Henry Clay  "The Great Pacificator"  April 12, 1777 - June 29, 1852

Henry Clay, with John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, made up the triumvirate of great statesmen who dominated American politics for over 30 years. Born to moderately well-to-do parents in Virginia bar 21 years later and moved to Kentucky, where he prospered as an attorney and politician.

Clay has been described as a witty, charming, and sociable man who demonstrated a towering intellect, along with great vitality and self confidence. He was also an extremely eloquent orator possessed of tremendous ambition. By 1812 Clay had been elected to seven terms in the Kentucky state legislature, had completed two unexpired terms in the U.S. Senate, and was the owner of a prosperous 600-acre estate known as "Ashland", where he lived with his wife, Lucretia Hart, and their 11 children. Clay had also by that time been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Politically, Clay was a Jeffersonian Democrat. An advocate of a protective tariff to aid the nation's young industries, he also supported making internal improvements at national expense and establishing a national bank. He was a border-state politician who owned slaves but favored gradual emancipation and stipulated in his will that his slaves be freed. As Speaker of the House, Clay pushed the United States into the War of 1812, and he served as a member of the commission that negotiated with Britain the Treaty of Ghent for ending the war. Head of the opposition to President Andrew Jackson throughout Old Hickory's political career, Clay was against Jackson's war with Florida's Seminole Indians, fought Jackson's destruction of the national bank, and pushed through Congress the compromise tariff of 1833 that ended Jackson's Nullification Crisis with the state of South Carolina.

Clay earned the nickname "Great Pacificator" for promoting the Missouri Compromise, the 1820 legislation that successfully eased the nation's tensions over the volatile issue of extending slavery for 30 more years.

Fascinating Fact:  Both Clay and Webster were prominent Whigs who were opposed to the war with Mexico, and both had sons who died while serving with American forces in Mexico.


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