Cam-Cla: Campbell through Clayton

See below for annotated biographies of anti-slavery Whigs. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

CAMPBELL, Lewis Davis, diplomatist, born in Franklin, Ohio, 9 August, 1811; died 26 November, 1882. He published a Whig newspaper at Hamilton, Ohio, from 1831 till 1836, supporting Henry Clay, and was then admitted to the bar and began to practice at Hamilton. He was elected to Congress as a Whig, and served from 3 December 1849, till 25 May, 1858.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

CAMPBELL, Lewis Davis, diplomatist, born in Franklin, Ohio, 9 August, 1811; died 26 November, 1882. On leaving school he was apprenticed to a printer in 1828, and was afterward assistant editor of the Cincinnati" Gazette." He published a Whig newspaper at Hamilton, Ohio, from 1831 till 1836, supporting Henry Clay, and was then admitted to the bar and began to practice at Hamilton. He was elected to Congress as a Whig, and served from 3 December 1849, till 25 May, 1858, being chairman of the Ways and Means Committee during his last term. He claimed to have been elected again in 1858, but the house gave the seat to C. L. Vallandigham. He served as colonel of an Ohio regiment of volunteer infantry from 1861 till 1862, when he on account of failing health. President Johnson appointed him minister to Mexico in December, 1865; but, before leaving for his post, he was a delegate to the Philadelphia union Convention and the Cleveland soldiers' Convention of 1866. He sailed for Mexico, in company with General Sherman, 11 November, 1866, authorized to tender to President Juarez the moral support of the United States, and to offer him the use of our military force to aid in the restoration of law. Mr. Campbell remained in Mexico until 1868, and from 1871 till 1873 was again a member of Congress. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I p. 515.

studied law in Abingdon and Winchester, Virginia, was admitted to the bar in Tennessee, and practised in Carthage. He was chosen district attorney for the fourth District of his state in 1831, and a member of the legislature in 1835. He raised a cavalry company, and served as its captain in the Creek and Florida Wars of 1836, and from 1837 till 1843 was a Whig member of Congress from Tennessee. He was elected major-general of militia in 1844, and served in the Mexican War as colonel of the 1st Tennessee Volunteers, distinguishing himself in the battles of Monterey and Cerro Gordo, where he commanded a brigade after General Pillow was wounded. He was governor of Tennessee in 1851–3, and in 1857 was chosen, by unanimous vote of the legislature, judge of the state circuit court. He canvassed the state in opposition to secession in 1861, and on 30 June, 1862, without solicitation, was appointed by President Lincoln brigadier-general in the National Army. He resigned, 26 January, 1863, on account of failing health. At the close of the war he was again chosen to Congress, but was not allowed to take his seat until near the end of the first session in 1866. He served until 3 March, 1867, and was a member of the committee on the New Orleans riots. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 516.



CHANDLER, Zachariah, 1813-1879, statesman, abolitionist. Mayor of Detroit, 1851-1852. U.S. Senator 1857-1975, 1879. Secretary of the Interior, 1875-1877. Active in Underground Railroad in Detroit area. Helped organize the Republican Party in 1854. Introduced Confiscation Bill in Senate, July 1861. Was a leading Radical Republican senator. Chandler was a vigorous opponent of slavery. He opposed the Dred Scott U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the Fugitive Slave Law. In 1858, opposed the admission of Kansas as a slave state under the Lecompton Constitution. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 574-575; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 618; Congressional Globe)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 574-575:

CHANDLER, Zachariah, senator, born in Bedford, New Hampshire, 10 December, 1813; died in Chicago, Illinois, 1 November, 1879. After receiving a common-school education he taught for one winter, at the same time managing his father's farm. He was noted when a youth for physical strength and endurance. It is said that, being offered by his father the choice between a collegiate education and the sum of $1,000, he chose the latter. He moved to Detroit in 1833 and engaged in the dry-goods business, in which he was energetic and successful. He soon became a prominent Whig, and was active in support of the so-called “Underground Railroad,” of which Detroit was an important terminus. His public life began in 1851 by his election as mayor of Detroit. In 1852 he was nominated for governor by the Whigs, and, although his success was hopeless, the large vote he received brought him into public notice. He was active in the organization of the Democratic Party in 1854, and in January, 1857, was elected to the U. S. Senate to succeed General Lewis Cass. He made his first important speech on 12 March, 1858, opposing the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution, and continued to take active part in the debates on that and allied questions. In 1858, when Senator Green, of Missouri, had threatened Simon Cameron with an assault for words spoken in debate, Mr. Chandler, with Mr. Cameron and Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, drew up a written agreement, the contents of which were not to be made public till the death of all the signers, but which was believed to be a pledge to resent an attack made on any one of the three. On 11 February, 1861, he wrote the famous so-called “blood letter” to Governor Blair, of Michigan. It received its name from the sentence, “Without a little blood-letting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush.” This letter was widely quoted through the country, and was acknowledged and defended by Mr. Chandler on the floor of the Senate. Mr. Chandler was a firm friend of President Lincoln, though he was more radical than the latter in his ideas, and often differed with the president as to matters of policy. When the first call for troops was made, he assisted by giving money and by personal exertion. He regretted that 500,000 men had not been called for instead of 75,000, and said that the short-term enlistment was a mistake. At the beginning of the extra session of Congress in July, 1861, he introduced a sweeping confiscation-bill, thinking that stern measures would deter wavering persons from taking up arms against the government; but it was not passed in its original form, though Congress ultimately adopted his views. On 16 July, 1862, Mr. Chandler vehemently assailed General McClellan in the Senate, although he was warned that such a course might be politically fatal. He was, however, returned to the Senate in 1863, and in 1864 actively aided in the re-election of President Lincoln. He was again elected to the Senate in 1869. During all of his terms he was chairman of the committee on commerce and a member of other important committees, including that on the conduct of the war. In October, 1874, President Grant tendered him the post of secretary of the interior, to fill the place made vacant by the resignation of Columbus Delano, and he held this office until President Grant's retirement, doing much to reform abuses in the department. He was chairman of the Republican National committee in 1876, and took an active part in the presidential campaign of that year. He was again elected to the Senate in February, 1879, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Isaac P. Christiancy, who had succeeded him four years before. On 2 March, 1879, he made a speech in the Senate denouncing Jefferson Davis, which brought him into public notice again, and he was regarded in his own state as a possible presidential candidate. He went to Chicago on 31 October, 1879, to deliver a political speech, and was found dead in his room on the following morning. During the greater portion of his life Mr. Chandler was engaged in large business enterprises, from which he realized a handsome fortune. He was a man of commanding appearance, and possessed an excellent practical judgment, great energy, and indomitable perseverance. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 574-575.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 618:

