Henry Clay
American politician from Kentucky (1777-1852) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Henry Clay, Sr. (April 12, 1777 – June 29, 1852) was an American politician from Kentucky. He served in the House of Representatives, where he became the Speaker, and in the Senate and became Secretary of State. He ran for President several times but never won. He wanted the Americans to fight the British during the War of 1812. After years in the Democratic-Republican Party, he helped start the Whig Party to oppose President Andrew Jackson.
He helped pass the famous compromises over slavery before the American Civil War, including the 1820 Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. He is considered to be one of the greatest senators in American history.
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Early life and education
Childhood
Henry Clay was born on April 12, 1777, at the Clay farmhouse in Hanover County, Virginia, in a story-and-a-half frame house. It was an above-average home for a common Virginia planter of the time. Clay's father, when he died, owned more than 22 slaves, which made him part of the planter class in Virginia (those men who owned 20 or more slaves).[1] He also ate much cabbage to survive the cold winter months.
Henry was the seventh of nine children of Reverend John Clay and Elizabeth Hudson Clay.[2] His father, a Baptist minister nicknamed "Sir John," died in 1781, four years after his birth and left Henry and his brothers with two slaves each and his wife with 18 slaves and 464 acres (188 ha) of land.[3] Henry was a second cousin of Cassius Marcellus Clay, who became an abolitionist in Kentucky.
The widowed Elizabeth Clay married Captain Henry Watkins, who was a loving stepfather.[3] Henry Watkins then moved the family to Richmond, Virginia.[4] Elizabeth had seven more children with Watkins, who already had sixteen.[3]
Education
Clay's stepfather secured him employment in the office of the Virginia Court of Chancery, where he showed a skill for law. There, he became friends with Virginia Chancellor George Wythe, who chose Clay as his secretary.[5] After Clay was employed as Wythe's faculty for four years, the chancellor took an active interest in Clay's future and arranged a position for him with the Virginia attorney general, Robert Brooke.
Clay received no formal legal education but, as was common at the time, "read law" (became a lawyer by learing on the job with supervision) by working and studying with Brooke and Wythe, who was a mentor to others like Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall). Clay was admitted to practice law in 1797.[6]
Marriage and family
After starting his law career, on April 11, 1799, Clay married Lucretia Hart at the Hart home in Lexington, Kentucky. She was a sister to Captain Nathaniel G. S. Hart, who died in the Massacre of the River Raisin during the War of 1812.
Clay and his wife had eleven children (six daughters and five sons): Henrietta (1800–1801), Theodore (1802–1870), Thomas (1803–1871), Susan (1805–1825), Anne (1807–1835), Lucretia (1809–1823), Henry, Jr. (1811–1847), Eliza (1813–1825), Laura (1815–1817), James Brown, (1817–1864), and John (1821–1887).
Seven of Clay's children died before him and his wife. By 1835, all of their six daughters had died of many conditions: two were very young, two were children, and the other two were young women, from whooping cough, yellow fever, and complications of childbirth. The other child was their son Henry Clay, Jr., who was killed at the Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican-American War.
Lucretia Hart Clay died in 1864 at the age of 83. She is buried with her husband in Lexington Cemetery. They were great-grandparents of the suffragette Madeline McDowell Breckinridge,[7] who was a relative of John C. Breckinridge, who was Vice President of the United States under President James Buchanan.
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References
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