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Henry Clay, Part One

American Hero

The people create heroes, and, when Henry Clay looked and acted the part and led the way toward national greatness and away from civil war, the legend began. With a great hero, it helps if he has overcome adversity and suffered and experienced failures; reality is left behind anyway, and he becomes larger than life.¹ It is an apotheosis in which the hero becomes superhuman, a myth, and a demigod. Clay was second only to George Washington in the American pantheon before the Civil War, and, when the Clay legend was made morally perfect like that of Washington, it was even more dramatic because there was more to overlook. Clay migrated to Lexington from Virginia in November 1797 at the age of twenty, and his buoyant spirit thrived on the atmosphere of frontier optimism and the garrulous nature of his neighbors and friends. He quickly became Lexington's best defense attorney, and in Congress he became the leading representative of Kentucky in national politics. The status of Lexington as the leading manufacturing center in the West stimulated him to develop his American System; as a slave owner, he formulated the necessary-evil doctrine on slavery that dominated the slavery debate in Kentucky from 1800 to 1865. His dedication to the Union, coupled with his maintenance that a state had the exclusive right to legislate regarding slavery, was the lodestar that guided Kentucky through the Civil War.²

One of the most prominent myths about Clay was that he was born in poverty, became an orphan when his father died, had to plow the fields of his mother's farm to support her, was denied formal schooling, and became successful on his own without any connections. In reality, he was born on April 12, 1777, in Hanover County, Virginia, in an attractive two-story frame house to a respectable family more prosperous than many Virginia farmers. His father, John, was a Baptist pastor and tobacco farmer, and he and Clay's mother, Elizabeth, lived on her father's 464-acre farm, a plantation with twenty-one slaves. Henry's father died when he was four years old, bequeathing two slaves to Henry in his will. When Elizabeth married Henry Watkins, she brought to the marriage her father's farm, which she had inherited. Elizabeth and Henry Watkins were prosperous, and they sent Henry to school and may have tutored him. The couple and their young children moved to Kentucky when Henry was fourteen, having arranged that the boy would work in the drug store of Richard Denny in Richmond, Virginia, and then become a clerk for Peter Tinsley, clerk of the High Court of Chancery in Virginia. At fifteen, Henry started his training in law at the High Court, and there he met and impressed George Wythe, one of the best law teachers in Virginia, teacher of John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson, and others. For four years, Henry worked as Wythe's secretary and law student, all the while socializing at the top of Richmond society. He then studied under Robert Brooke for about a year, passed the bar exam, and moved to Kentucky at the age of twenty.³

In the pressure of campaigning for president in the time when claiming to have been born in a log cabin seemed almost essential, Clay once stated that he was left “poor, penniless” when his father died. The neighborhood where he was born had land that was swampy and overgrown, and it was called the slashes. Campaign writers and local Hanover County historians created the myth that he rode barefoot on his pony to the gristmill, and orators proclaimed him “Mill Boy of the Slashes.” It is true that Clay did not attend college preparatory school or college, that beginning at age fourteen he lacked the daily guidance and comfort of a parent, and that he never studied Latin or Greek. Yet, with all the advantages Clay had, and with his outstanding education in the law and friends in Richmond, it was quite a leap in mythmaking to present him as a poor, uneducated orphan. Abraham Lincoln could recognize campaign rhetoric as readily as anyone, but the myth was so pervasive that, in his eulogy of Clay, he stressed that poor boys should be encouraged that Clay rose to fame in spite of his “comparatively limited” education and his birth to “undistinguished parents” and “in an obscure district” of Virginia.⁴

American heroes must look the part, and Clay was one of the most handsome men anyone had ever seen. When he walked into a room or rose to speak, every eye focused on him. He was six feet tall and thin and had a high forehead, large nose, and wide mouth with an unusually broad smile. He learned manners and dress in Richmond, Virginia, and in public he always appeared neat and fashionable, usually with a large collar shirt, dress coat, and black cravat. In conversation, he listened with his entire body but especially with his sparkling blue eyes, which burned with optimism and sympathy. When he addressed a jury or delivered a public speech, he moved with strength and grace, crouching low and rising to his full height, leaning backward, sweeping his lengthy arms in mighty circles, and thrusting his right hand forward to point with his index finger.⁵

As a young lad, Clay heard Patrick Henry speak and set himself the goal in life of becoming a great speaker. The feature that impressed people most about Clay as a speaker was his matchless voice. As he spoke, he modulated the tone and volume, changing from almost whispering in soft, high notes, to moderate volume and tones, to thunderous bass. Eyewitnesses compared his voice to melodious music, and one man said that it was as impossible to describe as it would be to paint a lightning bolt. Another person declared: “He is the most perfect speaker I have ever heard, and it was truly astonishing to see with what intense interest every one, high and low, listened to him. When he gets up, all is still as midnight and naught is to be heard save his sweet melodious voice.” Eyewitnesses said that we have no record of his best speeches because reporters became so enthralled they laid down their pens and forgot to take notes. Abraham Lincoln said that he touched “the chords of human sympathy,” and Clay's outstanding biographer, Robert Remini, declared that, if the entire nation could have heard him speak, he would have been elected president as many times as he wanted.⁶