CHANDLER, ZACHARIAH (December 10, 1813- November 1, 1879), senator, Republican boss, was born at Bedford, New Hampshire. His father, Samuel Chandler, was a descendant of William Chandler, who emigrated from England and settled at Roxbury, Massachusetts, about 1637 (George Chandler, The Chandler Family, 1872, p. 818). His mother, Margaret Orr, was the oldest daughter of Colonel John Orr. He received a common school education, and in 1833 removed to Detroit, where he opened a general store, and eventually through trade, banking, and land speculation became one of the richest men in Michigan. On December 10, 1844, he was married to Letitia Grace Douglass of New York. He made campaign speeches for Taylor in 1848, served for a year (1851-52) as mayor of Detroit, and in 1852 offered himself as a Whig candidate for governor and was defeated. He was one of the signers of the call for the meeting at Jackson, Michigan, July 6, 1854, which launched the Republican party, and "the leading spirit" of the Buffalo convention called to aid free state migration to Kansas (George F. Hoar, Autobiography, 1903, II, 75). In 1856 he was a delegate to the Republican national convention at Pittsburgh, and was made a member of the national committee of the party. In January 1857, he was elected to the United States Senate in succession to Lewis Cass [q.v.], and held his seat until March 3, 1875. In the Senate he allied himself with the radical anti-slavery element of the Republicans, although hostile to Charles Sumner, and was later recognized as one of the most outspoken enemies of secession. From March 1861 to 1875 he was chairman of the Committee on Commerce, to whose jurisdiction the appropriations for rivers and harbors, later known as the "pork barrel," were assigned. At the outbreak of the Civil War he exerted himself to raise and equip the first regiment of Michigan volunteers. He was a member of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War; initiated acts for the collection and administration of abandoned property in the South (March 3, 1863) and for the further regulation of intercourse with the insurrectionary states (July 2, 1864); bitterly denounced the incompetence of McClellan in a speech at Jackson, Michigan (July 6, 1862) which he regarded as one of his most important public services; supported the proposal of a national bank; voted for greenbacks as an emergency measure while strongly resisting inflation of the currency; and approved of the Reconstruction acts although criticizing them as in some respects too lax. His aggressive Republicanism was matched by his clamorous jingoism in regard to Great Britain; on January 15, 1866, he offered a resolution, which was tabled, for non-intercourse with Great Britain for its refusal to entertain the Alabama claims, and in 1867, when the question of recognizing Abyssinia as a belligerent in its war with Great Britain was under consideration, he submitted (November 29) a resolution "recognizing to Abyssinia the same rights which the British had recognized to the Confederacy" (Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 1 Session, p. 810). He was one of the promoters and most influential members of the Republican Congressional Committee, serving as its chairman in the campaigns of 1868 and 1876. From the beginning of his senatorial career he used his Federal patronage to strengthen his political power, and by methods openly partisan and despotic if not actually corrupt obtained control of the Republican machine in Michigan, and was for years the undisputed boss of his party in the state. The Democratic landslide of 1874, however, broke his power, and he was defeated for reelection to the Senate. In October 1875, he became secretary of the interior, retaining the office until the close of Grant's second administration. His reorganization of the department was attended by wholesale dismissals for alleged dishonesty or incompetence. He was again elected to the Senate in February 1879, to fill a vacancy caused by the resignation of Isaac P. Christiancy [q.v.].

[Aside from the Biography Congress Dir. (1913), the Journals of the Senate, the Congressional Globe, and Congressional Record, the chief source is the anonymous Zachariah Chandler: an Outline Sketch of His Life and Public Services (1880), which is supplemented in a number of details by Wilmer C. Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chandler, 1811-75 (1917), a doctoral dissertation of the University of Chicago.]

W.M.



CHASE, Salmon Portland, 1808-1873, statesman, Governor of Ohio, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1864-1873, lawyer, abolitionist, member, Whig, Liberty Party, Free Soil Party, Anti-Slavery Republican Party. “A slave is a person held, as property, by legalized force, against natural right.” – Chase.

“The constitution found slavery, and left it, a state institution—the creature and dependant of state law—wholly local in its existence and character. It did not make it a national institution… Why, then, fellow-citizens, are we now appealing to you?...Why is it that the whole nation is moved, as with a mighty wind, by the discussion of the questions involved in the great issue now made up between liberty and slavery? It is, fellow citizens—and we beg you to mark this—it is because slavery has overleaped its prescribed limits and usurped the control of the national government. We ask you to acquaint yourselves fully with the details and particulars belonging to the topics which we have briefly touched, and we do not doubt that you will concur with us in believing that the honor, the welfare, the safety of our country imperiously require the absolute and unqualified divorce of the government from slavery.”

“Having resolved on my political course, I devoted all the time and means I could command to the work of spreading the principles and building up the organization of the party of constitutional freedom then inaugurated. Sometimes, indeed, all I could do seemed insignificant, while the labors I had to perform, the demands upon my very limited resources by necessary contributions, taxed severely all my ability… It seems to me now, on looking back, that I could not help working if I would, and that I was just as really called in the course of Providence to my labors for human freedom as ever any other laborer in the great field of the world was called to his appointed work.”

(Blue, 2005, pp. 19, 30, 34, 61, 70-73, 76-78, 84, 123, 124, 177, 178, 209, 220, 225, 226, 228, 247, 248, 259; Dumond, 1961; Filler, 1960, pp. 142, 176, 187, 197-198, 229, 246; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 4-5, 8-9, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 33-36, 61-64, 67, 68, 70-72, 76, 87, 89, 94, 118, 129, 136, 156, 165, 166, 168-169, 177, 187, 191, 193, 195-196, 224, 228, 248; Pease, 1965, pp. 384-394; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 46, 56, 58, 136, 173, 298, 353-354, 421, 655-656; Wilson, 1872, pp. 167-173; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 585-588; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 34; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 4, p. 739; Hart, Albert Bushnell, Salmon Portland Chase, 1899)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 585-588:

