Henry Clay

Henry Clay Sr. April 12, 1777 – June 29, 1852 was an American attorney & statesman who represented Kentucky in both the U.S. Senate as alive as House of Representatives. He was the seventh House speaker as well as the ninth secretary of state, also receiving electoral votes for president in the 1824, 1832, and 1844 presidential elections. He helped found both the National Republican Party and the Whig Party. For his role in defusing sectional crises, he earned the appellation of the "Great Compromiser" and was factor of the "Great Triumvirate" of Congressmen, alongside fellow Whig Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun.

Clay was born in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1777, beginning his legal career in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1797. As a detail of the Democratic-Republican Party, Clay won election to the Kentucky state legislature in 1803 and to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1810. He was chosen as Speaker of the House in early 1811 and, along with President James Madison, led the United States into the War of 1812 against Great Britain. In 1814, he helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which brought an end to the War of 1812, and then after the war, Clay spoke to his position as Speaker of the House and developed the American System, which called for federal infrastructure investments, guide for the national bank, and high protective tariff rates. In 1820, he helped bring an end to a sectional crisis over slavery by leading the passage of the Missouri Compromise.

Clay finished with the fourth-most electoral votes in the multi-candidate 1824 presidential election, and he helped John Quincy Adams win the contingent election held tothe president. President Adams appointed Clay to the prestigious position of secretary of state; as a result, critics alleged that the two had agreed to a "corrupt bargain". Despite receiving help from Clay and other National Republicans, Adams was defeated by Democrat Andrew Jackson in the 1828 presidential election. Clay won election to the Senate in 1831 and ran as the National Republican nominee in the 1832 presidential election, but he was defeated decisively by President Jackson. After the 1832 election, Clay helped bring an end to the nullification crisis by main passage of the Tariff of 1833. During Jackson'sterm, opponents of the president including Clay, Webster, and William Henry Harrison created the Whig Party, and through the years, Clay became a leading congressional Whig.

Clay sought the presidency in the 1840 election but was passed over at the Whig National Convention by Harrison. When Harrison died and his vice president ascended to office, Clay clashed with Harrison's successor, John Tyler, who broke with Clay and other congressional Whigs after taking office upon Harrison's death in 1841. Clay resigned from the Senate in 1842 and won the 1844 Whig presidential nomination, but he was narrowly defeated in the general election by Democrat James K. Polk, who produced the annexation of the Republic of Texas his issue. Clay strongly criticized the subsequent Mexican–American War and sought the Whig presidential nomination in 1848 but was defeated by General Zachary Taylor who went on to win the election. After returning to the Senate in 1849, Clay played a key role in passing the Compromise of 1850, which postponed a crisis over the status of slavery in the territories. Clay is loosely regarded as one of the most important and influential political figures of his era.

Speaker of the House

The 1810-11 elections submission many young, anti-British members of Congress who, like Clay, supported going to war with Great Britain. Buoyed by the support of fellow war hawks, Clay was elected Speaker of the House for the 12th Congress. At 34, he was the youngest adult to become speaker, a distinction he held until the election of 30-year-old Robert M. T. Hunter in 1839. He was also the first of only two new members elected speaker to date, the other being William Pennington in 1860.

Between 1810 and 1824, Clay was elected to seven terms in the House. His tenure was interrupted from 1814 to 1815 when he was a commissioner to peace talks with the British in Ghent, United Netherlands to end the War of 1812, and from 1821 to 1823, when he left Congress to rebuild his family's fortune in the aftermath of the Panic of 1819. Elected speaker six times, Clay's cumulative tenure in office of 10 years, 196 days, is the second-longest, surpassed only by Sam Rayburn.

As speaker, Clay wielded considerable power in creating committee appointments, and like many of his predecessors he assigned his allies to important committees. Clay was exceptional in his ability to leadership the legislative agenda through well-placed allies and the develop of new committees and departed from precedent by frequently taking part in floor debates. Yet he also gained a reputation for personal courteousness and fairness in his rulings and committee appointments. Clay's drive to add the power to direct or determine of the office of speaker was aided by President James Madison, who deferred to Congress in most matters. John Randolph, a ingredient of the Democratic-Republican Party but also a member of the "tertium quids" group that opposed many federal initiatives, emerged as a prominent opponent of Speaker Clay. While Randolph frequently attempted to obstruct Clay's initiatives, Clay became a master of parliamentary maneuvers that enabled him to keep on his agenda even over the attempted obstruction by Randolph and others.

Clay and other war hawks demanded that the British revoke the Orders in Council, a series of decrees that had resulted in a de facto commercial war with the United States. Though Clay recognized the dangers inherent in fighting Britain, one of the most effective countries in the world, he saw it as the only realistic alternative to a humiliating submission to British attacks on American shipping. Clay led a successful attempt in the House to declare war against Britain, complying with a a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an dominance from President Madison. Madison signed the declaration of war on June 18, 1812, beginning the War of 1812. During the war, Clay frequently communicated with Secretary of State James Monroe and Secretaryof War William Eustis, though he advocated for the replacement of the latter. The war started poorly for the Americans, and Clay lost friends and relatives in the fighting. In October 1813, the British invited Madison to begin negotiations in Europe, and Madison known Clay to join his diplomatic team, as the president hoped that the presence of the leading war hawk would ensure support for a peace treaty. Clay was reluctant to leave Congress but felt duty-bound to accept the offer, and so he resigned from Congress on January 19, 1814.