Lithograph prints by Currier and Ives and other companies were the posters of the day, and people collected and displayed them on the walls of their homes. Black-and-white prints sold for ten or fifteen cents and large color images for three dollars. Clay's image was a best seller in this market, and artists often portrayed him in full figure, but what was unusual was that, in still images, they attempted to capture his gestures. In the nationally popular lithograph by P. F. Rothermel of Clay speaking in the Senate for the Compromise of 1850, he is portrayed from the side, standing tall and leaning back slightly, gesturing with his right hand as the senators surrounding him lean forward enthralled. Sculpture artists, frustrated in not being able to show his arm raised, depicted him gesturing with his right arm down by his side and his palm open to the front. Clay's favorite image of himself was a daguerreotype by Marcus A. Root produced in 1848 that captures Clay's glance, which, people said, was characterized by earnestness, wit, and a love of conversation. The photograph shows him seated looking off to the viewer's right, with a slight grin, and his eyes gleam with strength and kindliness as if he were about to answer a query from a beloved family member or close friend.⁷

The custom of kissing heroes began with Henry Clay, and women requested his autograph and a lock of his hair. “If the LADIES,—Heaven bless them! could vote, the election of Mr. Clay would be carried by acclamation!” wrote John S. Littell, president of the Clay Club of Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1844. “Their influence was powerfully felt in 1840, and their appreciation of eloquence, patriotism and genius, will prompt them to a warm support of ‘Harry of the West,’” Littell continued. One of the 1844 campaign songs promised:

If e'er I should wish to get married
And indeed I don't know but I may
The man that I give up my hand to
Must be the firm friend of Old Clay.

Mothers and fathers named babies for him, including Henry Clay Shall-cross of Wheeling in present-day West Virginia, Henry Clay Wright of St. Louis, and Henry Clay Work born in Middletown, Connecticut, on October 1, 1832, one of the years Henry Clay ran for president. Work became a popular writer of Civil War songs, including Marching through Georgia (1865). Henry Clay Frick, born on December 19, 1849, in West Overton, Pennsylvania, was Andrew Carnegie's steel factory manager and partner. In 1829, when the parents of an Indian youth enrolled him in the Choctaw Academy in Scott County, Kentucky, they honored him with the name Henry Clay.⁸

Nicknames bring the hero down to the level of the people, and Clay probably had more than any other public figure in American history. He was called “Prince Hal,” “Valiant Hal,” “Old Coon,” “Ashland's Sage,” and “Star of the West.” Not all the nicknames were positive; he was also called “Judas of the West,” “Gone Old Coon,” and “Ole Spavined Nag.”⁹ Clay sought the White House five times, achieving nomination three times, and as a hero-candidate he may have inspired more songs than any other candidate. For the 1844 campaign, John Littell published the book The Clay Minstrel in 1843 and included a campaign biography of Clay and many Clay songs. The first edition sold out, and booksellers requested a second. Littell added songs, and the 1844 second edition had over one hundred song lyrics. They included “Harry of Kentucky,” “For Harry Clay, Huzza!” “Clay, Our Nation's Glory,” “Come All Ye Men Who Push the Plough,” “Working Men's Song,” and “Hurrah for the Clay!” Probably no British monarch other than Elizabeth I inspired more songs than those published by the Whig press for the campaign of Henry Clay in 1844, concluded Arthur K. Moore.¹⁰

Littell made no claim that his book included all the pro-Clay songs of the campaign, and he included none of the satiric anti-Clay compositions. Moore wrote his article when he found many Democratic songs in the Lafayette, Louisiana, newspaper Southern Traveller. They included “Coon Hunter Melodies,” “Old Rosin the Bow,” “Orator Clay,” and “Clay's Lament.” In “Clay's Lament,” the writer satirized Clay's losing of votes in Kentucky because he supported the Old Court during the relief controversy:

It's now a “gone old coon”—no relief—no relief
I'm now a “gone old coon”—no relief
I'm now a “gone old coon.”

A song entitled “Tune—‘Old Dan Tucker’” declared Clay a used-up horse: “His track hab got most debblish mucky / He's a used up hos, dat ole Kentucky.” Another featured dueling and mentioned George Prentice's campaign biography of Clay:

’Tis written in Prentice's history
How he met one Marshall, his N-M-E
And fought him because they couldn't agree—
And how Marshall marr'd his L-E-G
Ri tu, & c.¹¹

The popular lithographs and painted portraits of Clay often had images of sailing ships “before the fresh'ning gale” in celebration of Clay's promotion of America's position in world trade and championing of the rights of seamen in the coming of the War of 1812. In a two-day speech in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 8-9, 1813, he upheld the rights of American sailors in words that appear today on Internet sites for Flag Day quotations: “The colors that float from the mast head should be the credentials of our seamen.” Clay's support was memorialized in the naming of ships. In 1826, the steamer Henry Clay carried passengers on the Great Lakes out of Buffalo. In 1845, Grinnell, Minturn and Company, a New York City shipping company with a fleet of packet ships transporting passengers between New York and Liverpool, commissioned the Henry Clay and sent Clay a painting of the ship by William Marsh. On September 27, 1845, Clay wrote thanking them for the honor and the painting. “It is a beautiful and splendid object of art,” he wrote, “presenting a magnificent Ship, highly creditable to the enterprise of the owners, and the skill and taste of its construction, as well as the pencil of the artiste who painted it.” The Hudson River steamboat Henry Clay raced from Albany to New York City with the Armenia on July 28, 1852, and was winning when it reached Yonkers; then it caught fire and sank, drowning many passengers, and producing one of the most sensational accident reports of the decade. The Henry Clay on the Mississippi River was running the batteries at Vicksburg on April 16, 1863, when it burned and sank. One of the World War II Liberty ships was named Henry Clay, and the USS Henry Clay, a Polaris submarine, patrolled the seas from 1964 to 1989.¹²