CHASE, Salmon Portland, statesman, born in Cornish, New Hampshire, 13 January, 1808; died in New York City, 7 May, 1873. He was named for his uncle, Salmon, who died in Portland, and he used to say that he was his uncle's monument. He was a descendant in the ninth generation of Thomas Chase, of Chesham, England, and in the sixth of Aquila Chase, who came from England and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, about 1640. Salmon Portland was the eighth of the eleven children of Ithamar Chase and his wife Jannette Ralston, who was of Scottish blood. He was born in the house built by his grandfather, which still stands overlooking Connecticut River and in the afternoon shadow of Ascutney mountain. Of his father's seven brothers, three were lawyers, Dudley becoming a U. S. Senator; two were physicians; Philander became a bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church; and one, like his father, was a farmer. His earliest teacher was Daniel Breck, afterward a jurist in Kentucky. When the boy was eight years old his parents moved to Keene, where his mother had inherited a little property. This was invested in a glass-factory; but a revision of the tariff, by which the duty on glass was lowered, ruined the business, and soon afterward the father died. Salmon was sent to school at Windsor, and made considerable progress in Latin and Greek. In 1820 his uncle, the bishop of Ohio, offered to take him into his family, and the boy set out in the spring, with his brother and the afterward famous Henry R. Schoolcraft, to make the journey to what was then considered the distant west. They were taken from Buffalo to Cleveland by the “Walk-in-the-Water,” the first steamboat on the great lakes. He spent three years in Worthington and Cincinnati with his uncle, who attended to his education personally till he went to England in 1823, when the boy returned home, the next year entered Dartmouth as a junior, and was graduated in 1826. He at once established a classical school for boys in Washington, D. C., which he conducted with success, at the same time studying law with William Wirt. Mr. Chase gave much of his leisure to light literature, and a poem that was addressed by him to Mr. Wirt's daughters was printed and is still extant. In 1830, having completed his studies, he closed the school, was admitted to the bar in Washington, and settled in Cincinnati, where he soon obtained a large practice. In politics he did not identify himself with either of the great parties; but on one point he was clear from the first: he was unalterably opposed to slavery, and in this sentiment he was confirmed by witnessing the destruction of the “Philanthropist” office by a pro-slavery mob in 1836. In 1837 he defended a fugitive slave woman, claimed under the law of 1793, and took the highest ground against the constitutionality of that law. One of the oldest lawyers in the court-room was heard to remark concerning him: “There is a promising young man who has just ruined himself.” In 1837 Mr. Chase also defended his friend James G. Birney in a suit for harboring a Negro slave, and in 1838 he reviewed with great severity a report of the judiciary committee of the state senate, refusing trial by jury to slaves, and in a second suit defended Mr. Birney. When it became evident, after the brief administration of Harrison was over and that of Tyler begun, that no more effective opposition to the encroachments of slavery was to be expected from the Whig than from the Democratic Party, a Liberty Party was organized in Ohio in December, 1841, and Mr. Chase was foremost among its founders. The address, which was written by Mr. Chase, contained these passages, clearly setting forth the issues of a mighty struggle that was to continue for twenty-five years and be closed only by a bloody war: “The constitution found slavery, and left it, a state institution—the creature and dependant of state law—wholly local in its existence and character. It did not make it a national institution. . . . Why, then, fellow-citizens, are we now appealing to you? . . . Why is it that the whole nation is moved, as with a mighty wind, by the discussion of the questions involved in the great issue now made up between liberty and slavery? It is, fellow-citizens—and we beg you to mark this—it is because slavery has overleaped its prescribed limits and usurped the control of the national government. We ask you to acquaint yourselves fully with the details and particulars belonging to the topics which we have briefly touched, and we do not doubt that you will concur with us in believing that the honor, the welfare, the safety of our country imperiously require the absolute and unqualified divorce of the government from slavery.” Writing of this late in life Mr. Chase said: “Having resolved on my political course, I devoted all the time and means I could command to the work of spreading the principles and building up the organization of the party of constitutional freedom then inaugurated. Sometimes, indeed, all I could do seemed insignificant, while the labors I had to perform, and the demands upon my very limited resources by necessary contributions, taxed severely all my ability. . . . It seems to me now, on looking back, that I could not help working if I would, and that I was just as really called in the course of Providence to my labors for human freedom as ever any other laborer in the great field of the world was called to his appointed work.” Mr. Chase acted as counsel for so many blacks who were claimed as fugitives that he was at length called by Kentuckians the “attorney-general for runaway Negroes,” and the colored people of Cincinnati presented him with a silver pitcher “for his various public services in behalf of the oppressed.” One of his most noted cases was the defence of John Van Zandt (the original of John Van Trompe in “Uncle Tom's Cabin”) in 1842, who was prosecuted for harboring fugitive slaves because he had overtaken a party of them on the road and given them a ride in his wagon. In the final hearing, 1846, William H. Seward was associated with Mr. Chase, neither of them receiving any compensation.

When the Liberty Party, in a national convention held in Buffalo, New York, in 1843, nominated James G. Birney for president, the platform was almost entirely the composition of Mr. Chase. But he vigorously opposed the resolution, offered by John Pierpont, declaring that the fugitive-slave-law clause of the constitution was not binding in conscience, but might be mentally excepted in any oath to support the constitution. In 1840 the Liberty Party had cast but one in 360 of the entire popular vote of the country. In 1844 it cast one in forty, and caused the defeat of Mr. Clay. The Free-Soil Convention that met in Buffalo in 1848 and nominated Martin Van Buren for president, with Charles Francis Adams for vice-president, was presided over by Mr. Chase. This time the party cast one in nine of the whole number of votes. In February, 1849, the Democrats and the Free-Soilers in the Ohio legislature formed a coalition, one result of which was the election of Mr. Chase to the U. S. Senate. Agreeing with the Democracy of Ohio, which, by resolution in convention, had declared slavery to be an evil, he supported its state policy and nominees, but declared that he would desert it if it deserted the anti-slavery position. In the Senate, 26 and 27 March, 1850, he made a notable speech against the so-called “compromise measures,” which included the fugitive-slave law, and offered several amendments, all of which were voted down. When the Democratic Convention at Baltimore nominated Franklin Pierce for president in 1852, and approved of the compromise acts of 1850, Senator Chase dissolved his connection with the Democratic Party in Ohio. At this time he addressed a letter to Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, of New York, suggesting and vindicating the idea of an independent democracy. He made a platform, which was substantially that adopted at the Pittsburg Convention, in the same year. He continued his support to the independent Democrats until the Kansas-Nebraska bill came up, when he vigorously opposed the repeal of the Missouri compromise, wrote an appeal to the people against it, and made the first elaborate exposure of its character. His persistent attacks upon it in the Senate thoroughly roused the north, and are admitted to have influenced in a remarkable degree the subsequent struggle. During his senatorial career Mr. Chase also advocated economy in the national finances, a Pacific Railroad by the shortest and best route, the homestead law (which was intended to develop the northern territories), and cheap postage, and held that the national treasury should defray the expense of providing for safe navigation of the lakes, as well as of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

