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i
Henry Clay
•
ii
iii
Henry Clay
•
THE MAN WHO WOULD
BE PRESIDENT
James C. Klotter
1
iv
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Klotter, James C., author.
Title: Henry Clay : the man who would be president / James C. Klotter.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017053284 (print) | LCCN 2017053862 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190498054 (updf) |
ISBN 9780190498061 (epub) | ISBN 9780190498047 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Clay, Henry, 1777–1852. | United States—Politics and government—1815–1861.
Classification: LCC E340.C6 (ebook) | LCC E340.C6 K57 2018 (print) | DDC 973.6092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053284
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
C on t e n ts
•
Acknowledgments vii
Prologue xi
Preface xiii
1. Preparation 1
2. Politics 19
3. Personality 49
4. Programs 74
5. Presidential Candidate I 95
v
vi
vi Contents
Notes 391
Index 499
vii
Ack now l e d g m e n ts
Books are the products of many hands, though only one person’s
name may appear on the title page, for without the work of others, the
finished work would be a poor product, indeed. Most acknowledgments
start with an obligatory nod to repositories of information, which is as it
should be, for it is in those places where the real work begins. This book
is no exception, so my thanks go to many people, some of them no longer
at these institutions—Terry Birdwhistell, William J. Marshall, and others
at the University of Kentucky library system; Mark Wetherington, James
Holmberg, and Rebecca Rice at the Filson Historical Society; Sara Elliott,
Darrell Meadows, and Louise Jones of the Kentucky Historical Society;
B. J. Gooch of the Transylvania University Library; Greg Decker and
Susan Martin of the Georgetown College Library; and various others
at the Kentucky Library at Western Kentucky University, the Kentucky
Department for Libraries and Archives, and the University of Louisville
Library. Outside the commonwealth, much aid particularly came from
staffs at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the US Senate
Historical Office, the Virginia Historical Society, the University of Chicago,
the Newberry Library, the Southern Historical Collection of the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Tennessee State Library and
vii
vi
viii Acknowledgments
Archives. (And I would be amiss if I did not thank Henry Clay for having
such good penmanship; that made reading his manuscripts much easier
than examining those of the typical leaders of his age.)
Individuals who supported this work in many different ways include
those who either owned Clay letters and images or pointed the way to
Clay-related items: Betty Jones of Richmond, Kentucky; Caroline Miller
of Bracken County, Kentucky; Chris and Nan Mosher of Washington,
DC; Harold Tallant of Georgetown College; Glen Taul of Georgetown,
Kentucky; Kim Gelke of Illinois; and Cassandra Trimble of Washington
State. Other aid was provided by Eric Blair, Braden Blankenship, Celisa
Bowen, Jessica Brown, Ann Cothran, Dana Edgerton, Ian Ellis, Greg
Haynes, Ron Klotter, Sarah and Rebekah McIntosh, Travis Mazurek, John
Sosbe, and Catherine Taylor. A special thanks to Ollie Puckett. My appre-
ciation also goes to Eric Brooks and Avery Malone of the Ashland Estate
and Amy Elizabeth Burton of the Senate Curator’s Office. And it goes
without saying—but I will say it anyway—that the editorial and produc-
tion team from Oxford University Press deserves much praise, including
Elda Granata, Julia Turner, and Elizabeth Vaziri. Many thanks especially
go to Nancy Toff, for her guidance throughout the project.
Research support was provided through a Goode Grant and a Summer
Research Grant from Georgetown College, a Mellon Fellowship from the
Virginia Historical Society, a Breaux Fellowship for the Filson Historical
Society, and a research grant from the Kentucky Historical Society. Part
of the results of that work already appeared in print in 2012, in an ar-
ticle in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society and as a chapter in
Kentucky Renaissance. My thanks go to the Kentucky Historical Society and
the University Press of Kentucky and for permission to use parts of those
works herein.
But in so many ways, an author’s greatest thanks should go to those
who take time off from their own projects and work, and critique a man-
uscript. I have been extremely fortunate in having excellent historians and
editors who have commented in depth about this book. It is much better
because of the suggestions made by two anonymous readers of Oxford
University Press; retired Georgetown College professor Lindsey Apple,
himself author of a book on the Clay family; Thomas H. Appleton Jr.
of Eastern Kentucky University, editor extraordinaire; and John David
Smith of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, a special historian.
And to my long-a go dissertation director, the late Holman Hamilton,
ix
Acknowledgments ix
I beg forgiveness for offering a harsher view than did he of his favorite
subject, Zachary Taylor.