Clay's face appeared on snuffboxes, glass plates, flasks, cigar cases, and other campaign trinkets. Material-culture historian Roger A. Fischer wrote that the vast array of memorabilia of Clay's 1844 campaign was almost equal to that of his fellow Whig William Henry Harrison's 1840 log-cabin campaign, when “the politics of popular amusement truly came of age.” Men wore “Mill Boy of the Slashes” ribbons on their lapels, smoked “Clay” pipes, hung Clay banners on the streets, and marched in parades rolling large balls and carrying banners. They collected tokens identifying Clay as “The Farmer of Ashland” and caught raccoons and displayed them in cages at rallies and parades. A banner showed the Whig raccoon atop a large ball stitched with strips bearing slogans, and a ribbon portrayed a raccoon tormenting the Democratic rooster and gibing, “Why Don't You Crow?”¹³

Kentuckians celebrated Harry of the West's rise in national politics as spokesman for Kentucky and the West. He was elected speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives and a member of the U.S. Senate, and then in 1811 he entered the U.S. House of Representatives and in his first session was selected speaker. This was the “War Hawk” Congress, and Clay was the chief war hawk, demanding war with Great Britain to defend the national honor and American seamen. “At no period of Clay's life did he represent more truly the feeling of the West than at this time,” wrote Clement Eaton. The same was true for Kentucky because the enthusiasm of Kentuckians for war was so intense when Clay came home at the beginning of the war that he feared that the war fever might become uncontrollable. Nevertheless, he championed, inspired, and encouraged Kentuckians who volunteered for the militia. Speaking in the U.S. Senate in 1810, while emphasizing western enthusiasm to attack Canada, he abandoned reality and made the exaggerated boast that the Kentucky militia alone could conquer Montreal and Upper Canada. When William Henry Harrison's expedition prepared to leave for the war on August 16, 1812, Clay spoke to the volunteers in their camp at Georgetown. He told them that Kentucky was famous for bravery and that they must uphold its reputation.¹⁴

The volunteers marched tenaciously and fought bravely, and soon the journalists and politicians of the nation were pointing to the military campaigning of Kentuckians as a model for the nation. Kentuckians read with pride about Clay's appointment as one of the five commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, and they approved the treaty. James W. Hammack pointed out that the pride of Kentuckians in their militia was deserved—of the 1,876 Americans killed in battle in the entire war, about 1,200 of them were Kentuckians. “The exploits of numerous individual Kentuckians helped create a romantic, almost legendary, image of the Kentucky fighting man,” Hammack wrote. For the rest of his life, Clay was popular with the state militia, and the same was true of militia in other states. When his body lay in state in City Hall in New York City, over three hundred elderly veterans of the war from the area entered the building arm-in-arm and filed past Clay's casket.¹⁵

Kentucky contributed vitally to Clay's rise as a national hero by providing the environment for development of the central theme of his political career, the American System. George Washington embodied the hope of creating the greatest democratic republic in history, and his secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, envisioned transforming the Republic from a mostly agrarian nation to a great and powerful manufacturing country competing effectively in the world market. Henry Clay updated and westernized Hamilton's program. When Clay arrived in Kentucky, Lexington was on the verge of becoming the commercial and manufacturing center west of the Appalachian Mountains and the “Athens of the West” in culture. Clay's experiences in Virginia and his law license prepared him to enter the forefront of Lexington society.

On April 11, 1799, he married Lucretia Hart, daughter of Thomas Hart, the most prominent merchant in Lexington. The marriage confirmed his position among the movers and shakers of the growing town. Lucretia connected him with the family of John Wesley Hunt, the pioneer merchant from New Jersey who would open one of the first hemp factories in Lexington in 1803 and continue rising in business to become known as Kentucky's first millionaire. Hunt's hemp factory and others in Lexington produced twine, cotton bagging (woven rope for holding cotton bales together for shipment), and bale rope (for securing bagging around cotton bales). Hunt and other hemp manufacturers used slave labor, and Lexington's population during the antebellum period was 30 percent African American. The city enforced a weeknight curfew, and any slave on the street from 10:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M. was subject to arrest by the night watchman. By 1810, Kentucky had thirty-eight ropewalks, more than any other state, and Kentucky was second only to Massachusetts in cordage or rope production. In the same year, Kentucky had thirteen factories producing cotton bagging. One of the symbols of the manufacturing success of Lexington was Hopemont, Hunt's elegant Georgian mansion, built in 1814. Hopemont was on Mill Street, only a few yards north of and across from Clay's law office. Clay and Hunt were friends, and they served together as trustees of Transylvania University and had business dealings together. Hunt served as the first chairman of the board of commissioners for the Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum in Lexington, where Clay's son Theodore would spend most of his life as a patient. Clay's friends included Robert Todd, and, later, Todd's daughter Mary, the future wife of Abraham Lincoln, would ride her new pony from Lexington to visit Clay at Ashland.¹⁶