In 1855 he was elected governor of Ohio by the opponents of the Pierce administration. His inaugural address recommended single districts for legislative representation, annual instead of biennial sessions of the legislature, and an extended educational system. Soon after his inauguration occurred the Garner tragedy, so called, in which a fugitive slave mother, near Cincinnati, attempted to kill all of her children, and did kill one, to prevent them from being borne back to slave-life in Kentucky. This and other slave-hunts in Ohio so roused and increased the anti-slavery sentiment in that place that Governor Chase was re-nominated by acclamation, and was re-elected by a small majority, though the American or Know-Nothing Party had a candidate in the field. In the National Republican Convention, held at Chicago in 1860, the vote on the first ballot stood: Seward, 173½; Lincoln, 102; Cameron, 50½; Chase, 49. On the third ballot Mr. Lincoln lacked but four of the number necessary to nominate, and these were given by Mr. Chase's friends before the result was declared. When Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated president, 4 March, 1861, he made Governor Chase secretary of the treasury. The difficulty that he was immediately called upon to grapple with is thus described by Mr. Greeley: “When he accepted the office of secretary of the treasury the finances were already in chaos; the current revenue being inadequate, even in the absence of all expenditure or preparation for war, his predecessor (Cobb, of Georgia) having attempted to borrow $10,000,000, in October, 1860, and obtained only $7,022,000—the bidders to whom the balance was awarded choosing to forfeit their initial deposit rather than take and pay for their bonds. Thenceforth he had tided over, till his resignation, by selling treasury notes, payable a year from date, at 6 to 12 per cent. discount; and when, after he had retired from the scene, General Dix, who succeeded him in Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, attempted (February, 1861) to borrow a small sum on twenty-year bonds at 6 per cent., he was obliged to sell those bonds at an average discount of 9½ per cent. Hence, of Mr. Chase's first loan of $8,000,000, for which bids were opened (2 April) ten days before Beauregard first fired on Fort Sumter, the offerings ranged from 5 to 10 per cent. discount; and only $3,099,000 were tendered at or under 6 per cent. discount—he, in the face of a vehement clamor, declining all bids at higher rates of discount than 6 per cent., and placing soon afterward the balance of the $8,000,000 in two-year treasury notes at par or a fraction over.” When the secretary went to New York for his first loan, the London “Times” declared that he had “coerced $50,000,000 from the banks, but would not fare so well at the London Exchange.” Three years later it said “the hundredth part of Mr. Chase's embarrassments would tax Mr. Gladstone's ingenuity to the utmost, and set the [British] public mind in a ferment of excitement.” In his conference with the bankers the secretary said he hoped they would be able to take the loans on such terms as could be admitted. “If you cannot,” said he, “I shall go back to Washington and issue notes for circulation; for it is certain that the war must go on until the rebellion is put down, if we have to put out paper until it takes a thousand dollars to buy a breakfast.” At this time the amount of coin in circulation in the country was estimated at $210,000,000; and it soon became evident that this was insufficient for carrying on the war. The banks could not sell the bonds for coin, and could not meet their obligations in coin, and on 27 December, 1861, they agreed to suspend specie payment at the close of the year. In his first report, submitted on the 9th of that month, Secretary Chase recommended retrenchment of expenses wherever possible, confiscation of the property of those in arms against the government, an increase of duties and of the tax on spirits, and a national currency, with a system of national banking associations. This last recommendation was carried out in the issue of “greenbacks,” which were made a legal tender for everything but customs duties, and the establishment of the national banking law. His management of the finances of the government during the first three years of the great war has received nothing but the highest praise. He resigned the secretaryship on 30 June, 1864, and was succeeded a few days later by William P. Fessenden. On 6 December, 1864, President Lincoln nominated him to be chief justice of the United States, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Roger B. Taney, and the nomination was immediately confirmed by the Senate. In this office he presided at the impeachment trial of President Johnson in 1868. In that year his name was frequently mentioned in connection with the Democratic nomination for the presidency, and in answer to a letter from the chairman of the Democratic National committee he wrote:

“For more than a quarter of a century I have been, in my political views and sentiments, a Democrat, and I still think that upon questions of finance, commerce, and administration generally, the old Democratic principles afford the best guidance. What separated me in former times from both parties was the depth and positiveness of my convictions on the slavery question. On that question I thought the Democratic Party failed to make a just application of Democratic principles, and regarded myself as more democratic than the Democrats. In 1849 I was elected to the Senate by the united votes of the old-line Democrats and independent Democrats, and subsequently made earnest efforts to bring about a union of all Democrats on the ground of the limitation of slavery to the states in which it then existed, and non-intervention in these states by Congress. Had that union been effected, it is my firm belief that the country would have escaped the late Civil War and all its evils. I never favored interference by Congress with slavery, but as a war measure Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation had my hearty assent, and I united, as a member of his administration, in the pledge made to maintain the freedom of the enfranchised people. I have been, and am, in favor of so much of the reconstruction policy of Congress as based the re-organization of the state governments of the south upon universal suffrage. I think that President Johnson was right in regarding the southern states, except Virginia and Tennessee, as being, at the close of the war, without governments which the U.S. government could properly recognize—without governors, judges, legislators, or other state functionaries; but wrong in limiting, by his reconstruction proclamations, the right of suffrage to whites, and only such whites as had the qualification he required. On the other hand, it seemed to me, Congress was right in not limiting, by its reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to the whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens, and of all unable to take a prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of arbitrary military governments for the states, and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions, no classes excluded from suffrage, and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the constitution and laws, and sincere attachment to the constitutional government of the United States. I am glad to know that many intelligent southern Democrats agree with me in these views, and are willing to accept universal suffrage and universal amnesty as the basis of reconstruction and restoration. They see that the shortest way to revive prosperity, possible only with contented industry, is universal suffrage now, and universal amnesty, with removal of all disabilities, as speedily as possible through the action of the state and national governments. I have long been a believer in the wisdom and justice of securing the right of suffrage to all citizens by state constitutions and legislation. It is the best guarantee of the stability of institutions, and the prosperity of communities. My views on this subject were well known when the Democrats elected me to the Senate in 1849. I have now answered your letter as I think I ought to answer it. I beg you to believe me—for I say it in all sincerity—that I do not desire the office of president, nor a nomination for it. Nor do I know that, with my views and convictions, I am a suitable candidate for any party. Of that my countrymen must judge.”

Judge Chase subsequently prepared a declaration of principles, embodying the ideas of his letter, and submitted it to those Democrats who desired his nomination, as a platform in that event. But this was not adopted by the convention, and the plan to nominate him, if there was such a plan, failed. In June, 1870, he suffered an attack of paralysis, and from that time till his death he was an invalid. As in the case of President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, his integrity was shown by the fact that, though he had been a member of the administration when the government was spending millions of dollars a day, he died comparatively poor. His remains were buried in Washington; but in October, 1886, were removed, with appropriate ceremony, to Cincinnati, Ohio, and deposited in Spring Grove cemetery near that city. Besides his reports and decisions, Mr. Chase published a compilation of the statutes of Ohio, with annotations and an historical sketch (3 vols., Cincinnati, 1832). See “Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase,” by J. W. Schuckers (New York, 1874). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 585-588.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 34:

CHASE, SALMON PORTLAND (January 13, 1808-May 7, 1873), statesman, secretary of the treasury under Lincoln, and chief justice during Reconstruction, was born at Cornish, New Hampshire. His line can be traced through nine generations to Thomas Chase of Chesham, England, and through six generations to the American emigrant, Aquila Chase, who settled at Newbury, Massachusetts, about 1640. From Newbury the Chases moved to Sutton, Massachusetts, and later to Cornish, a frontier community on the Connecticut River. The Cornish farmer, Ithamar Chase, father of Salmon, held various state and local offices and was in politics a Federalist; the mother, Janette Ralston, was a woman of vigorous Scotch ancestry. Salmon was the eighth of eleven children. In his childhood the family moved to Keene, New Hampshire, where Ithamar became a tavern keeper. The boy received his early training in the Keene district school and in a private school kept by a Mr. Dunham at Windsor, Vermont.

