page_title: Henry Clay
section_title: Secretary of State
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Clay / Secretary of State
caption_attribution_description: English: Map showing the route of the historic National Road — at its greatest completion in 1839.
context_page_description: Henry Clay Sr. was an American attorney and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the Senate and House. He was the seventh House Speaker and the ninth Secretary of State. He received electoral votes for president in the 1824, 1832, and 1844 presidential elections. He also helped found both the National Republican Party and the Whig Party. For his role in defusing sectional crises, he earned the appellation of the "Great Compromiser" and was part of the "Great Triumvirate."
  Clay was born in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1777 and launched a legal career in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1797. As a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Clay won election to the Kentucky state legislature in 1803 and to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1810. He was chosen as Speaker of the House in early 1811 and, along with President James Madison, led the United States into the War of 1812 against Britain. In 1814, he helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which brought an end to the War of 1812.
context_section_description: As secretary of state, Clay was the top foreign policy official in the Adams administration, but he also held several domestic duties, such as oversight of the patent office. Clay came to like Adams, a former rival, and they developed a strong working relationship. Adams and Clay were both wary of forming entangling alliances with the emerging states, and they continued to uphold the Monroe Doctrine, which called for European non-intervention in former colonies. Clay was rebuffed in his efforts to reach a commercial treaty and a settlement of the Canada–United States border with Britain, and was also unsuccessful in his attempts to make the French pay for damages arising from attacks on American shipping during the Napoleonic Wars. He had more success in negotiating commercial treaties with Latin American republics, reaching "most favoured nation" trade agreements in attempt to ensure that no European country had a trading advantage over the United States. Seeking deeper relations with Latin American countries, Clay strongly favored sending American delegates to the Congress of Panama, but his efforts were defeated by opponents in Senate.
  Adams proposed an ambitious domestic program based in large part on Clay's American System, but Clay warned the president that many of his proposals held little chance of passage in the 19th Congress. Adams's opponents defeated many of his proposals, including the establishment of a naval academy and a national observatory, but Adams did preside over the construction or initiation of major infrastructure projects like the National Road and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Followers of Adams began to call themselves National Republicans, and Jackson's followers became known as Democrats. Both campaigns spread untrue stories about the opposing candidates. Adams followers denounced Jackson as a demagogue, and some Adams-aligned papers accused Jackson's wife, Rachel Jackson, of bigamy. Though Clay was not directly involved in these attacks, his failure to denounce them earned him the lifelong enmity of Andrew Jackson.
  Clay was one of Adams's most important political advisers, but, due to his myriad responsibilities as secretary of state, he was often unable to take part in campaigning. As Adams was averse to the use of patronage for political purposes, Jackson's campaign enjoyed a marked advantage in organization, and Adams allies like Clay and Daniel Webster were unable to create as powerful of an organization around the president. In the 1828 election, Jackson took 56 percent of the popular vote and won almost every state outside of New England; Clay was especially distressed by Jackson's victory in Kentucky. The election result represented not only the victory of a man Clay viewed as unqualified and unprincipled, but also a rejection of Clay's domestic policies.
caption: Clay supported construction of the National Road, which extended west from Cumberland, Maryland.
exif: {}