Kentuckians encouraged Clay as a public speaker from the beginning of his career in the courtroom, when he was in the state legislature, and at barbecues and other political rallies. According to one contemporary, the people of Kentucky gave him a “brave spirit and commanding eloquence, and fascinating address.” He had been in the state only about eight months in 1798 when an incident occurred that launched the twenty-one-year old's great speaking career. Some of Lexington's leaders organized a public meeting to discuss the Alien and Sedition Acts. The laws were passed to provide domestic security in the expected war with France, and most Kentuckians were outraged that they violated civil liberties and made it a crime to satirize President John Adams and Congress. The gathering place was in a field near Lexington, and the speaker's platform was a wagon. A large number of men showed up to hear the first speaker, George Nicholas, a prominent lawyer and the first attorney general of Kentucky. Nicholas was loud but tedious in his condemnation of the laws, and he seemed to go on forever. When he finally stepped down, a group of young men began shouting “Clay! Clay!” until nearly the entire crowd united in the cheer. They lifted Clay onto the wagon, and he delivered a colorful and animated speech that also condemned the laws but contrasted greatly with Nicholas's in the way it was delivered. “The flame that burned in his own heart, was caught up and lighted in every other,” wrote George Prentice. When Clay finished, the men did not applaud or shout but were so moved with emotion over the threat to democracy Clay described that in unison they gave out a loud moan as if the pain were unbearable. An eyewitness later told Prentice that “it would be impossible to give an adequate idea of the effect produced.” Next, two local Federalists attempted to defend the laws, but, when the second started to speak, the men in the audience moved toward the wagon in a menacing manner. As the meeting broke up, several young men lifted Nicholas and Clay on their shoulders, forced them into a carriage, and pulled the vehicle through the streets, shouting their approval. Prentice concluded that Kentuckians that day showed Clay that “he had a spirit within him” that would lead him to fame and success.¹⁷

In his first, brief term in the U.S. Senate, completing the unfinished term of John Adair, from November 19, 1806, to March 3, 1807, Clay introduced a bill to investigate the possibility of a canal around the Falls of the Ohio River at Louisville. This bill placed him at the forefront as an advocate for internal improvements, even though the bill died in committee. On April 6, 1810, in the Senate, he spoke for the development of domestic manufacturing; his emphasis was on clothing, but he mentioned hemp manufacturing in Kentucky. Echoing Alexander Hamilton's “Report on Manufactures,” he said: “Aid may be given to native institutions in the form of bounties and of protecting duties.”¹⁸

Clay had the same vision of future greatness for the nation as Alexander Hamilton had earlier in New York City. It was more than coincidence that the people of New York City loved Clay more than those of any city other than his hometown of Lexington. Many New York residents shared the same vision. As the first secretary of the treasury, Hamilton, like Clay, saw a future when the United States would become the foremost manufacturing nation in the world. Hamilton's goal was to transform the American economy through government aid to business that included protective tariff rates, a national bank, bounties for new manufacturing ventures, and awards for new inventions. Abigail Adams enthusiastically endorsed Hamilton's program, designating it “the Great National System.” Congress found most of his ideas too nationalistic and too far ahead of the time, but a few were enacted, including a prohibitive tariff on hemp products. The hemp industry of Kentucky had not yet begun, but it is interesting that both Hamilton and Clay encouraged the business.¹⁹

Clay wrote Hamilton's son in 1840 that Hamilton would be remembered as one of the nation's “most distinguished Statesmen” he reflected that, if Hamilton had still been alive, he would have adjusted some of his views. Clay was probably referring to Hamilton's distrust of democracy and voting by the common man. Clay's American System grew out of and mirrored the hopes of manufacturers and investors in Lexington—entrepreneurs such as Clay's friends John Wesley Hunt and Robert S. Todd. A few years after Clay arrived, Lexington began manufacturing for the world market, and tariff protection was needed. Clay agreed with Hamilton's recommendation of a national bank, and he added the western goal of internal improvements, particularly needed for Lexington as the city was not located on a navigable river. Thus, Clay's American System had the key elements of tariff protection and internal improvements, with a national bank providing a sound financial system for business and the sale of public lands furnishing federal money to build vital roads and canals. Kentucky's U.S. senator Joseph R. Underwood commented in Clay's memorial service in the Senate: “He lived long enough to prove to the world that his ambition was no more than a holy aspiration to make his country the greatest, most powerful and best governed on the earth.”²⁰