The death of his father occurred when the boy was nine years old, and shortly after this he was placed under the stern guidance of his uncle, Philander Chase [q.v.], bishop of Ohio, a vigorous pioneer leader in the Protestant Episcopal Church. For two years, the boy lived with the bishop at Worthington, near Columbus, Ohio, entering the church school which the bishop conducted. His days at Worthington were devoted to classical studies, and he was at this time confirmed in the Episcopal Church; but his uncle's hope of making him an Episcopal clergyman was not realized. When Bishop Chase became president of Cincinnati College in the fall of 1821 Salmon entered the college; and a very serious student he seems to have been, to judge by his own statement that he had little to do with college pranks but spent much time "in reading, either under the bishop's direction, or at my own will." "I used to meditate a great deal," he added, "on religious topics; for my sentiments of religious obligation and . . . responsibility were profound" (Schuckers, p. 16). Leaving Cincinnati after less than a year, he spent some months in preparatory study, and then entered as a junior in Dartmouth College, from which he graduated without marked distinction in 1826. He then solicited the influence of another uncle, Dudley Chase, United States senator from Vermont, for a government clerkship; but, this being refused, he conducted a school for boys in Washington, having at one time under his charge sons of all but one of the members of John Quincy Adams's cabinet. In Washington and Baltimore he frequently visited in the cultured home of William Wirt [q.v.]; and his otherwise somber diary glows with youthful romance and sprightliness as it records the evenings spent in the company of the charming Wirt daughters.

Having determined upon his career, he read law under the nominal supervision of Wirt; and with scant legal preparation he was admitted to the bar on December 14, 1829. The following year he settled in Cincinnati, where in addition to legal duties he was soon occupied with anti-slavery activities and with various literary ventures. In 1830 he assisted in organizing the Cincinnati Lyceum which presented a series of lectures, and became himself a lecturer and magazine contributor. In his lecture-essay on the "Life and Character of Henry Brougham" (North American Review, July 1831) his reforming instinct was manifest in his pointed comments on legal abuses of the time. While waiting for clients the lawyer-author sought unsuccessfully to establish a literary magazine for the West, and then turned his energies into the compilation of the Statutes of Ohio (3 volumes, Cinn., 1833-35), a standard work which required heavy labor in the preparation and proved most serviceable to lawyers.

The events of Chase's private life are intimately related in his diary and family memoranda. Three marriages are recorded: the first to Katherine Jane Garniss (March 4, 1834), who died December 1, 1835; the second to Eliza Ann Smith (September 26, 1839), who died September 29, 1845; and the third to Sarah Bella Dunlop Ludlow (November 6, 1846), who died January 13, 1852. Six daughters were born to him, of whom four died when very young. The births and deaths of his children, and the loss of his wives, are recorded in his diary with a revealing tenderness and a grief which takes refuge in religion. Two children reached maturity: the brilliant Katherine, daughter of his second wife, who became the wife of Governor William Sprague of Rhode Island, and Janette, daughter of his third wife, who became Mrs. William S. Hoyt of New York City.

Despite scornful opposition, Chase prominently defended escaping slaves, and was called the "attorney-general for runaway negroes." He labored unsuccessfully to obtain the release of Matilda, a slave woman befriended by J. G. Birney; and when Birney himself was indicted for harboring a fugitive, Chase carried the case to the supreme court of Ohio, where he made a vigorous argument, contending that Matilda, having been voluntarily brought into a free state by her master, became free (Birney vs. Ohio, 8 Ohio, 230). Unwilling to commit itself to the Chase doctrine with which it was evidently impressed, the court directed the dismissal of the indictment against Birney on merely technical grounds. On another occasion Chase defended Vanzandt (the original of John Van Trompe in Uncle Tom's Cabin), prosecuted for aiding the escape of slaves from Kentucky. This case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, and in its argument Chase was associated with William H. Seward, both giving their services without compensation. Chase contended that the federal government under the Constitution had "nothing whatever to do, directly, with slavery"; that "no claim to persons as property can be maintained under any ... law of the United States"; and that the fugitive-slave act of 1793 was unconstitutional. The case was lost for his client; but it did much to bring Chase into prominence.

In politics Chase subordinated party interests to the central issue of slavery. Though formerly a Whig, he joined the Liberty party after the nomination of Birney in 1840; and in various of the conventions of this party, state and national, he was an outstanding leader. The resolutions of the Buffalo convention of August 1843 came chiefly from his pen; and the Southern and Western Liberty Convention at Cincinnati in 1845 (designed as a rallying point for anti-slavery sentiment in the Middle West) was mainly his work. He was active in the Free Soil movement of 1848, presiding at the Buffalo convention, and drafting in part the platform which declared for "no more slave states and no more slave territory." The power of the new party in the nation at large was shown by the defeat of Cass, whose choice had angered the anti-slavery Democrats; and in the Ohio legislature the Free Soilers used their balance of power in alliance with the Democrats to elect Chase to the United States Senate (February 22, 1849). By this time he had come to realize the weakness of a party grounded on a purely antislavery basis, and was turning his attention to the possibility of capturing the Democratic party for the anti-slavery cause.

Chase entered upon his senatorial career at the time of the mid-century crisis over the slavery question. Unwilling to temporize on this issue, and resenting the Southern leanings of the Democratic party, he opposed the compromise measures of 1850; and in 1854 he issued his "Appeal of the Independent Democrats," denouncing Douglas 's Nebraska bill as a "criminal betrayal of precious rights," warning the people that the "dearest interests of freedom and the Union" were in "imminent peril," and imploring all Christians to protest against "this enormous crime." In this "Appeal" we have the key-note of Chase's senatorial policy-a policy of writing slavery restrictions into national law wherever possible, and of paving the way for a new Democratic party that would be free from pro-slavery "domination." He introduced an amendment to Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska bill affirming the right of the people of a territory to prohibit slavery if they wished (as seemed to be implied in Douglas's "popular sovereignty" doctrine); but the amendment was emphatically rejected.