And finally, I have dedicated previous books to my spouse, our children,
and our grandchildren, but in truth they are an important part of all my
work. For they help me better understand the human condition and make
it all worth living.
x
xi
Prol o gu e
The presidential campaign of 1844 had ended. Now Henry Clay awaited
the results. Twice before he had received electoral votes for president; twice
he had been defeated. Another time he had sought his Whig Party’s nomi-
nation and had failed to receive it, only to see the nominee win the office of
chief executive. Now, however, his friends agreed that this race represented
his best opportunity to lead the nation.
Because states held their elections on different days, news of the results
trickled in over a period of almost two weeks. But as more returns became
known, it seemed clear that if New York voted for Clay, he would become
president. If it did not, he would taste bitter defeat once more.
In that atmosphere, Clay and his wife attended a wedding as they waited
for the fateful news. Any day a dispatch might bring jubilation or dejection.
In Illinois, Lexington native Mary Todd Lincoln received a letter written by
her stepmother, telling what had transpired:
As the hour approached for the arrival of the mail, I saw several
gentlemen quietly leave the room, and knowing their errand, I eagerly
watched for their return. As soon as they came in the room I knew
by the expression of each countenance that New York had gone
Democratic. The bearers of the news consulted together a moment,
xi
xii
xii Prologue
then one of them advanced to Mr. Clay who was standing in the
center of a group, of which your father [Robert Todd] was one, and
handed him a paper. Although I was sure of the news it contained,
I watched Mr. Clay’s face for confirmation of the evil tidings. He
opened the paper and as he read the death knell of his political hopes
and life-long ambition, I saw a distinct blue shade begin at the roots
of his hair, pass slowly over his face like a cloud and then disappear.
He stood for a moment as if frozen. He laid down the paper, and,
turning to a table, filled a glass with wine, and raising it to his lips
with a pleasant smile, said: “I drink to the health and happiness of all
assembled here.” Setting down his glass, he resumed his conversation
as if nothing had occurred and was, as usual, the life and light of the
company.1
Three years later, a New York newspaper termed Clay “The Great
Rejected.”2
xii
Pr e fac e
On the Fourth of July 1861, in the early stages of the Civil War, a crowd
gathered in Kentucky not to advocate for one side or the other but, rather,
to dedicate a monument to honor their state’s most famous political leader,
a man who had tried to avoid the war now raging around them. Henry Clay
had died almost a decade earlier, but only now the tall memorial to honor
him had been completed. At the top, 130 feet from the ground, stood an
imposing statue of the man many called the Great Compromiser. It faced
Clay’s home of Ashland and it majestically surveyed the scene around it.
Even then, it would be another three years before the body of Henry Clay
would be secured in its final resting place, in a sarcophagus at the base of
the edifice.
For years, the monument stood as a quiet testament to the man who
had helped guide the nation in the crucial years of its history. But some
forty years later, a storm over Lexington unleashed thunder, high winds,
and lightning bolts. The howling tempest hurled the head of the statue to
the ground below, where the stately stone broke into several fragments. For
seven more years, the Clay sculpture remained headless. Then, in 1910, the
old statue was taken down, to be replaced by a newer representation of the
man buried below. But in its damaged state, the older figure shattered upon
its removal. Workmen buried the pieces in a corner of the mausoleum.
xiii
xvi
xiv Preface
Soon a new symbol of Clay looked down on the world of the twentieth cen-
tury and the old one seemed forgotten.1
Like the statue in Lexington Cemetery, Clay’s reputation rose and
fell during the years after his death, sometimes looming large and im-
posing, sometimes appearing broken, the man largely forgotten. Initially,
the pendulum of history seemed to swing Clay’s way.2 But during Clay’s
lifetime, his two bitter rivals were Democrats Andrew Jackson and John
C. Calhoun, and in the struggle for historical attention, they began to win
out once more. Decades later, with the hard days of the Great Depression,
with the business and bank failures, and with the party of Andrew Jackson
ever more popular, the hero of the common man began to appeal more to
Americans. Even though Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal owed much
of its philosophical basis to Clay’s belief in the role of the central gov-
ernment in economic planning, Jackson’s words and image resonated
louder. Jackson Day dinners and new books about the general left Clay
either the villain or a bit actor in the pageant. Jackson ruled. Later yet, in
the Cold War era, readers likewise seemed more attracted, for a time, to
Calhoun’s absolutism and abstract reasoning than to Clay’s pragmatism
and compromises3
But scholars abhor historical vacuums. During the last three decades,
that pendulum began to swing back and writers started, once more, to give
Henry Clay greater prominence in the history of his era. As it became clear
that both current American parties owed part of their ancestry to Clay’s
Whig Party, books have focused increasingly on those past partisans. At the
same time, changes in American society dimmed the appeal of Jackson and
Calhoun. The South Carolinian’s obstructionist stands and his unyielding
defense of slavery seemed less noble in the era of civil rights resistance in
the South. And scholars began to present the war hero in a much less he-
roic way, given Jackson’s racist views, his treatment of Native Americans,
his laissez-faire philosophy, and his arbitrary actions. By contrast, Clay now
appeared more modern, more progressive, and more valued.4
By the twenty-first century, discordant party rhetoric also may have
caused Clay to grow more appealing and more vital as a subject of study.
