clay, standing fourth in the number of electoral votes received, was excluded from the choice, and he used his influence in the house for John Quincy Adams, who was elected. The friends of Jackson and Crawford charged that there was a corrupt understanding between Adams and Clay, and this accusation received color from the fact that Adams promptly offered Clay the portfolio of secretary of state, and Clay accepted it. This was the origin of the “bargain and corruption” charge, which, constantly repeated, pursued Clay during the best part of his public life, although it was disproved by the well-established fact that Clay, immediately after the result of the presidential election in 1824 became known, had declared his determination to use his influence in the house for Adams and against Jackson. As secretary of state under John Quincy Adams, Clay accepted an invitation, presented by the Mexican and Colombian ministers, to send commissioners of the United States to an international congress of American republics, which was to meet on the Isthmus of Panama, to deliberate upon subjects of common interest. The commissioners were appointed, but the Panama congress adjourned before they could reach the appointed place of meeting. In the course of one of the debates on this subject, John Randolph, of Roanoke, denounced the administration, alluding to Adams and Clay as a “combination of the Puritan and the blackleg.” Clay thereupon challenged Randolph to a duel, which was fought on 8 April, 1826, without bloodshed. He negotiated and concluded treaties with Prussia, the Hanseatic republics, Denmark, Colombia, Central America, and Austria. His negotiations with Great Britain concerning the colonial trade resulted only in keeping in force the conventions of 1815 and 1818. He made another treaty with Great Britain, extending the joint occupation of the Oregon country provided for in the treaty of 1818; another referring the differences concerning the northeastern boundary to some friendly sovereign or state for arbitration; and still another concerning the indemnity to be paid by Great Britain for slaves carried off by British forces in the war of 1812. As to his commercial policy, Clay followed the accepted ideas of the times, to establish between the United States and foreign countries fair reciprocity as to trade and navigation. He was made president of the American colonization society, whose object it was to colonize free negroes in Liberia on the coast of Africa.

In 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected president, and after his inauguration Clay retired to his farm of Ashland, near Lexington, Kentucky. But, although in private life, he was generally recognized as the leader of the party opposing Jackson, who called themselves “national republicans,” and later “whigs,” Clay, during the years 1829-'31, visited several places in the south as well as in the state of Ohio, was everywhere received with great honors, and made speeches attacking Jackson's administration, mainly on account of the sweeping removals from office for personal and partisan reasons, and denouncing the nullification movement, which in the mean time had been set on foot in South Carolina. Yielding to the urgent solicitation of his friends throughout the country, he consented in 1831 to be a candidate for the U. S. senate, and was elected. In December, 1831, he was nominated as the candidate of the national republicans for the presidency, with John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, for the vice-presidency. As the impending extinguishment of the public debt rendered a reduction of the revenue necessary, Clay introduced in the senate a tariff bill reducing duties on unprotected articles, but keeping them on protected articles, so as to preserve intact the “American system.” The reduction of the revenue thus effected was inadequate, and the anti-tariff excitement in the south grew more intense. The subject of public lands having, for the purpose of embarrassing him as a presidential candidate, been referred to the committee on manufactures, of which he was the leading spirit, he reported against reducing the price of public lands and in favor of distributing the proceeds of the lands' sales, after certain deductions, among the several states for a limited period. The bill passed the senate, but failed to pass the house. As President Jackson, in his several messages, had attacked the U. S. bank, Clay induced the bank, whose charter was to expire in 1836, to apply for a renewal of the charter during the session of 1831-'2, so as to force the issue before the presidential election. The bill renewing the charter passed both houses, but Jackson vetoed it, denouncing the bank in his message as a dangerous monopoly. In the presidential election Clay was disastrously defeated, Jackson receiving 219 electoral votes, and Clay only 49.