In the altered political horizon produced by the dissolution of the Whig organization and the rise of the Republican party, Chase naturally cast his lot with the Republicans. Meeting in Columbus in July 1855 the new party (perhaps best designated as an "anti-Nebraska" party) nominated Chase as governor; and in a triangular contest in which he had to combat the old Whigs and the old-line Democrats, while suffering embarrassment from his Know-Nothing friends, he was victorious. In 1857 he was reelected as Republican governor; and by this time he had become committed to the new party. As governor his administration was embarrassed by interstate conflicts over the fugitive-slave question, by a threat of Governor Wise of Virginia to invade Ohio in order to suppress alleged attempts to rescue John Brown (to which Chase sent a vigorous reply), and by corruption in the office of state treasurer. One of his achievements as governor was a reorganization of the militia system which added greatly to the state's military preparedness in 1861.

In 1856 Chase was an avowed aspirant for the Republican presidential nomination; but he did not even command the support of the full Ohio delegation, and his position at Philadelphia was much weaker than that of Fremont. Again in 1860 his wide prestige and his consistent record of anti-slavery leadership caused him to be prominently mentioned for the presidency; but his expected strength did not materialize in the convention at Chicago, since the Ohio delegation was again divided, and the firmness of his outspoken opinions caused him to be rejected from the standpoint of "availability." With only 49 votes out of 465 on the first ballot, and with dwindling support as the voting proceeded, his friends gave up the struggle in his behalf; and when the break for Lincoln became apparent, they threw their votes to the Illinois candidate, thus putting Chase in favor with the incoming administration.

When Virginia, in an effort to avert impending war, called the Peace Convention at Washington in February 1861 Chase attended as one of the Ohio commissioners; but he refused to compromise as to slavery extension, and his speeches in the convention, though disclaiming any intention to invade state rights, probably tended to confirm the Southerners' worst fears.

Chase was again chosen United States senator in 1860, but resigned to become Lincoln's secretary of the treasury, which office he held from March 1861 until July 1864. As director of the country's finances during the Civil War it was his task to borrow money from reluctant bankers and investors; to labor with congressional committees in the formulation of financial legislation; to devise remedial measures for a deranged currency; to make forecasts and prepare estimates in days when financial responsibility was diffused and scientific budgets were unknown; to trim the sails of fiscal policy to political winds; to market the huge loans which constituted the chief reliance of an improvident government; and to supervise the enforcement of unusual laws, such as that which provided for the seizure of captured and abandoned property in the South. The low state of public credit was reflected in the suspension of specie payments at the close of the year 1861; the high interest rate (over seven per cent) on government loans; the marketing of the bonds at a discount; the difficulty of obtaining loans even on these unfavorable terms and the height and instability of the premium on gold. Chase was fortunate in having the valuable assistance of Jay Cooke who, as "financier of the Civil War," performed the same kind of service in marketing bonds that Robert Morris and Benjamin Franklin did for the Revolutionary War. When the bill to provide for immense issues of paper money with the legal tender feature was under consideration in Congress, Chase at first disapproved, endeavoring to obtain support among bankers for his national banking system; but when this support failed he grew non-committal and later gave a reluctant approval. The country was thus saddled with the "greenback" problem without such active opposition as his judgment would have dictated. The national banking system, first established by law on February 25, 1863, was originated by Chase, who formally submitted his proposal in December 1862 in order to increase the sale of government bonds, improve the currency by providing reliable bank notes backed by government security, and suppress the notorious evils of state bank notes. This was perhaps his most important piece of constructive statesmanship.

On the major questions of the war Chase was called upon, as a member of the President's official family, to assist in the formulation of policies. He favored, in a qualified manner, the provisioning of Fort Sumter; urged the confiscation of "rebel" property; approved the admission of West Virginia (the legality and wisdom of which was doubted by certain members of the cabinet); gave reluctant consent to the surrender of Mason and Slidell; urged McClellan's dismissal; approved Lincoln's suspension of the habeas corpus privilege, and, in general gave support to those measures which were directed toward a vigorous prosecution of the war. The closing paragraph in Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, invoking the "gracious favor of Almighty God," was penned by him; but he considered the President's policy of liberation weak, and did not approve the exceptions of whole states and large districts from the proclamation as issued. Chase never had that easy comradeship with Lincoln which Seward had; and the President never got on well with his minister of finance. To Chase Lincoln seemed to lack force; and he frequently complained of the chief's lax administration. He spoke with disparagement of the "so-called cabinet," considered its meetings "useless," and privately expressed distrust of the President's whole manner of conducting the public business. Often he was at odds with his colleagues, and many difficulties arose because of the presence of both Seward and Chase in the President's household-Seward the easy-going opportunist, and Chase the unbending apostle of righteousness and reform. In December 1862 the most serious cabinet crisis of Lincoln's administration arose when, in a Republican caucus of the upper House, certain radical senators, partisans of Chase, expressed lack of confidence in the President and demanded a "reconstruction" of the cabinet, by which was intended primarily the resignation of Seward. One of the senators thus wrote of the designs of the Chase men: "Their game was to drive all the cabinet out then force upon him [the President] the recall of Mr. Chase as Premier, and form a cabinet of ultra men around him" (Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, 1925, I, 604). Lincoln handled the situation by arranging a meeting in which the intriguing senators were asked to give open expression to their complaints in the presence of the cabinet. In this meeting Chase was placed in a very embarrassing position. With Lincoln and his colleagues in the room he felt impelled to speak favorably of cabinet harmony in the presence of senators to whom he is said to have remarked that "Seward exercised a back stair and malign influence upon the President, and thwarted all the measures of the Cabinet" (Ibid., p. 603). As a result of these bickerings both Seward and Chase resigned; Lincoln promptly refused to accept either resignation, and matters proceeded as before, except that, as the months passed, Chase's official position became more and more difficult. He honestly differed with Lincoln on essential matters; chafed at the President's inaction and "looseness"; became increasingly impatient at the slow progress of the war, and probably came to believe in his own superior ability to guide the ship of state. Though not quite disloyal to the President, he nevertheless became the center of an anti-Lincoln movement while retaining his position in the cabinet.

Early in 1864 many zealous Unionists, including Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, William Cullen Bryant, and Theodore Tilton, had reached the conclusion that Lincoln's administration was a failure; and a congressional committee of which Senator Pomeroy of Kansas was chairman sounded the call for Chase in a paper known as the "Pomeroy Circular," which was at first distributed confidentially but soon found its way into the press. The paper declared that it was practically impossible to reelect Lincoln; that his "manifest tendency toward temporary expedients" would become stronger during a second term, and that Chase united more of the needful qualities than any other available candidate. Chase, it appears, did not know of the circular until he saw it in a Washington paper; but his criticisms of the administration, as well as his willingness to rely upon the good judgment of those who thought that "the public good" would be promoted by the use of his name, were well known. An element of bitterness was injected into the Chase boom when General Francis P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri, delivered an abusive speech against Chase in Congress in April 1864; and the friendliness of the President toward Blair was misconstrued, adding a further strain to the relations between Chase and Lincoln.

