THE MISSOURI QUESTION wasn’t the only thing that spoiled the good feelings of James Monroe’s presidency. A panic seized the financial system in 1819 and spread to the larger economy, afflicting every section of the country. “The years 1819 and ’20 were a period of gloom and agony,” Thomas Hart Benton recalled later. Benton was a direct beneficiary of Clay’s work on Missouri; he was one of the first two men elected to the Senate from the new state, in 1821. As a Missourian he was well placed to witness the searing effects of the panic, which hit the West hardest of all. “No money, either gold or silver; no paper convertible into specie; no measure or standard of value left remaining….No price for property or produce. No sales but those of the sheriff and the marshal. No purchasers at execution sales but the creditor or some hoarder of money. No employment for industry; no demand for labor; no sale for the product of the farm. No sound of the hammer but that of the auctioneer, knocking down property….No medium of exchange but depreciated paper; no change, even, but little bits of foul paper, marked by so many cents and signed by some tradesman, barber or innkeeper. Exchanges deranged to the extent of fifty or one hundred per cent. DISTRESS, the universal cry of the people. RELIEF, the universal demand thundered at the doors of all legislatures, state and federal.”
Henry Clay fared far better than the millions who lost jobs, lost farms, lost homes, lost hope. Yet the panic caught him holding bad debt, which left him exposed when his debtors defaulted. He liquidated property and cut deals with creditors where he could, but it wasn’t enough. A dispassionate calculation convinced him he couldn’t afford to continue in politics. He announced he would not seek reelection in 1820.
He began reckoning how he might recoup his fortunes, or at least stay out of debtors’ prison. He formed a new law practice. “The subscribers have associated themselves together in the practice of the LAW in the Courts at Lexington,” he and partner Greenberry Ridgely advertised in the Kentucky Reporter. “Engagements entered into by either will be attended to by both, as far as practicable. One or both of them may be generally found in the room adjoining the Athenaeum at the Kentucky Hotel.”
He tested new methods of getting profits from his farm. The crash caused prices for most commodities to plummet, but one that held promise was hemp, used for making rope. A correspondent sent him a news clipping about a novel method of converting the crop to fiber. Clay responded, “The information which you have had the goodness thus to communicate comes very seasonably, for after having almost abandoned the culture of hemp in this fine region of country to which it is so well adapted, ever since the termination of the late war, the farmers are beginning again to turn their attention considerably to it, and it bears a better price at this time than any other produce of the land.” The letter Clay had received identified a machine that processed the hemp more efficiently than other devices. “What would be the probable cost?” he inquired. “I wish to procure one.”
TO FOCUS ON his business affairs, he resigned as speaker of the House before his congressional term ended. He expected to play a minor role in the session that ran until March 1821, when the new Congress would be sworn in.
But the House had gotten used to his leadership, and it floundered for lack of his guidance. The Missouri question arose again when the drafters of that new state’s constitution included a provision forbidding the entry of free blacks. The ban reflected slaveholders’ perception that free blacks were an anomaly that undermined the slave system, which rested on the principle that blacks in America were meant to be slaves. When black slaves encountered blacks who were not slaves, they started to get unsettling ideas. Existing slave states were making manumission more difficult, in part to keep their numbers of free blacks low. Missouri sought to avoid the problem by keeping free blacks out.
But Northern opponents of slavery took the ban as an insult, not to mention a violation of the clause of the Constitution guaranteeing that the citizens of each state be accorded the rights of citizens in all states. Blacks were citizens in some Northern states and so could not be barred from entering Missouri. The Missouri Compromise had slipped through Congress with the help of Clay’s dexterity; now it seemed on the verge of unraveling. And the new House leadership could do nothing to stop it.
So Clay stepped into the breach. He got himself appointed chairman of a special committee to address the issue. One by one he buttonholed the members and made his plea for the Union. In due course the committee proposed that Missouri be made a state on the condition that its legislature never adopt a law barring the entry of any class of citizens of other states. Clay was hardly alone in recognizing the cosmetic nature of the condition. Missouri could accept it, become a state, and then write whatever laws it wanted. Congress had no power over state laws; only the federal courts did. But cosmetics serve a purpose, and this brand gave cover to Northerners with antislavery constituents. Not enough cover, as things proved: Clay’s measure was defeated when it came before the House.
A new complication developed. The demise of the Federalists left James Monroe without an opponent in the 1820 election. The states submitted their electoral votes, but Congress still had to count them. Missouri sent three votes for Monroe, asserting that having written its constitution, it was already a state. Southern members of Congress generally supported Missouri’s claim and wanted to accept its votes. Most Northerners did not. All realized that the difference wouldn’t affect the outcome of the election: Monroe was going to be elected nearly unanimously in either case. But a decision in the matter would have consequences for Missouri. If its votes were counted, its claim to statehood would be strengthened. If they were rejected, the claim would suffer.
