biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1777–1852)
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| biography:
| US representative and senator, born in Hanover Co, Virginia, USA. With little formal education, he studied law, was admitted to the bar (1797), and moved to Kentucky to practise law. Elected to the state legislature (1803–6), he was then chosen to fill unexpired terms in the US Senate (1806–7, 1810–11). In 1810 he was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the US House of Representatives, where he served three terms (1811–14, 1815–21, 1823–5). Such was his reputation that he was Speaker of the House for most of his years there, and became known in Congress as a nationalist and defender of Western regional interests. He was a ‘war hawk’ in the period leading into the War of 1812 and served as a member of the delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Ghent (1814) that ended that war with Britain. After the war he argued for the ‘American System’, which sought to ensure American self-sufficiency through economic development. He favoured a protective tariff, the establishment of a national bank, and internal improvements such as roads and canals. More as a firm supporter of the preservation of the Union than as an opponent of slavery, in 1820 he sponsored the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. In 1824 he was one of four who ran for the US presidency, and when no candidate received a majority of the electoral votes, the election was sent to the House of Representatives. He gave his support to John Quincy Adams, securing his election over Andrew Jackson. When Adams appointed Clay as secretary of state, the two were accused of having made a ‘corrupt bargain’. When Adams was defeated by Jackson in 1828, Clay returned to Kentucky, where his prosperous law practice allowed him to make his estate, Ashland, near Lexington, KY, into a showplace; it boasted fine sheep, cattle, and prize-winning race horses. Back in Washington as a US senator (1831–42), he emerged as a leading figure in the newly organized Whig Party and became its presidential candidate (1832, 1844); he lost the former because of his support of high tariffs, and the latter because of his refusal to take a stand on the annexation of Texas. In the Senate he proposed a compromise tariff (1833) to help resolve the nullification crisis that had once again raised the spectre of disunion and war. Out of office in the mid-1840s, he returned for a final US Senate term (1849–52). His last major legislative achievement again involved the issue of slavery. He submitted the Compromise Act of 1850 that, although appeasing both pro- and anti-slavery sides, only postponed the Civil War. He died in office, and although his eloquent defence of the Union earned him the title ‘the great compromiser’, that has remained the extent of his reputation. |
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