On 19 November, 1832, a state convention in South Carolina passed an ordinance nullifying the tariff laws of 1828 and 1832. On 10 December, President Jackson issued a proclamation against the nullifiers, which the governor of South Carolina answered with a counter-proclamation. On 12 February, 1833, Clay introduced, in behalf of union and peace, a compromise bill providing for a gradual reduction of the tariff until 1842, when it should be reduced to a horizontal rate of 20 per cent. This bill was accepted by the nullifiers, and became a law, known as the compromise of 1833. South Carolina rescinded the nullification ordinance, and Clay was again praised as the “great pacificator.” In the autumn of 1833, President Jackson, through the secretary of the treasury, ordered the removal of the public deposits from the U. S. bank. Clay, in December, 1833, introduced resolutions in the senate censuring the president for having “assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the constitution and laws.” The resolutions were adopted, and President Jackson sent to the senate an earnest protest against them, which was severely denounced by Clay. During the session of 1834-'5 Clay successfully opposed Jackson's recommendation that authority be conferred on him for making reprisals upon French property on account of the non-payment by the French government of an indemnity due to the United States. He also advocated the enactment of a law enabling Indians to defend their rights to their lands in the courts of the United States; also the restriction of the president's power to make removals from office, and the repeal of the four-years act. The slavery question having come to the front again, in consequence of the agitation carried on by the abolitionists, Clay, in the session of 1835-'6, pronounced himself in favor of the reception by the senate of anti-slavery petitions, and against the exclusion of anti-slavery literature from the mails. He declared, however, his opposition to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. With regard to the recognition of Texas as an independent state, he maintained a somewhat cold and reserved attitude. In the session of 1836-'7 he reintroduced his land bill without success, and advocated international copyright. His resolutions censuring Jackson for the removal of the deposits, passed in 1834, were, on the motion of Thomas H. Benton, expunged from the records of the senate, against solemn protests from the whig minority in that body.

Martin Van Buren was elected president in 1836, and immediately after his inauguration the great financial crisis of 1837 broke out. At an extra session of congress, in the summer of 1837, he recommended the introduction of the sub-treasury system. This was earnestly opposed by Clay, who denounced it as a scheme to “unite the power of the purse with the power of the sword.” He and his friends insisted upon the restoration of the U. S. bank. After a struggle of three sessions, the sub-treasury bill succeeded, and the long existence of the system has amply proved the groundlessness of the fears expressed by those who opposed it. Clay strongly desired to be the whig candidate for the presidency in 1840, but failed. The whig national convention, in December, 1839, nominated Harrison and Tyler. Clay was very much incensed at his defeat, but supported Harrison with great energy, making many speeches in the famous “log-cabin and hard-cider” campaign. After the triumphant election of Harrison and Tyler, Clay declined the office of secretary of state offered to him. Harrison died soon after his inauguration. At the extra session of congress in the summer of 1841, Clay was the recognized leader of the whig majority. He moved the repeal of the sub-treasury act, and drove it through both houses. He then brought in a bill providing for the incorporation of a new bank of the United States, which also passed, but was vetoed by President Tyler, 16 August, 1841. Another bank bill, framed to meet what were supposed to be the president's objections, was also vetoed. Clay denounced Tyler instantly for what he called his faithlessness to whig principles, and the whig party rallied under Clay's leadership in opposition to the president. At the same session Clay put through his land bill, containing the distribution clause, which, however, could not go into operation because the revenues of the government fell short of the necessary expenditures. At the next session Clay offered an amendment to the constitution limiting the veto power, which during Jackson's and Tyler's administrations had become very obnoxious to him; and also an amendment to the constitution providing that the secretary of the treasury and the treasurer should be appointed by congress; and a third forbidding the appointment of members of congress, while in office, to executive positions. None of them passed. On 31 March, 1842, Clay took leave of the senate and retired to private life, as he said in his farewell speech, never to return to the senate.