When the publication of the Pomeroy circular required an explanation, Chase wrote Lincoln of his entirely passive attitude toward the movement in his behalf, assured the President of his respect and affection, and offered to resign his secretaryship if the President should desire it. Lincoln's reply indicated that he had not been offended and that he desired no change in the treasury department. The Chase movement soon collapsed, partly from mismanagement, and partly for the lack of any solid foundation. The President's party managers played a trump card by setting an early date (June 7) for the Republican or "Union" nominating convention at Baltimore; and when a caucus professing to speak for the Union members of the Ohio legislature indorsed the President, Chase withdrew his candidacy.

He did not long remain in the cabinet. After various differences over appointments, he submitted for the office of assistant treasurer at New York the name of M. B. Field whom Lincoln found unacceptable because of influential opposition in the state. When Lincoln suggested that the appointment would subject him to "still greater strain," Chase replied that he had thought only of fitness in his suggested appointments, referred to the "embarrassment and difficulty" of his position, and, as on various other occasions, presented his resignation. Chase's diary indicates that he could have been induced to remain in the cabinet (Warden, post, p. 618); but, somewhat to his chagrin, Lincoln accepted the resignation, and he unexpectedly found himself out of office. "Of all I have said in commendation of your ability and fidelity," wrote the President, "I have nothing to unsay; and yet you and I have reached a point of mutual embarrassment in our official relations which it seems cannot be overcome or longer sustained consistently with the public service."

In the depressing summer of 1864 certain factors seemed to be working for a revival of the Chase candidacy. Distrust of the President, combined with anger at his veto of the Wade-Davis reconstruction bill and depression due to the unfavorable military situation, caused certain anti-Lincoln men to launch a movement for another nominating convention "to concentrate the Union strength on some one candidate who commands the confidence of the country" (New York Sun, June 30, 1889, p. 3). The plan contemplated that Lincoln, renominated in June, should be induced to withdraw. On August 18, 1864, Horace Greeley wrote: "Mr. Lincoln is already beaten. He cannot be elected. And we must have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow" (Ibid.). Charles Sumner approved the movement; and various men who had been active in the earlier effort toward Chase's candidacy, notably Henry Winter Davis, gave it support. Whitelaw Reid, who was very close to Chase, induced the Cincinnati Gazette to come out for Lincoln's withdrawal. Chase's own attitude was at first receptive and non-committal. In September, however, the entire political situation changed with the fall of Atlanta and Republican success in Vermont and Maine. The proposed convention was not held; the whole "radical" movement was abandoned; its sponsors came out for the Baltimore candidates, and Chase himself participated in the campaign for Lincoln, making various speeches in the West.

When Chief Justice Taney died, October 12, 1864, Lincoln's choice fell upon Chase in spite of misgivings as to the former secretary's presidential ambitions-or, as some thought, the President may have felt that he was putting a perpetual candidate in an office where presumably his ambition would be silenced. The years of Chase's chief justiceship fell during the turbulent period of Reconstruction. Occupied with problems of unusual complexity in his judicial capacity, he by no means held aloof from political controversies; and the most determined efforts to put him in the presidency came while he wore the toga of judicial office. Though these years witnessed the fruition of cherished hopes in the eradication of slavery and the restoration of the Union, the satisfaction he might have felt in the accomplishment of these objects was clouded by post-war excesses and corruption which put him out of tune with the party of his later choice, while in his own person he suffered disappointment, affront, and injured dignity. He was probably the least happy of our chief justices. At the time of Lincoln's assassination his life was considered in danger and he was protected by military guard. On April 15, 1865, he administered the presidential oath to Johnson; and it seemed for a time that he might become a sort of mentor to the new president. On various occasions he approached Johnson with advice on Reconstruction policies, at times even drafting public statements to be delivered or issued by the President. Warmly advocating negro suffrage, and favoring the radical policy of Reconstruction, he started in May 1865 on an extended Southern tour which occupied two months and was devoted to confidential investigations concerning conditions in the states lately in "rebellion." At Charleston, South Carolina, and elsewhere he addressed colored audiences, advocating the enfranchisement of their race.

After the war Chase was confronted with the question of reopening federal courts in the South; but he delayed because of the conviction that subordination to the military authorities would be inconsistent with judicial independence; and when at length he did open the United States circuit court at Raleigh, North Carolina, on June 6, 1867, he carefully explained in his address to the bar that this was done only after the habeas corpus privilege had been restored and assurances given that the "military authority [ did] not extend in any respect to the courts of the United States." When planning to reopen the circuit court at Richmond, Virginia, he declined military protection for himself and the court, with the comment: "If I go to Richmond at all, I intend to have no relations with the military, except those which spring from the good-will which subsists between myself and some of the officers" (Warden, post, p. 659).

A painful duty confronting Chase in his capacity as circuit justice was that of presiding at the proposed trial of Jefferson Davis, who, after two years in military custody, was released to the civil authorities in May 1867 and placed under indictment for treason against the United States. The earlier stages of the case cannot be traced here; but on March 26, 1868, in the United States circuit court at Richmond, a grand jury brought in an elaborate indictment against Davis, charging treason under the federal law of 1790, which prescribed the penalty of death. Chase's reluctance to preside at the Davis prosecution may well have explained his repeated postponements in coming to Richmond to hold court. When he did appear he was annoyed by association on the bench with John C. Underwood [q.v.], federal district judge in Virginia, a man whose pronounced anti-Southern prejudices destroyed his judicial impartiality. In December 1868 a motion to quash the indictment was argued before Justices Chase and Underwood, Davis's counsel contending that any prosecution of the Confederate leader for treason would be inconsistent with the fourteenth amendment of the Federal Constitution, in which disability from office-holding, not death, was prescribed for those in Davis's position. Favoring the quashing of the indictment, Chase disagreed with Underwood; the disagreement was certified to the United States Supreme Court; and the Davis case was pending there when, on December 25, 1868, President Johnson issued an unconditional and universal pardon to all who had participated in the "rebellion." The consequent termination of the case, both at Richmond and at Washington, gave genuine relief to Chase (R. F. Nichols, "United States vs. Jefferson Davis,'' American Historical Review, XXXI, 266 ff.).

