Crawford of the South. Late in the campaign Jackson entered the race and the West divided its strength. The election showed that neither had won and that Clay, as the fourth on the list of candidates, could not be considered by the House when it came to select the next President. Crawford had been stricken with paralysis and this reduced the contest to two aspirants, Jackson, whom Clay had denounced before the House and the country, and Adams, the most disliked man in the country among Clay's constituents and whom he had denounced since 1817. When Congress met in December, the one anxious query of all was what would Clay do. Few public men have ever been re duced to such a dfficult position, the more dif ficult since the leaders of the West were al most unanitnous in urging him to support and thus elect Jackson. To put Jackson in the President's chair would have been a self-deny ing act on Clay's part, for the country would not have been willing to take two Western men in succession as presidents. Early in January Clay announced that he would support Adams. This decision alienated his stronger Western supporters, Amos Kendall, Frank P. Blair and Thomas H. Benton. The disappointment of the people ol Kentucicy was very great. But what weakened Clay's position for the rest of his life was his acceptance of the position of Secretary of State in Adams' Cabinet. Follow ers of Crawford, like John Randolph, now joined Jackson's friends and set up the cry of *bargain and sale, coalition of Puritan and bladdeg,* between Adams and Clay, which led to a duel of comic outcome. As chief of the Cabinet Clay was on the defensive during the four stormy years that followed. The Senate was little more than a national Jackson cam paign committee, and even the House weakened in its support of the Secretary of State. When Jacicson was at last elected Clay went home to amend his fences.* Jacicson had carried Ken tucky in the recent election and nearly all Clay's prominent former friends had deserted him. He desired to be elected to the Senate in 1830 and he began a canvass of all the counties to regain his former popularity. R. M. Johnson, a man of little pretension to high leadership, opposed him. After a long and bit ter contest Clay won by a very close vote in the assembly. It was the greatest contest of his life before his own people, for had he been defeated his position as a national leader must have been ruined, Once more in Washington, he began in the winter of 1832 to arrange the program for the presidential campaign ot that year. His American system, formulated in 1823-24, now received its widest advertisement. That is, he would stand for a protective tariff to the point of excluding all serious competition of foreign goods with domestic manufactures, for internal improvements which should absorb whatever revenues there might be, and for a strong national bank, which should have a monopoly of the government's financial busi ness. It was clearly a combination of the East and the few Western States which he might control against the South and the greater West which followed Jackson. He was the logical candidate of the opposition and he made every effort to win. But the election showed that Jackson had carried every State except chusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Kentucicy. It was the most de cisive election in American history since that of 1804. Yet Clay continued to lead the oppo sition in Congress and the country against the °Goths and Vandals,) as he called Jackson and his party. A break between Jacicson and Calhoun, which had been threatening for a long time, now became inevitable. Nullification by South Carolina of the Federal tariff laws fol lowed. Jackson denounced Calhoun and the nullification movement in December 1832. Civil war was imminent. Fearing the worst, Clay now changed his view entirely as to the tariff, brought in a compromise measure and extended his hand to Calhoun, who joined him in oppo sition to Jacicson. The compromise tariff scheme of Clay became a law in 1833 and nulli fication was given up in South Carolina. A second time he had patched up a peace between the irreconcilable interests of the country. Clay remained in the Senate during the next decade and he was the master mind of the Whig party, as his followers now came to be called. He planned the campaign of 1836 against Van Buren and he seems to have named the three Whig candidates of that year, the object being to cause the election to be carried to the House as in 1824. Failing in this, he successfully blocked every important measure of Yan_Buren till June of 1840, when another election was approaching. He was a candidate for the nomination of the Whigs in 1840, but William Henry Harrison defeated him. It was a bitter pill. Clay swallowed it and lent him self loyally to the campaign which followed— the famous log-cabin and hard cider campaign. Harrison won. Clay shaped the new adminis tration and laid plans for the future only to find that death of President Harrison removed from his reach control of affairs. When John Tyler succeeded to the presidency Clay undertook to guide the footsteps of the °inex perience& man. Tyler refused guidance and Clay denounced him and called upon the Cab inet to resign. The Administration broke