During his retirement he visited different parts of the country, and was everywhere received with great enthusiasm, delivering speeches, in some of which he pronounced himself in favor hot of a “high tariff,” but of a revenue tariff with incidental protection repeatedly affirming that the protective system had been originally designed only as a temporary arrangement to be maintained until the infant industries should have gained sufficient strength to sustain competition with foreign manufactures. It was generally looked upon as certain that he would be the Whig candidate for the presidency in 1844. In the mean time the administration had concluded a treaty of annexation with Texas. In an elaborate letter, dated 17 April, 1844, known as the “Raleigh letter,” Clay declared himself against annexation, mainly because it would bring on a war with Mexico, because it met with serious objection in a large part of the Union, and because it would compromise the national character. Van Buren, who expected to be the democratic candidate for the presidency, also wrote a letter unfavorable to annexation. On 1 May, 1844, the whig national convention nominated Clay by acclamation. The democratic national convention nominated not Van Buren, but James K. Polk for the presidency, with George M. Dallas for the vice-presidency, and adopted a resolution recommending the annexation of Texas. A convention of anti-slavery men was held at Buffalo, New York, which put forward as a candidate for the presidency James G. Birney. The senate rejected the annexation treaty, and the Texas question became the main issue in the presidential canvass. As to the tariff and the currency question, the platforms of the democrats and whigs differed very little. Polk, who had the reputation of being a free-trader, wrote a letter apparently favoring a protective ta riff, to propitiate Pennsylvania, where the cry was raised. “Polk, Dallas, and the tariff of 1842.” Clay, yielding to the entreaties of southern whigs, who feared that his declaration against the annexation of Texas might injure his prospects in the south, wrote another letter, in which he said that, far from having any personal objection to the annexation of Texas, he would be “glad to see it without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon fair terms.” This turned against him many anti-slavery men in the north, and greatly strengthened the Birney movement. It is believed that it cost him the vote of the state of New York, and with it the election It was charged, apparently upon strong grounds that extensive election frauds were committed by the Democrats in the city of New York and in the state of Louisiana, the latter becoming famous as the Plaquemines frauds; but had Clay kept the anti-slavery element on his side, as it was at the beginning of the canvass, these frauds could not have decided the election. His defeat cast the whig party into the deepest gloom, and was lamented by his supporters like a personal misfortune.

Texas was annexed by a joint resolution which passed the two houses of congress in the session of 1844-'5, and the Mexican war followed. In 1846, Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, moved, as an amendment to a bill appropriating money for purposes connected with the war, a proviso that in all territories to be acquired from Mexico slavery should be forever prohibited, which, however, failed in the senate. This became known as the “Wilmot proviso.” One of Clay's sons was killed in the battle of Buena Vista. In the autumn of 1847, when the Mexican army was completely defeated, Clay made a speech at Lexington, Kentucky, warning the American people of the dangers that would follow if they gave themselves up to the ambition of conquest, and declaring that there should be a generous peace, requiring no dismemberment of the Mexican republic, but “only a just and proper fixation of the limits of Texas,” and that any desire to acquire any foreign territory whatever for the purpose of propagating slavery should be “positively and emphatically” disclaimed. In February and March, 1848, Clay was honored with great popular receptions in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, and his name was again brought forward for the presidential nomination. But the whig national convention, which met on 7 June, 1848, preferred General Zachary Taylor as a more available man, with Millard Fillmore for the vice-presidency. His defeat in the convention was a bitter disappointment to Clay. He declined to come forward to the support of Taylor, and maintained during the canvass can attitude of neutrality. The principal reason he gave was that Taylor had refused to pledge himself to the support of whig principles and measures, and that Taylor had announced his purpose to remain in the field as a candidate, whoever might be nominated by the whig convention. He declined, on the other hand, to permit his name to be used by the dissatisfied whigs. Taylor was elected, the free-soilers, whose candidate was Martin Van Buren, having assured the defeat of the democratic candidate, General Cass, in the state of New York. In the spring of 1849 a convention was to be elected in Kentucky to revise the state constitution, and Clay published a letter recommending gradual emancipation of the slaves. By a unanimous vote of the legislature assembled in December, 1848, Clay was again elected a U. S. senator, and he took his seat in December, 1849.

