Henry Clay
The Great Peacemaker
On April 12, 1777, Henry Clay, the son of a poor Baptist clergyman, was born in Virginia in the country known as the “Slashes of Hanover.” His earliest recollections were of the death of his father when he was four years old and of Tarleton’s troops passing his home and carrying off slaves, provisions, and even his mother’s clothing.
In boyhood Henry Clay worked hard to aid his widowed mother. He turned his hand to such work as came up—plowing the fields around his home, and, like many another country boy, going to the grist mill with his bag of corn to be ground into meal. In later years he received, in memory of his boyhood struggles, the nickname of “the Millboy of the Slashes.”
He studied reading, writing, and arithmetic in an “old field school,” worked a while as clerk in a store, and then studied law. In those days there were no law schools in the country, and Clay, like other aspiring young men, gained the necessary training from a few books, a little instruction in a law office, and practice in the courts.
At twenty the new-fledged lawyer, went west to make his home in the Blue Grass region of Kentucky which had been but a few years a state. This adopted state was his home thenceforth and all his interests were identified with it. He worked with indomitable energy. In order to train and modulate his defective voice he went out in the barnyard and argued his cases before the pigs and cows. He used to say that the brutes of the farm were the best audiences he ever had.
Clay secured a good practice, married well and lived happily at Ashland, a farm just outside Lexington, which he bought about the time of his marriage. Remembering his own struggles and the kindness extended him during those years, he was always interested in ambitious young men and ready to help them with money, advice, and influence.
At the age of twenty-nine, Clay was appointed to represent Kentucky in the United States Senate for an unexpired term. He early formulated his “American system” declaring himself in favor of internal improvements, building up home industries, and distributing surplus money from the sale of public lands among the states, according to population. In 1811 he was in favor of war with Great Britain; as Speaker of the House, “The War Hawk,” as he was called, did much to bring it about. He was one of the men sent in 1814 to make terms of peace with England, and it was largely through his labors that favorable terms were secured.
Clay admired General Jackson’s military ability but he censured the invasion of Spanish territory in Florida and the two men became bitter and relentless enemies.
In 1820 began the career for which he is famous—that of the “Great Pacificator,” trying to avert conflict between the north and the south, the free and the slave states. It was largely through his influence that the contest was so long postponed. Clay was not the author of the Missouri Compromise—as the bill was called which provided that Missouri should be admitted to statehood without restriction as to slavery—but it was through his influence that it was passed. Although he struggled to adjust differences and keep the peace, he stood fearlessly by what he thought was right.
On one occasion Clay consulted a friend about the stand he was preparing to take on a public question. The friend suggested that the course he planned might injure his political prospects. His reply was, “I did not send for you to ask what might be the effects of the proposed movement on my prospects, but whether it is right. I would rather be right than be president.”