to pieces and a new Cabinet was formed. Clay now retired from the Senate with a formal farewell, which reminds one of Jacicson's farewell of 1837. But in two years he was again the choice of his party for the presidency. The issue then before the country, the annexation of Texas, had been made by Tyler and on it the Whigs were sorely divided; one-half following the lead of John Quincy Adams, declared that annexation would be to them the dissolution of the Union; the other half, guided by Southemers lilce Preston and Mangum, were almost as earnestly in favor of annexation. Etetween these diverging forces Clay made a poor campaign and lost the elec tion to James K. Polk, whom he had ridiculed at the beginning with the query: °Who is Polk?)) This third defeat was an ordeal which he did not endure without signs of bitterness. He remarked in a letter that he hoped the country would survive. The Mexican War developed hostile groups in the Democratic party and in 1848 Clay was again a candidate before the Whig convention. Thurlow Weed, architect and master of the great political machine of New York, aided by Alexander Stephens of Georgia and John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, former friends of Clay, secured the nomination of Gen. Zachary Taylor, who was elected. Taylor organized his administration without the aid of Clay. But the problem of the time was once again to determine which of the two hostile sections, the East or the South, should have its way. The territories which had been ceded by Mexico were to be organ ized, and California was asking admission to the Union as a State. The South demanded that slavery should be allowed in the territories and that California should come in as a slave State or not be admitted at all. How could the inexperienced Taylor solve the problem? More than 70 years of age, and marked with the evidences of many campaigns, Clay offered himself once more to the legislature of Ken tucky as a candidate for the Senate. He was elected without difficulty and he appeared in Washington in December 1849. The South erners, both Whigs and Democrats, were pre paring for a Southern convention in Nashville the following June. The object of this gather ing was to secede from the Union in event slav ery should be excluded from the new terri tories. The leaders of the East were equally resolute. There was to be no further extension of slavery and they were talking of secession in the event of failure. In January Clay offered himself as a compromiser of the quarrel. Later he prepared his program of concession and sought support from Webster, from his old friends of the South and frcen moderate news papers like the Washington Union, official organ of the Democratic party. Calhoun op posed him. William H. Seward of New York opposed and the influence of the President was wholly against him. Webster's speech of 7 March gave him a great advantage and later the members of the Nashville convention elected his friends to preside over that body. Still, the South stood firm against him in Wash ington, and Taylor threatened to send an army into the disputed region. The deadlodc lasted till 9 July, when the death of the President put Clay's friend Fillmore into the executive chair. The Cabinet was reorganized in the interest of the compromise and one by one the items of the measure became law during the remainder of the summer. The principal of these were the admission of California as a free State, the enactment of a rigid fugitive slave law and the provision that the new terri tories south of the line of 36° 30' might be left to determine for themselves whether they would have slavery or not It was the greatest triumph of Clay's life, the third treaty of peace between the sections which he had arranged. The coun try received the news of the passage of the compromise with salutes of a hundred guns in the leading cities and men breathed a sigh of relief when they knew the crisis was passed. Some Southern leaders retired from public life as a protest and extremists in New England declared they would never obey the fugitive slave law. But the great majority North and South were satisfied. Yet the greatest hope of Clay's life had been repeatedly denied him be cause of that sectional rivalry which he alone had proved able to quiet from time to time. He felt that he had been hardly handled by the country and the people of the country felt dur ing these closing years of his life that they had refused the highest office in their gift to the greatest man of his time and country. His health was already broken; still he remained in the Senate to the last, where he died on the scene of his greatest triumphs as well as of his bitterest defeats.
Bibliography.— Clay, Thomas H., 'Henry Clay' (in (American Crisis Biographies,' Phil adelphia 1910) ; Colton, Calvin, 'The Life and Times of Henry Clay' (2 vols., New York 1846) ; Sargent, Epes, 'Life and Public Serv ices of Henry Clay' (New York 1859) ; Schurz, Carl, (Henry Clay' (in (American Statesmen' Boston 1887). There are still other works on Clay, but no really good and critical biography has thus far