By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, New Mexico and California, including Utah, had been acquired by the United States. The discovery of gold had attracted a large immigration to California. Without waiting for an enabling act, the inhabitants of California, in convention, had framed a constitution by which slavery was prohibited, and applied to congress for admission as a state. The question of the admission of California as a free state, and the other question whether slavery should be admitted into or excluded from New Mexico and Utah, created the intensest excitement in congress and among the people. Leading southern men threatened a dissolution of the Union unless slavery were admitted into the territories acquired from Mexico. On 29 January, 1850, Clay, who was at heart in favor of the Wilmot proviso, brought forward in the senate a “comprehensive scheme of compromise,” which included (1) the speedy admission of California as a state; (2) the establishment of territorial governments in New Mexico and Utah without any restriction as to slavery; (3) a settlement of the boundary-line between Texas and New Mexico substantially as it now stands; (4) an indemnity to be paid to Texas for the relinquishment of her claims to a large portion of New Mexico; (5) a declaration that slavery should not be abolished in the District of Columbia; (6) the prohibition of the slave-trade in the district; and (7) a more effective fugitive-slave law. These propositions were, on 18 April, 1850, referred to a special committee, of which Clay was elected chairman. He reported three bills embodying these different subjects, one of which, on account of its comprehensiveness, was called the “omnibus bill.” After a long struggle, the omnibus bill was defeated; but then its different parts were taken up singly, and passed; covering substantially Clay's original propositions. This was the compromise of 1850. In the debate Clay declared in the strongest terms his allegiance to the Union as superior to his allegiance to his state, and denounced secession as treason. The compromise of 1850 added greatly to his renown; but, although it was followed by a short period of quiet, it satisfied neither the south nor the north. To the north the fugitive-slave law was especially distasteful. In January, 1851, forty-four senators and representatives, Clay's name leading, published a manifesto declaring that they would not support for any office any man not known to be opposed to any disturbance of the matters settled by the compromise. In February, 1851, a recaptured fugitive slave having been liberated in Boston, Clay pronounced himself in favor of conferring upon the president extraordinary powers for the enforcement of the fugitive-slave law, his main object being to satisfy the south, and thus to disarm the disunion spirit.

After the adjournment of congress, on 4 March, 1851, his health being much impaired, he went to Cuba for relief, and thence to Ashland. He peremptorily enjoined his friends not to bring forward his name again as that of a candidate for the presidency. To a committee of whigs in New York he addressed a public letter containing an urgent and eloquent plea for the maintenance of the Union. He went to Washington to take his seat in the senate in December, 1851, but, owing to failing health, he appeared there only once during the winter. His last public utterance was a short speech addressed to Louis Kossuth, who visited him in his room, deprecating the entanglement of the United States in the complications of European affairs. He favored the nomination of Fillmore for the presidency by the whig national convention, which met on 16 June, a few days before his death. Clay was unquestionably one of the greatest orators that America ever produced; a man of incorruptible personal integrity; of very great natural ability, but little study; of free and convivial habits; of singularly winning address and manners; not a cautious and safe political leader, but a splendid party chief, idolized by his followers. He was actuated by a lofty national spirit, proud of his country, and ardently devoted to the Union. It was mainly his anxiety to keep the Union intact that inspired his disposition to compromise contested questions. He had in his last hours the satisfaction of seeing his last great work, the compromise of 1850, accepted as a final settlement of the slavery question by the national conventions of both political parties. But only two years after his death it became evident that the compromise had settled nothing. The struggle about slavery broke out anew, and brought forth a civil war, the calamity that Clay had been most anxious to prevent, leading to general emancipation, which Clay would have been glad to see peaceably accomplished. He was buried in the cemetery at Lexington, Kentucky, and a monument consisting of a tall column surmounted by a statue was erected over his tomb. The accompanying illustrations show his birthplace and tomb. See “Life of Henry Clay,” by George D. Prentice (Hartford, Connecticut, 1831); “Speeches,” collected by R. Chambers (Cincinnati, 1842); “Life and Speeches of Henry Clay,” by J. B. Swaim (New York, 1843); “Life of Henry Clay,” by Epes Sargent (1844, edited and completed by Horace Greeley, 1852); “Life and Speeches of Henry Clay,” by D. Mallory (1844; new ed., 1857); “Life and Times of Henry Clay,” by Reverend Calvin Colton (6 vols., containing speeches and correspondence, 1846-'57; revised ed., 1864); and “Henry Clay,” by Carl Schurz (2 vols., Boston, 1887). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I.

