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

Bibliography. There are many biographies of Clay, and numerous collections of his speeches. Carl Schurz's Henry Clay (Boston, 1887, two vols.), is the best account of the statesman; Henry Clay, by Thomas H. Clay (Philadelphia, 1910), is adequate for Clay the man; and Daniel Mallory's Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay (New York, 1844), is the finest collection of his speeches made hitherto.

REPLY TO JOHN RANDOLPH[4]

[From The Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, edited by Daniel Mallory (New York, 1844, v. i., 4th edition)]

Sir, I am growing old. I have had some little measure of experience in public life, and the result of that experience has brought me to this conclusion, that when business, of whatever nature, is to be transacted in a deliberative assembly, or in private life, courtesy, forebearance, and moderation, are best calculated to bring it to a successful conclusion. Sir, my age admonishes me to abstain from involving myself in personal difficulties; would to God that I could say, I am also restrained by higher motives. I certainly never sought any collision with the gentleman from Virginia. My situation at this time is peculiar, if it be nothing else, and might, I should think, dissuade, at least, a generous heart from any wish to draw me into circumstances of personal altercation. I have experienced this magnanimity from some quarters of the house. But I regret, that from others it appears to have no such consideration. The gentleman from Virginia was pleased to say, that in one point at least he coincided with me—in an humble estimate of my grammatical and philological acquirements, I know my deficiencies. I was born to no proud patrimonial estate; from my father I inherited only infancy, ignorance, and indigence. I feel my defects; but, so far as my situation in early life is concerned, I may, without presumption, say they are more my misfortune than my fault. But, however I regret my want of ability to furnish to the gentleman a better specimen of powers of verbal criticism, I will venture to say, it is not greater than the disappointment of this committee as to the strength of his argument.

ADDRESS TO LA FAYETTE

[From the same]

General,

The house of representatives of the United States, impelled alike by its own feelings, and by those of the whole American people, could not have assigned to me a more gratifying duty than that of presenting to you cordial congratulations upon the occasion of your recent arrival in the United States, in compliance with the wishes of Congress, and to assure you of the very high satisfaction which your presence affords on this early theatre of your glory and renown. Although but few of the members who compose this body shared with you in the war of our revolution, all have, from impartial history, or from faithful tradition, a knowledge of the perils, the sufferings, and the sacrifices, which you voluntarily encountered, and the signal services, in America and in Europe, which you performed for an infant, a distant, and an alien people; and all feel and own the very great extent of the obligations under which you have placed our country. But the relations in which you have ever stood to the United States, interesting and important as they have been, do not constitute the only motive of the respect and admiration which the house of representatives entertain for you. Your consistency of character, your uniform devotion to regulated liberty, in all the vicissitudes of a long and arduous life, also commands its admiration. During all the recent convulsions of Europe, amidst, as after the dispersion of, every political storm, the people of the United States have beheld you, true to your old principles, firm and erect, cheering and animating with your well-known voice, the votaries of liberty, its faithful and fearless champion, ready to shed the last drop of that blood which here you so freely and nobly spilt, in the same holy cause.

The vain wish has been sometimes indulged, that Providence would allow the patriot, after death, to return to his country, and to contemplate the intermediate changes which had taken place; to view the forest felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals cut, the highways constructed, the progress of the arts, advancement of learning, and the increase of population. General, your present visit to the United States is a realization of the consoling object of that wish. You are in the midst of posterity. Every where, you must have been struck with the great changes, physical and moral, which have occurred since you left us. Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, alike endeared to you and to us, has since emerged from the forest which then covered its site. In one respect you behold us unaltered, and this is in the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, and of ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend, the father of his country, and to you, and to your illustrious associates in the field and in the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which surround us, and for the very privilege of addressing you which I now exercise. This sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten millions of people, will be transmitted, with unabated vigor, down the tide of time, through the countless millions who are destined to inhabit this continent, to the latest posterity.[5]