Clay's most famous internal-improvement proposal was for a sixty-four-mile Maysville Road from Lexington to the Ohio River town of Maysville. Clay traveled to Washington so many times and traveled so many miles on stagecoaches and carriages on rough roads that he could feel in his bones the need for the road. But President Andrew Jackson vetoed the Maysville Road bill, and Clay told the mechanics of Cincinnati that the veto fell hard on Kentucky. Maysville residents never forgot what Clay attempted for them, and on the day of his funeral in Lexington they draped the doors of their homes in black crepe, closed business from 9:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M., and had a memorial service at 11:00 A.M. in the courthouse. The people of Ohio appreciated Clay's support for the extension of the National Road into their state. There was a local tradition in Guernsey County, Ohio, that, when Clay traveled on the road through Ohio, he never had to pay a toll or stage fare or for lodging in taverns—everything was free for him. Clay was proud of the twenty-foot monument at Wheeling, Virginia, on the National Road, erected in 1820 in recognition of his support in Congress of funding for the road and other internal improvements. The statue on the monument was of the Goddess of Liberty. About five months before he died, a group of his friends in New York City gave him a gold medal in a silver case. The case was decorated with three images: Ashland, the U.S. Capitol, and Clay's monument on the National Road.²¹

Clay attempted to establish his American System by running for president five times and obtaining nomination in 1824, 1832, and 1844. Free laborers recognized his advocacy of the tariff as protection for their jobs; they gave him credit for the bread on their tables and made him their hero. When he spoke to the mechanics' festival in Cincinnati on August 3, 1830, he said that the great object of the American System was “to secure the independence of our country, to augment its wealth, and to diffuse the comforts of civilization throughout society…. To the laboring classes it is invaluable, since it increases and multiplies the demands for their industry, and gives them an option of employments.” On his grand tour of the Northeast in 1833, he visited several new factories. Workers hailed him everywhere he appeared, and he was greatly impressed that the market revolution under way in the national economy was confirming his principles. When he was in Providence, Rhode Island, he received an invitation from the business leaders of nearby Fall River, Massachusetts, to visit their factories. Offering to send a steamboat for him, they expressed the highest respect for his character and “warmest gratitude” for his “eminent and successful public services in the cause of liberty, in advancing the best interests of the nation, and in the protection of our manufacturing, agricultural and commercial industry.”²²

On July 4, 1832, a group of workers in Washington, DC, gave Clay an engraved silver water pitcher in gratitude for the tariff protection in the American System.²³ “The Working-Men's Song,” written for the 1844 campaign, proclaimed that he would provide more work and higher wages to laborers, farmers, weavers, tailors, hatters, shoemakers, coopers, and blacksmiths. The final verse declared:

And thus we'll work, and thus we'll sing,
Till Tyler's race is run,
And then we'll have, to fill his place,
KENTUCKY'S FAVOURITE SON,
For now we'll rouse, with might and main,
And work and work away,
And work, work, work, work,
And put in HENRY CLAY.²⁴

Another 1844 campaign song declared: “The lab'ring man has always found / In him a faithful friend.” The song, The Clay Bugle Blast, reveals that, when the sound of the Clay bugle meets the laborer's ear, he looks up, and his face lights up with a smile, and in his heart he cheers for “FREEDOM AND CLAY!” Tokens for 1844 appealed to blue-collar workers with slogans such as “Protection to the Working Class Is an Assurance of Success,” “Henry Clay and Protection of All Our Enterprises,” “The Wealth of a Nation Is Indicated by Its Industry,” and “Champion of a Protective Tariff.” A ribbon read: “With Henry Clay, We'll win the day, And Home Industry defend.” An 1844 campaign broadside stated that Clay “has ever been the sturdy advocate of that protection and encouragement for national industry, without which no legislation can insure prosperity and happiness to the people. Every act of his life pronounces him a true FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE.” The Boston Atlas declared on September 20, 1844, that Whigs of Massachusetts preferred Clay over James K. Polk “because Mr. Clay is pledged to support the protection of American industry, which Mr. Polk is pledged to destroy.”²⁵

On September 14, 1849, the Covington Journal reprinted a clipping from the Providence Journal that described how, during his tour of New England, Clay was mobbed in Newport, Rhode Island, jostled, and almost injured. “It seems that nothing can keep the people away,” said the writer. When Clay died, coal miners in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, led by the Clay supporter Benjamin Bannan, the editor of the Miner's Journal newspaper, decided to erect a monument to Clay. On July 26, 1852, they held a mock funeral procession with a hearse drawn by four white horses, and the procession climaxed with a ceremony to lay the cornerstone of a monument. They raised money, completed a base, and commissioned the huge statue. On July 4, 1855, it was dedicated. It was refurbished in 1985 and stands today, cast iron, fifteen feet tall. Clay's obituary in the New York Times stated: “If domestic industry has ever flourished and yielded the laborer bread, and shelter and comfort, Mr. Clay will be remembered as the founder of the American System.”²⁶