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

“If all this be as is now represented, he has acquired fame enough.”
- DANIEL WEBSTER.

IN every country, an active politician must occupy a conspicuous place in the public eye. In every country, and in our own, especially, the more conspicuous he is rendered by his talents, energy, decision of character, or peculiar principles, the more will he become the favorite of some, and the object of reproach to others. Where men and principles must be tried at the bar of public opinion, as in our country, or in Great Britain, and we may now add, in France, it is impossible to prevent this result. Nor, is it desirable that it should be otherwise, saving, the bitterness and coarseness of invective, with which political opponents are too often assailed, in the eager strife of parties. To such an extent does this prevail in our land of free presses, that it is to moderate politicians often a subject of deep mortification and regret. To most of those who have been the prominent men of our country these remarks are applicable, and yet, no sooner are they removed from the stage of action, than their country remembers their services with a just regard. Is it right that public men should struggle through a life of anxious toil and unfaltering patriotism, with only the hope of posthumous justice to their integrity and their talents? Certainly not;—we shall therefore make our selections, alike from the distinguished living and the illustrious dead.

Among the names which belong to, and are interwoven with, the history of the United States, that of HENRY CLAY stands in bold relief. Like many others in our country, he has been the builder of his own fortunes; having risen from poverty and obscurity to professional eminence and political dignity, by the energetic and assiduous exercise of his intellectual powers.

HENRY CLAY was born on the 12th of April, 1777, in Hanover county, Virginia. His father, who was a respectable clergyman, died while HENRY was quite young; in consequence of which, he received no other education, than could be acquired at a common school. He was placed at an early age in the office of Mr. Tinsley, clerk of the high court of chancery, at Richmond, where his talents and amiable deportment won for him, the friendship of some of the most respectable and influential gentlemen in the state. At nineteen, he commenced the study of the law, and was admitted to practice when twenty years of age. He soon after removed to Lexington, Kentucky, and continued his studies there about a year longer; during which time he practised public speaking in a debating society. In his first attempt he was much embarrassed, and saluted the president of the society with the technical phrase, gentlemen of the jury; but gaining confidence as he proceeded, he burst the trammels of his youthful diffidence, and clothing his thoughts in appropriate language, gave utterance to an animated and eloquent address. He soon obtained an extensive and lucrative practice; and the reputation which the superiority of his genius acquired, was maintained by his legal knowledge and practical accuracy.

Mr. CLAY’S political and professional career began nearly at the same time; but as we cannot give the details of his varied and busy life within the limits of this sketch, we shall only mark the most prominent points, particularly, where he has taken a stand in support of his favorite principles and measures.

In 1798, when the people of Kentucky were preparing to frame a constitution for the state, a plan was proposed for the gradual emancipation of slaves. Mr. CLAY zealously exerted his talents in favor of it; he wrote for the journals, and declaimed at the public meetings, but his efforts failed of success.