His ability to rise, on occasion, above state or section or party, his capacity
to produce workable compromises, and just his sheer talent caused people
to focus attention on him. The views of Henry Clay range from that of one
writer who called him “an LBJ-like figure” to that of a critic who looked at
his policies and labeled him, of all things, “a National Socialist.” More com-
monly, a greater number of Americans have agreed with the journalist who
xv
At over 130 feet tall, the Clay Monument in Lexington Cemetery was dedicated in
1861. More than four decades later, a storm knocked the head off the statue of Clay,
and the decapitated body remained in place for seven more years. In 1910, the re-
placement statue was erected but was also damaged in a storm. Like his memorial,
Clay’s reputation suffered over the years. Clay Lancaster Slide Collection, University
of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center, 2008ms020
xvi
xvi Preface
perused contemporary politics and stressed “our need for another Henry
Clay.” So, is there anything more to be said about Henry Clay?5
When this project was begun, the question motivating it was a simple
one: Why did Clay not win the presidency? A corollary query involved an-
other issue: Why did Clay’s contemporaries continue to support him for
the nation’s highest political office despite his many defeats? In short, this
project started as a study of Clay and the presidency. And so this is not
a biography, per se, of Henry Clay. Instead, it focuses on the aspects of
his life and his career that had an impact on his presidential searches and
races. But very quickly into the study, it became clear that it must contain
extensive biographical elements, for a person’s life may well shape the for-
mation of him as candidate. Beyond that, no political entity exists only in
the maelstrom of a campaign. Clay’s career, his compromises, his policies,
his lifestyle—a ll became subjects of intense scrutiny and debate. That made
this work not only a political story but also a social, intellectual, economic,
and family one.
As with current political candidates, everything Clay did had the po-
tential to become part of a race. A possible presidential candidate for at
least a quarter century, he stood always “in the gaze of millions.” Usually
half of those voters praised him while the other half damned him. Yet
every casual word, each private conversation, any thoughtless action
could be used against him. Whenever he left the relatively safe confines
of his estate, supporters flocked to him and enemies scorned him. As one
journal noted, Clay could not move in public “without having to ha-
rangue a deputation of political friends, and stand to be kissed by ladies
and pump handled by men, and hide the enormous bane of it beneath
a fixed smile.” Even in his home, he could not separate himself from
public life: enormous amounts of mail demanded answers, as he posed
for artists, talked to journalists, revealed himself to biographers, and
regaled with stories the numerous domestic tourists and foreign travelers
who appeared at his door. He might enjoy some quiet moments with his
family, but even then sorrows tormented him. Should he devote more
time to his wife, children, and grandchildren, or should he pay more
attention to the model farm that helped him meet his constant financial
obligations, or should he continue to serve in Congress and do more to
advance his presidential ambitions? Clay’s private life was seldom private
and usually could not be separated from his public person. This story,
then, is about the making of a person and a politician, as well as the
unmaking of a presidential candidate.6
xvi
Preface xvii
xviii Preface
Preface xix
Henry Clay
•
xxi
1
1
•
Preparation
In March 1840, Henry Clay returned to the place of his birth. Born on
April 12, 1777, in an area of eastern Virginia known as the Slashes, he had
not seen that home for almost a half century. In that time, politically ori-
ented biographers had crafted their accounts of his early years, and others
would continue to add to the story. They told of the early demise of Clay’s
poor and pious clergyman father, whose passing left the family in abject
poverty, and the widow with little more than seven children. That tragic
death had made son Henry “a poor and friendless orphan boy” at the
age of four, and he had received limited education as a result. Instead, he
would work the fields, and the shoeless, sunburnt boy would mount an old
horse and take corn to a distant mill to help provide for the family. In the
biographers’ portrayal, this “Millboy of the Slashes,” born in poverty and
obscurity, had raised himself by force of his brilliance and had risen to be-
come “the self-made man of America.”1
Clay reinforced those elements of his life story with his own words.