By the 1844 presidential campaign, Clay's status as an American hero was well established. For Whigs and urban Americans, he symbolized nearly everything they hoped for—jobs, civilization, freedom, security, and future greatness. From December 1843 through April 1844, Clay went on a campaign tour of the southeastern states ending in Baltimore for the meeting of the Whig National Nominating Committee. He started in New Orleans, his favorite city after Lexington, and, as he moved east and north along the coast, he spoke on the American System to large crowds, attended balls, and met enthusiastic friends. He attracted not just Whigs; it appeared that nearly everyone wanted to see him. In Savannah, about fifteen hundred people met him at the railroad depot to escort him into the city. In Charleston, the people turned out to hear cannon salute his arrival and watch the procession, which included a float designed like a schooner manned by sailors and pulled by a car that recognized Clay for defending “Sailor's Rights.” One of the banners along the street proclaimed: “Welcome, thrice Welcome, bright Star of the West.” He gave a two-hour speech in a theater and was the guest of honor at a dinner and ball at the Charleston Hotel. In Raleigh, over ten thousand people greeted him, and the next day at a barbecue the crowd rushed to shake his hand. He retreated to a tree and, standing with his back against it, said, “Ah! You have tree'd the old coon at last!”²⁷

Kentuckians could hardly believe what a hero Clay had become, and many never appreciated the depth of his hero worship in other states. The Frankfort Commonwealth reported: “His progress was one grand, unbroken triumphal civil procession, never equalled in this country unless in the case of Gen. Lafayette. Mr. Clay, undoubtedly, is infinitely the most popular man in America and he certainly is the greatest of American orators and Statesmen.” The significance of this great tour cannot be explained simply in political terms. There were Whigs in the cities he visited, but many who gathered to cheer Clay were Democrats. As a hero, Clay was beginning to transcend politics and appeal to people whether they agreed with his politics or not. When the election was held, Clay won only one of the six states he visited, North Carolina. People came to hear him speak and shake his hand who had no intention of voting for him.²⁸

According to Clay biographer Robert Remini, in a speech he gave in Raleigh, Clay probably for the first time extended the American System so far into the future that his philosophy presaged Lincoln's economic-development program and looked forward to the America of the twenty-first century. Clay said, according to Remini: “It is the duty of the central government, not the states or anyone else, to supply all the necessary ‘national means of safety, convenience and prosperity' for the American people.” Clay said that the powers of the national government should be extended to provide for the general well-being of all citizens, ensuring their happiness, prosperity, and safety. Remini points out that this was the beginning of what Civil War historian James M. McPherson described as a redefinition of liberty by Abraham Lincoln from “negative liberty,” where the national government stays out of people's lives, to “positive liberty,” where the government frees slaves and guarantees equal opportunity for every individual. McPherson wrote that this was what Lincoln meant when in the Gettysburg Address he announced “a new birth of freedom,” a government, not of the states, but of the people, by the people, and for the people. Today, Hamilton, Clay, and Lincoln appear as heralds and precursors of modern America. Lincoln's economic program included a protective tariff, land grants for the transcontinental railroad, a homestead act, and land grants for state colleges. In a valuable roundtable discussion at the Kentucky Historical Society on June 8, 2002, Robert Remini said that Henry Clay had “extraordinary vision of the growth of this country, and its becoming a great power,” and that “Henry Clay represents what this country is about.”²⁹

Most Kentuckians supported the American System, and, because of Clay, Kentucky was one of the strongest Whig states. Those who knew Clay personally respected him as a southern gentleman who could talk with anyone. He enjoyed talking with farmers about horses, mules, and cattle, and he helped fight fires in leather-bucket brigades. His popularity and prestige were so great in the commonwealth that he ran without opposition except in 1816, when he defeated John Pope for the U.S. House of Representatives. Kentucky voters consistently elected Whig governors and voted for Clay and other Whig presidential candidates. Clay and the Kentucky Whigs had the benefit of the enthusiastic support of George Prentice, editor of the state's most influential newspaper, the Louisville Journal. Prentice was born in Connecticut, graduated from Brown University, came to Kentucky in 1830 to write The Biography of Henry Clay, a laudatory campaign biography, and stayed the rest of his life, continually supporting Clay and broadcasting Clay's ideas in his newspaper. In the poem “Henry Clay” by C. D. Stuart, which Prentice published in the Journal, the poet trumpeted: “He shines among a nation's stars the brightest and the best!”³⁰

When Clay came home in 1842, having resigned from the Senate during the John Tyler administration, Lexington welcomed him with a “retirement” barbecue that was actually a launching rally for his next presidential campaign. Clay needed encouragement—he was accused accurately of acting like a dictator and attempting to dominate Tyler; opponents hammered away with Jackson's 1824 charge of “bargain and corruption” against Clay for accepting the office of secretary of state from John Q. Adams. Judge George Robertson, chief justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, presided, and he introduced Clay to the large audience as the “Farmer of Ashland, patriot and philanthropist—the American statesman, and unrivaled orator of the age.” Robertson declared that, no matter what, “Kentucky will stand by him, and still continue to cherish and defend, as her own, the fame of a son who has emblazoned her escutcheon with immortal renown.” Clay responded with a lengthy address in which he thanked all Kentuckians for their “generous and unbounded confidence” in him “at all times” and particularly for defending him against the corrupt-bargain charge. He said: “It would have been wiser and more politic in me, to have declined accepting the office of Secretary of State in 1825.” But his motives, he continued, were “as pure and as patriotic as ever carried any man into public office.” Then he swept his long arms toward the sky, folded them with his hands touching his heart, and said: “Here is the best of all witnesses of my innocence” the audience roared its approval with tremendous cheering.³¹