The next great question of a public character in which he took a part, found him arrayed with the popular party, in vindicating the freedom of the press, and in opposition to the sedition law, which was viewed by one political party, as an attempt to control it. His speeches on the subject are said to have exhibited much of that energy of character and power of eloquence, which have since distinguished him on all great public occasions.

In 1803, he was elected a member of the legislature, and soon took rank among the ablest men of the state. In 1806, General Adair resigned his seat in the senate of the United States, and Mr. CLAY was elected to fill the vacancy for one year. He made his debut, in a speech in favor of the erection of a bridge over the Potomac at Georgetown, which is said to have decided the question in favor of the measure, and is the first of his efforts in support of his favorite principle of internal improvement. On his return to Kentucky, he was reëlected to the state legislature, and at the next session was chosen speaker, by a large majority. He held that station for several years, during which he frequently took a part in the debates. He particularly distinguished himself at the first session after his return from congress, by a powerful speech in defence of the common law. A resolution had been introduced to forbid the reading of any British decision, or elementary work on law, in the Kentucky courts. The prejudices of the people, and of a majority of the assembly, were believed to be in favor of the motion; Mr. CLAY moved an amendment, the effect of which was, to exclude those British decisions only, which are of a subsequent date to the declaration of independence. The prejudices against which he contended, were removed by his masterly exposition of the subject. The common law, which viewed in the darkness of ignorance, appeared mysterious and inexplicable; locked up, as was supposed, in a thousand musty volumes; was shown to be simple and easy of comprehension, by the application of a few plain principles. On this occasion, by one of the most extraordinary efforts of his genius, and a brilliant exhibition of his legal knowledge and oratorical powers, Mr. CLAY succeeded in carrying his amendment, by an almost unanimous vote.

In 1809, Mr. CLAY was again elected to the United States’ senate for two years, in the place of Mr. Thurston. At this time, the country had arrived at one of those periods, when the strength of its institutions was to be tried, by the menaces and impositions of foreign powers. The policy of the United States has ever been, a noninterference in the affairs of Europe; but notwithstanding the neutrality of the government, to such a height had the animosity of the belligerent European powers arrived, that each strove to injure the other, even at the expense of justice, and by a violation of our neutral rights. Several expedients had been resorted to, by which it was hoped an appeal to arms might be averted, our commercial rights respected, and our national honor remain untarnished; but at the same time a just apprehension was felt, that after all, our pacific measures might prove abortive, and that it was necessary to prepare for war. To this end, a bill was brought into the senate, to appropriate a sum of money for the purchase of cordage, sail cloth, and other articles; to which an amendment was offered giving the preference to American productions and manufactures. It was on this occasion Mr. CLAY first publicly appeared as the advocate of domestic manufactures, and of the protective policy which has since been called “the American system.” Mr. CLAY also participated in other important questions before the senate, and amongst them, that respecting the title of the United States to Florida, which he sustained with his usual ability.

His term of service in the senate having expired, he was elected a member of the house of representatives, and in the winter of 1811 took his seat in that body, of which he was chosen speaker, by a vote that left no doubt of the extent of his influence, or of the degree of respect entertained for his abilities. This station he continued to hold until 1814. Previous to the time when the preparations for war, before alluded to, became a subject of interest, Mr. CLAY had been rather a participator in the discussion of affairs, than a leader, or originator of any great measures, such as have since characterized the national policy; but from that period, he is to be held responsible as a principal, for the impulse which he has given to such of them, as will probably be left to the calm judgment of posterity. As early as 1811, we find him in his place advocating the raising of a respectable military force. War he conceived inevitable,—that in fact, England had begun it already; and the only question was, he said, whether it was to be “a war of vigor, or a war of languor and imbecility.” “He was in favor of the display of an energy correspondent to the feelings and spirit of the country.” Shortly afterward, with equal fervor, he recommended the gradual increase of the navy; a course of national policy, which has fortunately retained its popularity, and still remains unchanged.

