Henry Clay

David S. Heidler, Jeanne T. Heidler:  Henry Clay: The Essential American
Henry Clay b. 1777; d. 1852

Henry Clay never became president, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.  The great leader of the Whig party, Clay saw the lesser William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor as Whig candidates in 1840 and 1848.  Harrison defeated an embattled incumbent (Martin Van Buren) during a deep recession and Taylor (after Polk stepped down) defeated Democrat Lewis Cass in large part because Van Buren ran on a free soil platform and siphoned votes away from Cass in New York.  Clay lost to John Quincy Adams in 1824, was crushed by Andrew Jackson in 1832, and got edged by Polk in 1844.

Clay, in a photograph--not many of those yet

I read Clay’s biography for a couple of reasons.  First, Clay was a very interesting individual.  He was probably the most important non-president of the pre-Civil War U.S. except for perhaps Alexander Hamilton.  Part of reading about the presidents is reading about great historical figures—Clay is still great even though he never quite made it all the way to the White House.  Second, Clay was a national figure for a long, long time.  Clay entered the U.S. senate in 1806, during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, and became good friends with Dolly Madison.  He was active in the Senate 44 years later, where he negotiated the Compromise of 1850, which helped (temporarily) avoid a civil war.  So wanted to read Clay just before I got into Lincoln, whose presidency really ended on epoch and began another.

Clay’s life had a real richness to it.  He was involved in many important events in many different decades.  The Heidlers’ book does a great job explaining these events in a very readable fashion.  It’s not the best biography that I’ve read—it can drag at times—but I’m glad that I read it.

Slavery:  This is an issue that whizzed right by Henry Clay.  He owned slaves, but was schooled in the era of Jefferson and Monroe—people who owned slaves but recognized that slavery was a regrettable and flawed institution.  The later part of his career he saw dominated by Southern fire-eaters, who actually came to defend the peculiar institution as a positive good.   

A Great Lawyer:  I’m a lawyer.  I find it inspiring that so many of our presidents were also lawyers, and really great ones at that.  Buchannan and Van Buren were both popular, jocular men who excelled in the courtrooms of New York and Pennsylvania.  As was Lincoln in Illinois.  Clay was also an excellent lawyer—hell, he successfully represented Aaron Burr in his state criminal trial in Kentucky (after which Clay had to go back to the Senate, and deal with the issue again).  But Clay was also a tremendously hard-working corporate lawyer.  He represented a number of railroads in property disputes with farmers and banks (including Henry Biddle’s Bank of the United States) against debtors.  None of this was popular work—he was representing corporate interests against regular people—but it was complex and detail oriented, and it paid the bills.  This is an inspiring fact about Mr. Clay.

The American System:  We today take it for granted that the federal government will support roads, bridges, harbors, and other infrastructure improvements.  But in Clay’s day, this was a controversial issue.  But Clay stood his ground boldly and fought for this program because he thought it would tie the nation together and improve the lives of millions of Americans.  This was a continuation of the great work done by Alexander Hamilton.  What makes me scratch my head is that so many people opposed this, especially people who stood to gain so much from this program.  (I wish we could get people to support a massive infrastructure improvement program today.  But what can you do.)

Personal Tragedy:  As with many of the men in this series, Clay had a number of personal tragedies befall him.  He lost sons and daughters to illness and one to the Mexican-American War, and as a result he and his wife ended up raising various grand children (he’s similar to Q in this regard).  And his long battle with TB at the end of his life was a long and rather unpleasant way to go.  Life was even more fragile then than it is today.