When a caustic critic condemned him in 1824 for his lack of learning, Clay
responded that he knew his weaknesses: “I was born to no proud patrimo-
nial estate; from my father I inherited only infancy, ignorance, and indi-
gence. I feel my defects.” Later, when supporting aid for public education,
he dramatized again his humble origins, stressing that he had been left an
orphan, “too young to have been conscious of a father’s smiles and caresses,
with a widowed mother, surrounded by numerous offspring, in the midst of
pecuniary embarrassments, without a regular education, without fortune,
1
2
2 Henry Clay
without friends, without patrons.” Given all that, he would reasonably con-
clude: “I have reason to be satisfied with my public career.”2
And well he might, for by 1840, he had been a state representative,
US representative, US senator, diplomat, secretary of state, the “Great
Compromiser,” and twice presidential candidate. But many of his most im-
portant years lay ahead.
In 1840, Henry Clay returned to the memories of a past that he had left
behind so many years earlier. Here, in “the spirit of a pilgrim,” he came to
see people and places from his past. Here, his heart returned to cherished
spots. Here, he came home. Marveling at what he saw, he wrote his wife,
“Every thing was changed.” No stone marker but, rather, a field of wheat
covered his father’s and grandparents’ graves, long leveled by the plow.
A fondly remembered hickory tree now stood in decay. His old homestead
between Black Tom Slash and Hanover Courthouse had been greatly mod-
ified, and he barely recognized the room of his birth. The old St. Paul’s
Church where he had attended school for two years seemed on the verge of
collapse. The whole experience strengthened Clay’s sense of his own mor-
tality and of his place in history.3
Yet his remembered origins and his political present did not always
completely coincide. The invented life and the historical one could di-
verge considerably. But sometimes they did not. As Clay noted, he had
been orphaned at the age of four, and he never really knew his father
or grandfather. John Clay had been a little over forty years old when
he died, leaving Elizabeth Hudson Clay a widow in her thirties. At al-
most the same time, the family experienced further trauma. As Henry
Clay noted later, he was “rocked in the cradle of the revolution.” That be-
came reality when Sir Barreste Tarleton’s British troops came to the Clay
household, seized food, destroyed furniture, confiscated slaves, and then
plunged their swords into the fresh graves of Clay’s father and grandfather,
thinking the family had buried valuables there. That image of desecration
would later affect Clay’s political actions, and he clearly remembered the
event six decades later. Death and violence were a recurring part of Clay’s
childhood.4
But other parts of the Clay story as told by early biographers, as well as
Clay himself, did not reflect reality. That struggle between fact and fiction
would infiltrate Clay’s entire public life. In contrast to the image of Rev.
John Clay as a poverty-stricken minister of the Old Dominion, in truth
Henry’s father came from a distinguished family that had been in Virginia
almost from the first English settlement. “Sir John,” as he was called by
3
Preparation 3
4 Henry Clay
Preparation 5
His stepfather’s aid got Clay started down a career path. But Henry’s
real opportunity came when the legendary George Wythe, Sole Chancellor
of the High Court of Chancery and the state’s foremost legal mind, met
the young clerk. Clay’s abilities impressed the aged man who had taught
Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Monroe, and others. A signer
of the Declaration of Independence, the unimpressive- looking Wythe
had helped craft the US Constitution as well. Now he asked Clay to be
in essence his private secretary, his amanuensis—a particularly important
task, since Wythe barely could use his hand. But more than that, Wythe
became Clay’s mentor, perhaps his father figure.12
For some four years following his sixteenth birthday, Clay worked closely
with Wythe. He took dictation, copied decisions, and researched cases. But
the work was far from one-sided. If Wythe mentioned a book Clay should
peruse, the young scribe usually examined it, to his profit. Clay felt heavily
his inability to read Greek and Latin, but Wythe would read passages to
him, to Clay’s delight. The chancellor also would explain his decisions and
the reasoning behind them, and Clay’s legal awareness grew. In turn, Clay
idolized Wythe. Near the end of his own life, after meeting famous people
on two continents, Clay lovingly remembered the “plain, simple, and unos-
tentatious” Wythe as, “one of the purest, best, and most learned men” that
he had ever known. Wythe’s instruction helped the boy; his advice aided
the student; but his example, most of all, shaped the man.13
Wythe rewarded Clay for his loyalty by arranging for him to read
law with the Virginia attorney general, former governor Robert Brooke.