In 1814, Mr. CLAY was appointed one of the commissioners, who negotiated the treaty of Ghent. When he resigned the speaker’s chair on the eve of his departure to Europe, he addressed the house in a speech, “which touched every heart in the assembly, and unsealed many a fountain of tears”; to which the house responded by passing a resolution, almost unanimously, thanking him for the impartiality, with which he had administered the arduous duties of his office. In the spring, after the termination of the negotiations at Ghent, he went to London with two of his former colleagues, Messrs. Adams and Gallatin; and there entered upon a highly important negotiation, which resulted in the commercial convention, which has been made the basis of most of our subsequent commercial arrangements with foreign powers. On his return to his own country, he was every where greeted with applause, and was again elected to the house of representatives in congress, of which he continued to be a member until 1825, when he accepted the appointment of secretary of state under President Adams.

One of the great results of our foreign policy, after the war, was the recognition of the independence of the Spanish colonies. On this subject, Mr. CLAY entered with all his heart and soul, and mind and strength,—he saw “the glorious spectacle of eighteen millions of people struggling to burst their chains and to be free”; and he called to mind the language of the venerated father of his country: “Born in a land of liberty, my anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes, are irresistibly excited, whensoever, in my country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.” We regret that we cannot enter into the details of his efforts in that cause; it must suffice to notice, that at first they were not successful, yet he was not discouraged, but renewed them the following year, when he carried the measure through the house of representatives. The president immediately thereafter, appointed five ministers plenipotentiary to the principal Spanish American states. While on this subject, we must not permit the occasion to pass without remarking; that much as we admire those British statesmen, who are bending the powers of their noble minds and splendid talents, to the great cause of human liberty and human happiness, we cannot allow them, nor one of them, to appropriate to himself the honor of having “called a new world into existence.” That honor belongs not to George Canning, as a reference to dates will show. If there be glory due to any one mortal man more than to others, for rousing the sympathies of freemen for a people struggling to be free, that glory is due to HENRY CLAY; although he has never had the vanity to say so himself. His exertions won the consent of the American people, to sustain the president in the decisive stand which HE took, when the great European powers contemplated an intervention on behalf of Spain; and it was THAT which decided Great Britain, in the course which she pursued. The Spanish American states have acknowledged their gratitude to Mr. CLAY by public acts; his speeches have been read at the head of their armies; and his name will find as durable a place in the history of the South American republics, as in the records of his native land.

In the domestic policy of the government, there have been two points, to which Mr. CLAY’S attention has been particularly directed, since the late war; both of them, in some degree, resting their claims on the country, from circumstances developed by that war. We are not about to discuss them, but merely to indicate them as his favorite principles, to support which his splendid talents have been directed. These are internal improvements, and the protection of domestic manufactures by means of an adequate tariff. With regard to these measures, the statesmen, and the people of the country, have been much divided,—sometimes, there has been a difference of opinion as to the expediency of them, and sometimes, constitutional objections have been advanced. He has been, however, their steadfast champion, and has been supposed to have connected them, with the settled policy of the country. How far this may prove true, time only can decide.

The right, claimed by South Carolina, to nullify an act of Congress, the warlike preparations made by that state to resist compulsion, and the excitement throughout the country, occasioned by the conflict of interests and opinions, and the hopes and fears of the community, will never be forgotten by the present generation. A civil war and the dissolution of the union, or the destruction of the manufacturing interests, which had grown up to an immense value under the protective system; for a time seemed the only alternatives. During the short session of congress in 1832-3, various propositions were made to remove the threatened evils, by a rëadjustment of the tariff; but the time passed on in high debate, and the country looked on in anxious hope, that some measure would be devised, by which harmony and security might be restored. Two weeks only remained to the end of the session, and nothing had been effected; when Mr. CLAY, “the father of the American system,” himself brought in the olive branch. On the 12th of February, he arose in his place in the senate, and asked leave to introduce a bill, to modify the various acts, imposing duties on imports; he at the same time addressed the senate in explanation of his course, and of the bill proposed. “The basis,” Mr. CLAY said, “on which I wish to found this modification, is one of time; and the several parts of the bill to which I am about to call the attention of the senate, are founded on this basis. I propose to give protection to our manufactured articles, adequate protection, for a length of time, which, compared with the length of human life, is very long, but which is short, in proportion to the legitimate discretion of every wise and parental system of government—securing the stability of legislation, and allowing time for a gradual reduction, on one side; and on the other, proposing to reduce the rate of duties to that revenue standard for which the opponents of the system have so long contended.”

