Henry Clay : The Essential American

by HEIDLER, DAVID S.HEIDLER, JEANNE T.

• ISBN13: 9781400067268
• ISBN10: 140006726X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-05-04
• Publisher: Random House

Summary

The epic life and times of one of the most important political figures in our history. He was the Great Compromiser, a canny and colorful legislator and leader whose life mirrors the story of America from its founding until the eve of the Civil War. Speaker of the House, senator, secretary of state, five-time presidential candidate, and idol to the young Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay is captured in full at last in this rich and sweeping biography that vividly portrays all the drama of his times. David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler present Clay in his early years as a precocious, witty, and optimistic Virginia boy, raised on a farm, who at the age of twenty transformed himself from bumpkin to attorney-a shrewd and sincere defender of the ordinary man who would be his eventual political base. The authors reveal Clay's tumultuous career in Washington, one that transformed the capital and the country. Nicknamed "the Western Star," Clay became the youngest Speaker of the House shortly before the War of 1812 and transformed that position into one of unprecedented power. Then, as a senator, he joined and sometimes fought John Calhoun and Daniel Webster to push through crucial legislation affecting everything from slavery to banking. Commonly regarded as the greatest U.S. senator in history, Clay served under ten presidents and overshadowed most of them, with the notable exception of his archrival Andrew Jackson. Clay ran unsuccessfully for president five times, and his participation in the deadlocked election of 1824 brought about the "Corrupt Bargain" with John Quincy Adams that made Clay secretary of state-and haunted him for the rest of his career. As no other book, Henry Clay humanizes Clay's marriage to plain, wealthy Lucretia Hart, a union rumored to be mercenary on his part but that lasted fifty-three years and produced eleven children. Featuring an inimitable supporting cast including Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, James Polk, and Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay is beautifully written and replete with fresh anecdotes and insights. But it is Henry Clay who often rises above them all. Horse trader and risk taker, arm twister and joke teller, Clay was the consummate politician who gave ground, made deals, and changed the lives of millions. His life is an astounding tale-and here superbly told.

Author Biography

David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler have written numerous scholarly books and articles dealing with the history of the early American republic, the Antebellum period, and the Civil War. David Heidler is associated with the Department of History at Colorado State University-Pueblo, and Jeanne Heidler is professor of history at the United States Air Force Academy, where she is the senior civilian member of her department. The Heidlers live in Colorado Springs.

Table of Contents

Prologue	p. xi
The Slashes	p. 3
“My Hopes Were More than Realized”	p. 26
“Puppyism”	p. 54
The Hawk and the Gambler	p. 84
Uncompromising Compromiser	p. 120
“I Injured Both Him and Myself”	p. 154
A Thousand Cuts	p. 186
Losing the Bank, Saving the Union	p. 219
Whig	p. 259
“I Had Rather Be Right than Be President”	p. 284
Three Campaigns	p. 317
Four Letters	p. 354
“Death, Ruthless Death”	p. 394
The Last Gamble	p. 418
“What Prodigies Arise”	p. 445
“The Best & Almost Only True Friend”	p. 476
Acknowledgments	p. 493
Notes	p. 497
Bibliography	p. 551
Index	p. 569
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Chapter One


The Slashes

In the year 1777 the United States was less than a year old and at war. It was also deeply divided over the wisdom of that war and doubtful in the main about its conclusion. And yet for much of the country the war was a distant event. Britain chose to focus on what it regarded as the hotbeds of pro-war sentiment, which were in the Northeast. The strategic decision to isolate New England kept the war centered on New York and made it remote for the rest of the thirteen erstwhile colonies, at least for a time. Now styling themselves as sovereign states united for the purpose of fighting this war and not much else, the new United States confronted the complicated and divisive nature of their enemy. The rebellion that had become the Revolution also became a civil war. Little wonder that many did not hold out much hope for success.

This was the world that greeted Henry Clay on April 12, 1777, two years almost to the day after the shedding of first blood at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts that marked the beginning of the shooting war with Britain. In that respect, he and his country were intertwined in both origin and destiny.

Henry Clay was a member of the sixth generation of a family that had been in colonial Virginia for more than a hundred and fifty years. John Clay was the first of that line, emigrating from England around 1612. Descendants maintained that John was the son of a Welsh aristocrat, but there is no definitive proof of the claim. If John’s pedigree was unremarkable, though, his industry once he arrived in the New World was admirable. Hard work and two good marriages brought him property and prominence. His marriage to Elizabeth—his second, her third—produced Charles in 1645. Ten years later, when John died, he left a considerable estate. Charles married Hannah Wilson and commenced something of a Clay tradition for producing large families. He and Hannah had seven children, three of them girls, though the female children had a distressing way of dying young, a peculiarity that tragically repeated itself in subsequent generations. Charles’s boys, however, were not only hale, two of them were well-nigh immortal. Charles Jr., born in 1676, lived to see ninety, and his older brother, Henry, born in 1672, nearly matched that endurance, dying in 1760 at age eighty-eight. Such longevity was rare anywhere in the world, let alone in hardscrabble colonial Virginia.

The elder Charles was a prosperous planter whose lands lay on the Virginia frontier, vulnerable to hostile Indians and persistently ignored by the colonial government in Jamestown. For those beyond the sight line of the eastern elite, prosperity did not necessarily mean security, and success did not breed prudence when it came to their relations with the Crown’s neglectful representatives. Sir William Berkeley’s administration proved indifferent to mounting protests, and Charles Clay joined Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion in 1676 that chased Governor Berkeley to the Eastern Shore of Virginia and briefly set up a rival government for the colony. Bacon’s Rebellion did not last long, but its occurrence made an impression on the royal administration. Charles Clay emerged from the event unpunished.

Clay lands were originally in Henrico County, a large district that spanned both sides of the James River. In 1749, the Virginia Assembly had established Chesterfield County out of Henrico, making it the new district within which sat “?The Raels,” the Clay plantation that belonged to Charles’s son, the long-lived Henry. While in his late thirties, Henry married teenaged Mary Mitchell sometime before 1709 and began a family that would also number seven children. The youngest, John, survived Henry by only two years, dying young at forty-one in 1762. Around 1740, though, he married affluent Sarah Watkins and had two sons with her before

---

Excerpted from Henry Clay: The Essential American by Jeanne Heidler, David Heidler
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.