The greatest criticism Clay faced was the corrupt-bargain charge, and he was grateful to Kentuckians for not holding it against him. There is no evidence that there was any corruption involved, but, in voting for Adams in the election in the House, Clay went against the instructions of the Kentucky legislature; they had instructed the Kentucky delegation in the House to vote for Jackson. Clay violated the will of the people of Kentucky, and, in those days of the rising tide of democracy, that was usually considered corruption. Jackson called Clay “The Judas of the West,” and Clay had to live with it, but it would probably have been impossible for him to continue in politics if many Kentuckians had labeled him “Judas of Kentucky.”³²

Kentuckians smiled tolerantly at some of the more sensational criticisms of Clay, but they knew that some of the rumors were true. It was certainly no secret that he enjoyed drinking and playing cards, and his duels were legendary. In 1844, Democrats accused him of murder for dueling and pronounced him a thief, swearer, adulterer, common drunkard, and Sabbath breaker for attending horse races on Sunday. Robert Wickliffe and other Kentucky opponents called him a habitual gambler, liar, and drunkard. When Clay warned that Jackson as a military chieftain would ruin the nation if elected, Jackson replied by pointing out that Clay never served in the military: “Mr. Clay has never yet risked himself for his country. He never sacrificed his repose, nor made an effort to repel an invading foe.” However, most Kentuckians recognized Democratic canards published in the heat of campaigns for what they were. They had never seen Clay break the Sabbath, and by all accounts he was a faithful husband and father. Although he was accused of cruelty to his slaves, Kentuckians knew that he was a humane master.³³

William F. Conrad, a Grant County Baptist pastor, probably represented the thoughts of many Kentuckians. He was also a farmer and owned seven slaves. In his memoirs, he lamented that the corrupt-bargain charge damaged Clay, but it did not bother him. “I supported Mr. Clay on most occasions,” he wrote, “possibly because he was the lesser of most evils represented by most politicians.” He recalled that, in the 1820s, rumors circulated in Kentucky that Clay “was a drunkard who spent his nights at a gaming table and in the revel of a brothel,” but he did not believe these stories. He did believe that Clay in his young adulthood had been “a reveler, a drinker to excess, a willing participant at the gaming table and a duelist.” Conrad hated dueling worst of all, and it offended him that Clay fought a duel with Humphrey Marshall in Indiana and that neither Indiana nor Kentucky prosecuted him. But he greatly approved that Clay had joined the Episcopal church in Lexington, being baptized on June 22, 1847, at the age of seventy.³⁴

Robert Remini wrote that the corrupt-bargain charge was the political death warrant that kept Clay out of the White House. As described in the next chapter, it did not die until after he was too elderly to run for president, but another aspect of his public life as a hero should be taken into account. Clay was so famous and so attractive that his personality became a two-edged sword—as a candidate for the White House he attracted a large and dedicated following, but, at the same time, many of his political opponents feared and hated him. Clay told about one of these men, a Democrat he met early in 1844 during his tour of the Southeast. The man told Clay that he was determined not to make Clay's acquaintance because he feared being overcome with Clay's famous “fascination” and he wanted to go on believing that Clay had hooves and horns. But he had heard that Clay had entertained Martin Van Buren at Ashland, and he wanted to ask whether it was true. Clay confirmed the report and said that he enjoyed Van Buren's visit. After the brief conversation, the Democrat said that he found Clay agreeable, clever, and a gentleman. The hatred of Clay was manifest when, after the election, Democrats skinned raccoons and hung them in trees along the roads.³⁵

Democrats were not the only ones who did not admire Clay as a hero. He certainly was no hero to free African Americans or slaves, and emancipationists condemned his advocacy of gradual emancipation and challenged him to prove that he considered slavery a great evil by freeing his slaves as an example. The abolitionist press accused him of cruelty to his slaves. Clay replied that he was a kind master, and he believed that he was. When he spoke in Richmond, Indiana, on October 1, 1842, Hiram Mendenhall, a Quaker, petitioned him to free his slaves. Clay answered with one of his most complete discourses against immediate emancipation, and his remarks clearly reflected his racism, which mirrored the racial prejudice of most white Americans of the day. He also directly defended his treatment of his slaves. Clay's personal slave, Charles Dupuy, was present, and Clay challenged Mendenhall to ask Charles how he treated his slaves. For years, when Clay was at home, Charles served as the efficient head steward at Ashland and, when Clay traveled, as his valet. Clay's relationship with Charles was probably as close as was possible under slavery. They traveled together extensively in northern states and in Canada, and Charles made no attempt to escape. Over two years later, in 1844, Clay emancipated Charles, and eventually he freed at least eight of his slaves.³⁶

On the other hand, neither Clay nor any owner of another human could escape the evil of the institution. He employed an overseer to manage the field slaves at Ashland, and, even though he gave the man detailed instructions, Clay, like any master, could not ensure fair and humane supervision by an overseer. Some of Clay's slaves, including Lewis Richardson, resisted bondage by running away. After Charles Dupuy was emancipated, a slave named Levi replaced him as Clay's personal servant on trips, and, when they were in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1849, Levi escaped, fled to Boston, changed his mind, and reported back to Clay in Newport two days later. When they reached Buffalo, New York, Levi escaped again. Clay suspected that abolitionists might have kidnapped him to stain Clay's reputation as a slave master, but he wrote that, if Levi had gone off voluntarily, he would not bother to catch him, “as it is probably that in a reversal of our conditions, I would have done the same thing.” On his own, Levi returned to Ashland and bondage.³⁷