Once more, Clay found himself allied to a major player in the political
game. Under Brooke’s guidance, Clay learned his lessons quickly, and in
November 1797, “Henry Clay Gentleman” qualified to practice law. At the
age of twenty, Henry Clay may not have overcome as much as the legend
would later indicate, but he had, nevertheless, faced much adversity and
had seized his opportunities. He now had the prospects of a fine future be-
fore him. But where would that future be?14
As the end of the eighteenth century neared, more and more Virginians
had left their increasingly worn-out lands for the rich soil of the Kentucky
frontier. Some had departed seeking more religious freedom. Others
sought greater political and professional opportunities. But for almost all
of them, the place across the mountains represented hope—for a better
life. In 1797, new attorney Clay looked westward as well, as he questioned
whether he should join his family in what some called a New Eden, others
6
6 Henry Clay
a New Hell. Originally part of Virginia, now a state for barely five years,
the Commonwealth of Kentucky had already attracted many talented
immigrants. Lawyers, like Clay, had gleefully noted that the new state’s use
of the old Virginia land system had resulted in many vague and overlapping
“shingled” claims— ones that produced numerous lawsuits, and much
income for attorneys. Ambitious men like George Nicholas and John
Breckinridge saw the limits to advancement in the more closed Virginia
society, with its plethora of talented political leaders, and instead sought
their fortunes in the West. The Kentucky myth of plenty motivated many.15
At the same time, if Clay did depart Virginia, he would leave behind
the politically important support groups from which he had benefited in
Richmond. And while many who left found better lives in Kentucky, many
did not. Movement westward did not mean automatic success, and it could
involve failure, especially given all the talent Clay would compete against,
at the bar of justice. In the end, perhaps it was simply the spirit of the new
land that enticed him to make the move. The fledging state was in transition,
moving to a society that more replicated the cultural and class situations of
the mother state but that also contained elements representing freer forces,
born of its earlier experience. That appealed to Clay as well. The struggle
between the democratic forces of the frontier and the aristocratic might of
the established gentry, the contest between the mass of the population and
the elite, would be a long-continuing one in American history. In Kentucky,
separated from the Atlantic seaboard by mountains and forged out of the
conflict with native peoples, the mentality of the old order clashed with the
ethos of the new order. Out of that, a different force emerged, one unlike
that of the East. Kentucky became the First West. Shaped as well by those
from both the agrarian South and the commercial North, the resulting so-
ciety represented a mix of influences, different from them but tied to them.
As it turned out, functioning in that society would produce in Henry Clay
an outlook that combined elements of various cultures, classes, and sections.
Whether that would be an asset for him remained to be seen.16
The new state matched the temperament of the new man, this young
attorney, and he would make Kentucky his home for the rest of his life. It
would prove to be a fortuitous choice, for from the moment in 1797 until
Clay’s death, the commonwealth took its place as one of the nation’s most
important states. In that time, the state would help shape Clay’s beliefs and
positions during his political career.
At a time when agriculture provided much of the wealth of a people or
of a commonwealth, Kentucky would, by 1840, stand first in the nation in
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ehtineet pelastaa kauheasta palosta. Se oli hirveä yö, hän muisti
vielä sen hyvästi! Tämä muurahaisten majan muutto alkoi hänestä
nyt tuntua samanlaiselta ja hän tunsi tehneensä pahan teon. Nuo
pienet raukat! Kuinka hän sääli niitä! Jos hän olisi tiennyt edeltä päin,
ei hän toki olisi tehnyt niille tätä. Mitenkä ne nyt mahtuvat asumaan
yhdessä pesässä entisten asukasten kanssa?
Aaro tuli uteliaaksi ja pani sen uudestaan veteen. Hän tahtoi antaa
sen oikein kastua. Vaan sitä lähti nyt ilman henki viemään ja se meni
avutonna, pää veden sisässä, takaruumis yläällä. Aaro haki
karahkan, jolla hän onki sen lähelle. Se tarttui erääseen karahkan
oksaan. Aaro antoi sen olla siinä ja asetti karahkan veteen, niin että
tuon oksan nenä oli vaan vähän yläällä vedestä ja karahkan tyven
hän laski kivelle. Sitte hän rupesi kalliolla mahalleen, hajasäärin ja
kädet rinnan alla, ja katseli muurahaisen hommia. Ei hän aikonut
suinkaan sitä tappaa, vaan hän tahtoi nähdä sen neuvokkaisuutta.