The bill was read, referred to a committee, reported on, and brought to its final passage in the senate within a few days. In the mean time, it had been made the substitute for a bill under discussion, in the house of representatives, and was adopted in that body by a large majority and sent to the senate, where it had its final reading on the 26th, and when approved by the president became a law.

We should not, in this place, have alluded to the course pursued by one of the states, to effect a modification of the tariff, had it not been so inseparably connected with, what we doubt not, will be hereafter considered one of the most important acts of Mr. CLAY’S public life. “He expressly declared that he thought the protective system in extreme danger; and that it would be far better for the manufacturers, for whose interests he felt the greatest solicitude, to secure themselves by the bill, than take the chances of the next session of congress, when, from the constitution of both houses, it was probable a worse one would be passed.” On the other hand, he urged the proposition “as a measure of mutual concession,—of peace, of harmony. He wanted to see no civil war; no sacked cities; no embattled armies; no streams of American blood shed by American arms.” We trust, that the crisis is passed, and that we shall continue for ever a united, prosperous, and happy people.

The tariff has had its effect so far, that a new era has commenced, and it is very probable, that the revenue of the country will finally be settled down to a standard, only sufficient, to meet the expenses of the government. In connection with this subject, we wish to preserve the following extract from the speech of Mr. Verplanck, in January, 1833, in support of a bill to reduce the tariff, reported by him to congress:

“The last war left the nation laboring under a weight of public debt. The payment of that war debt was one of the great objects of the arrangement of our revenue system at the peace, and it was never lost sight of in any subsequent arrangement of our tariff system. Since 1815, we have annually derived a revenue from several sources, but by far the largest part from duties on imports, of sometimes twenty, sometimes twenty-five, and recently thirty-two and thirty three millions of dollars a year.

“Of this sum, ten millions always, but of late a much larger proportion, has been devoted to the payment of the interest and principal of the public debt. At last that debt has been extinguished. The manner in which those burthens were distributed under former laws, has been, heretofore, a subject of complaint and remonstrance. I do not propose to inquire into the wisdom or justice of those laws. The debt has been extinguished by them—let us be grateful for the past.”
Many other interesting incidents are presented in the public life of Mr. CLAY, to which we shall only advert; such, as the part he took in the Missouri question; in the election of Mr. Adams; on the subject of sending a commissioner to Greece; on the colonization of the negroes; and more recently, his labors in favor of rechartering the United States Bank, and for the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands for the purposes of internal improvement, education, &c.

Mr. CLAY received from Mr. Madison the successive offers of a mission to Russia, and a place in the cabinet; and from Mr. Monroe a situation in his cabinet, and the mission to England; all of which he declined.

On the great Cumberland road, there has been erected a large and beautiful monument, surmounted by a figure of Liberty, and inscribed “HENRY CLAY.” These are evidences of the estimation in which Mr. CLAY has been held by his contemporaries; others might be adduced, but they would be superfluous.

Twice he has been nominated for the presidency, but without success. We trust that he is too firm in his republican principles to murmur, and that his friends will in some measure be consoled, by reflections similar to that, which we have adopted as a motto to this article.

Source: National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 1839, Volume 1.


CLAYTON, George R., Milledgeville, Georgia, State Treasurer of Georgia, member of the Milledgeville auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 71)



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.