Election fraud has been common in U.S. history, and it may seem sour grapes to point out that the 1844 election was stolen from Clay, but it is true. Kentucky Whig Leslie Combs wrote to a friend that Clay was “cheated out of his election by vile fraud.” The voters elected him according to the Constitution, but vote fraud cost him the presidency. If Clay had won the thirty-six electoral votes of New York, he would have been declared the winner. He lost the state by 5,106 votes and would have won it except that a few weeks before the election Democrats naturalized an estimated five to fifteen thousand recent immigrants, nearly all of whom voted for James K. Polk. Clay wrote that one reason he lost was the immigrant vote in New York and Pennsylvania, and he believed that vote fraud cost him the electoral vote of both states. In Louisiana, the campaign was so savage in spirit that in Plaquemines Parish, where there were fewer than five hundred registered voters, the parish reported 1,044 votes, only 37 of them for Clay. Polk carried Louisiana by a majority of only 699 of 26,865 votes.³⁸

Kentucky was Clay's sanctuary, and periodically he needed to come home to Lucretia and Ashland to rest and renew his spirit. From Washington he once wrote his wife: “I am sincerely and unaffectedly tired of remaining here, and I wish to God that I was with you at home.” Regarding Ashland and Fayette County, he said that he was more blessed than Moses, that Moses died within sight of the Promised Land but he had the pleasure of owning a farm in Kentucky, his promised land. Lucretia deserves a tremendous share of the credit for his success. She earned her reputation as a “good and pure Christian lady” with a serene and cheerful temperament. She patiently loved him in spite of his weaknesses and resisted the temptation to play the termagant. He left their home in Washington to fight the duel with John Randolph without telling her about the duel or that he was leaving. She heard the news from a servant while he was gone, and, when he returned, she met him in the hallway, threw her arms around him, and exclaimed, “O, Harry! How could you go without letting me know?” When a New England woman said, “Isn't it a pity that your husband gambles so much!” Lucretia replied, “Oh, I don't know, he usually wins.” She remained gentle and loving, and finally he followed her Christian example by being converted and taking communion the rest of his life.³⁹

Some of our greatest leaders have experienced an uncommon level of pathos in their lives, and their suffering has given them unusual attractiveness; adversity in the life of a hero makes him seem human and strengthens the identification of the people with him. Henry and Lucretia Clay's lives as parents were heavy with pathos. Most families in the days before scientific medicine experienced the death of at least one child, and many wives died of childbirth. Parents in Kentucky and throughout the nation identified with Henry and Lucretia's grief in the deaths of their beloved children. They had eleven children—five sons and six daughters. He experienced the death of seven of them, and she mourned the loss of eight. Henrietta and Laura died as infants, Laura at three months of whooping cough. Daughter Lucretia died at the age of fourteen. Youngest daughter Eliza died at the age of twelve; one month later, Susan died at twenty years of age in New Orleans. She was married and had two children, and her last words were, “I regret to die without Seeing my Father & mother.” Less than ten years later, Anne died of childbirth having given birth to her seventh child. When Henry learned of her death in a letter, he fainted.⁴⁰

Clay's namesake and favorite son, Henry Jr., was killed in action in the Battle of Buena Vista in the Mexican War, and his body was returned and buried with honors in Frankfort. “Alas,” Clay wrote, “there are some wounds so deep and so excrutiatingly painful, that He only can heal them…. And the death of my beloved son is one of them.” Theodore suffered a blow on the head that fractured his skull and died in the mental hospital in Lexington. Thomas eventually failed in hemp manufacturing and went bankrupt even though his father briefly mortgaged Ashland in an attempt to save the business. John enrolled in Princeton but refused to study, and his father had him dismissed. James farmed in Missouri but returned to Kentucky after his father died and served in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Confederate army.⁴¹

Clay announced his candidacy for the presidency the last time on April 10, 1848, two days before his seventy-first birthday. He failed to win the nomination and remained in retirement at Ashland. For several years, newspaper editors in Kentucky had been advocating returning him to the Senate, and, on February 5, 1849, the General Assembly elected him. At seventy-one years of age, he could have refrained from serving, but he loved national politics and thought he might contribute to settling the threatening question of slavery in the territory acquired in the Mexican War. At that point, his heroic public image had only one stain, and that was ambition—he had sought the presidency so many times that many interpreted his statesmanship as self-serving; the old charge of bargain and corruption still lived. However, when he arrived in Washington on December 1, 1849, he was about to attain the highest level of American hero worship; he was about to become second only to Washington and, like Washington, be considered by the American public to be unselfish, above party differences, and motivated only by pure patriotism. The Kentucky hero was about to earn recognition for sacrificing his health to save the Union and, in the words of the New York Times, to become “too great to be President.”⁴²