In Clay’s decade in Congress he had learned that distraction undid more good intentions than any other influence. He refused to let the House get distracted by a lengthy debate over counting the electoral votes. He proposed an unprecedented solution. Two counts would be taken, one with Missouri’s votes, the other without. If the discrepancy did not affect the identity of the winner, both results would be reported to the president of the Senate, who would then announce the winner.
Clay’s plan provoked an outcry. Opponents of Missouri’s admission objected that it would give de facto approval to that admission, rewarding the scoundrels who had flouted the clear intent of Congress in the original compromise. Constitutional purists spluttered that it mocked the charter’s straightforward directions for counting the electoral votes. John Randolph condemned it as more of Clay’s high-handedness.
But the House approved, and the Senate too, and Clay’s solution went forward. James Monroe was duly elected with either 228 or 231 electoral votes. John Quincy Adams, the runner-up, received 1 vote.
Though the result got Clay and the country no closer to a solution to the larger Missouri problem, at least it carried them no further away. Yet he still couldn’t see a clear path to the end. “This Missouri storm is threatening to sweep every thing before it,” he wrote to an associate. “Unhappy subject! Every attempt to settle it has yet failed.” But he wouldn’t give up. “I still cherish, perhaps vainly, hopes.” Some in the House suggested putting off action on Missouri until the next Congress. Clay refused to entertain the idea, not least because he knew he wouldn’t be in Congress then. “Put off the question!” he said. “No! I would as soon sleep amidst the conflagration of a city, under the vain persuasion that in the morning, when I awoke, it would be time enough to endeavor to extinguish the flames.”
WILLIAM HENRY SPARKS was a guest in the House when Clay made a final effort to douse the fire. Writing decades later, Sparks recalled the moment. “About him was gathered the talent of the Senate and the House,” Sparks said. “The lobbies and galleries were filled to overflowing.” Clay dominated the scene. “How grandly he towered up over those seated about him! Dressed in a full suit of black, his hair combed closely down to his head, displaying its magnificent proportions, with his piercing gray eyes fixed upon those of the Speaker, he poured out, in fervid words, the wisdom of his wonderful mind and the deep feelings of his great heart….All the majesty of his nature seemed as a halo emanating from his person and features as, turning to those grouped about him, and then to the House, his words, warm and persuasive, flowing as a stream of melody, with his hand lifted from his desk, he said: ‘I wish that my country should be prosperous and her government perpetual. I am in my soul assured that no other can ever afford the same protection to human liberty and insure the same amount. Leave the North to her laws and her institutions. Extend the same conciliating charity to the South and West. Their people, as yours, know best their wants, know best their interests. Let them provide for their own. Our system is one of compromises. And in the spirit of harmony come together; in the spirit of brothers compromise any and every jarring sentiment which may arise in the progress of the country. There is security in this; there is peace and fraternal union. Thus we may, we shall, go on to cover this entire continent with prosperous states and a contented, self-governed and happy people.’ ”
In Sparks’s memory, Clay’s performance worked a miracle. “There was oil upon the waters, and the turbulent waves went down. Men who had been estranged and angered for many months met and, with friendly smiles, greeted each other again. The ladies in the gallery above rose up as if by a common impulse to look down, with smiles, upon the great commoner. One whose silvered hair, parted smoothly and modestly upon her aged forehead, fell in two massy folds behind her ears, clasped her hands and audibly uttered, ‘God bless him.’ ”
The reality was rougher than Sparks recalled, but only a little. Clay’s previously rejected cosmetic proposal became the fallback as the session raced toward its close. The Senate and the House agreed to admit Missouri on the condition that the state’s legislature promise that it would never adopt legislation abridging the rights of any citizens of any states. The votes were close. Some Northerners still objected to admitting Missouri with slaves at all. Southerners complained about the demeaning condition extorted from Missouri. Missouri lawmakers, in their turn, gave the required promise even as they denied the authority of Congress to require it.
Clay didn’t care about the margin, only the result. Failure would have meant disaster. “No human being could have anticipated the consequences of the exclusion from the Union of Missouri for any length of time,” he told a friend. “My firm conviction is, founded upon a knowledge of several powerful forces operating in the West, that one of them would have been an attempt at separation of some, and ultimately all, of the Western states from the confederacy.”
The crisis had passed, though not the underlying danger. “Wisdom and prudence may keep us united a long time, I hope for ever. But there are natural causes tending towards disseverance.” The work of statesmen, of the builders of the American nation, was never done.