When the peak of radical fury was reached in the attempt to remove President Johnson, it fell to Chase as chief justice to preside over the Senate sitting as a court of impeachment. The flimsiness of the charges betrayed the whole movement as a partisan attack upon the President because of his opposition to the Stevens-Sumner-Wade policy of Reconstruction; and the great danger was that the judicial character of the whole proceeding would be a mere pretense. Denying that the Senate was a court, the anti-Johnson group sought to subordinate the chief justice as a figurehead, to exclude ordinary rules of evidence, to suppress essential testimony, to deny adequate opportunities for defense, to intimidate individual senators, and to rush the whole proceeding through with railroad speed. Chase, however, refused to accept the role of puppet and effectively asserted his prerogatives as presiding judge. Characteristically, he began by lecturing the Senate for receiving articles of impeachment and framing rules of procedure before being organized as a court. For this he was criticized; and even Warden states that his "hero" erred in this respect; but the question was essentially a judicial one to which the Chief Justice had given earnest study, and his unwillingness to surrender his own functions is more to be admired than censured. He considered himself a part of the court, with the presiding judge's function of seeing that its proceedings from the outset were properly conducted. The Senate radicals were minded to deny him the casting vote; but he successfully defended this right, taking the opportunity, on the occasion of the first tie on a question of adjournment, to announce his vote and declare the tribunal adjourned. He was attacked as a partisan of the President, accused of seeking converts for acquittal, and assailed for playing politics in allowing his name to be used as a candidate for the presidency during the impeachment proceedings. As to the "stories" of rides in which he advised senators on their duty, he himself said that there was a "grain of fact sunk in gallons of falsehood" (Warden, post, p. 696). He did profoundly disapprove of the whole impeachment movement and did not entirely suppress his views; but there is no reason to reject his own statement that he did not seek to influence or convert any one (not even Sprague, his son-in-law), and that until the final vote he had no idea what the result would be.

Chase's incurable ambition for the presidency found its most striking manifestation in 1868, when, after obtaining no notice in the Republican convention, he became the center of a determined boom among the Democrats. Though certain papers, such as the New York Tribune, put forth his name, he made no effort for the Republican nomination. One should perhaps discount his statements in private letters that he would not take the nomination; for he had no chance whatever in that party, whose radical leaders had repudiated him, and whose emotional swing to Grant was irresistible. From the standpoint of party regularity it seemed to many a shocking thing that so prominent a Republican should not only fail to support his party's candidate, but should seek the leadership of the opposing party. For Chase, however, party regularity had never been an imperative motive; he had often described himself as an independent Democrat, and his attitude toward Grant was that of thorough disapproval and lack of confidence. Newspapers and influential leaders began to work for him; and he decided to allow his name to be used. In correspondence and interview he again showed a receptive attitude, and when asked for a public statement he defined his policy, emphasizing universal amnesty and universal suffrage, though realizing that such an attitude would injure his prospects (Schuckers, post, pp. 584-86). In the Democratic convention at New York an active group of Chase managers labored early and late ("Kate" Sprague turning politician and exerting her personal and social influence); and a "Chase platform" was circulated among the delegates. When it came to the voting, however, his platform was rejected; Ohio declared for Seymour of New York; and in an atmosphere of pandemonium Seymour was unanimously chosen for the presidential candidacy, with Chase's factious enemy, Blair, as running mate. In his disappointment Chase bore himself in silence and dignity and gave no countenance to efforts of his friends to obtain Seymour's withdrawal or launch a third-party movement.

Meanwhile the court over which Chase presided was faced by a menacing Congress and subjected to unusual strain in deciding a series of perplexing cases. In the Milligan case (4 Wallace, 2), it was held that military commissions for the trial of citizens are illegal, except where invasion or war actually deposes the civil courts. On the main point of this decision Chase concurred; but he dissented from that portion which held that Congress could not have provided for such trials if it had wished. At various times it seemed that the court would have to decide on the constitutionality of the Reconstruction Acts; but such a result, which would have precipitated an unseemly contest with Congress, was avoided. In Mississippi vs. Johnson (4 Wallace, 475) and Georgia vs. Stanton (6 Wallace, 50), the court refused to enjoin the President or a member of the cabinet from enforcing the Reconstruction Acts. This was in keeping with the court's practise of avoiding political questions. In the McCardle case (6 Wallace, 318), which again involved the legality of Reconstruction legislation, a decision was avoided by an act of Congress which deprived the court of jurisdiction; and the court permitted its functions thus to be limited. Further questions concerning reconstruction were considered in Texas vs. White (7 Wallace, 700), Cummings vs. Missouri (4 Wallace, 277) and Ex parte Garland (4 Wallace, 333). In these controversies the court held the Union to be indissoluble, declared secession a nullity, and denied the validity of test oaths intended to exclude ex-Confederates from officeholding. The application of the Fourteenth Amendment to certain state legislation was considered in the Slaughterhouse Cases (16 Wallace, 36), in which the court refused to set itself up as a censor of state laws or invade the domain of civil rights theretofore belonging to the states. Preferring a broader application of the amendment, Chase dissented from this opinion, whose main doctrine has since been abandoned by the court.

In 1870 Chase delivered the opinion declaring unconstitutional that part of the Legal Tender Act of 1862 which made the "greenbacks" legal tender as to contracts existing at the time the act was passed (Hepburn vs. Griswold, 8 Wallace, 603). As secretary of the treasury he had issued these government notes; and he was now roundly abused for holding them illegal. When the Hepburn decision was reversed in 1871 (Legal Tender Cases, 12 Wallace, 457), Chase dissented.

It appears that Chase would have accepted a presidential nomination by the Liberal Republicans in 1872; but, aside from other factors, the state of his health would have prevented such a nomination. His vote this year was given to Greeley (Schuckers, post, p. 593). On May 7, 1873, he died of a paralytic stroke in New York.

Chase was tall, massive, handsome in feature, and distinguished in figure and bearing. His portraits show a large head, with deep-set, blue-gray eyes, prominent brow, spirited nostrils, and firm lips. He was near-sighted and may have lacked magnetism and approachableness; but there was something in his mien that bespoke a determined will. His religious convictions were genuine and earnest. Reading his diaries we find how he chided himself on his sinfulness; how at times he declined communion from self-distrust; how he was equally disturbed if at other times his unworthiness failed to oppress him; how he repeated psalms while bathing or dressing; how he pursued his Scripture reading and prayer as a pure matter of conscience. He considered it sinful to waste time. Though fond of chess, he foreswore cards and avoided fashionable society. He once described a charming young lady as one with whom he would have fallen in love had she not been "fond of the gay world" and "disinclined to religion," which he valued "more than any earthly possession" (Warden, post, 190). Though he was socially at ease, a sense of humor was denied him; and when telling a story he would usually spoil it. Schuckers speaks of his "modesty"; but others considered him conceited and accessible to flattery. Though hardly the scholar in politics, he was of a literary turn; and in early life he sometimes expressed himself in verse. There are purple patches in his usually grave diaries to which the historian turns with real delight.

Having the "defects of his virtues," he was self-righteous, opinionated, and difficult to work with. Ambition colored all the more prominent phases of his career. That it diminished his usefulness, impaired his dignity, and blinded his judgment as to currents of public opinion, may be conceded; but it did not prompt unworthy bargains nor excessive electioneering. His moral courage was manifest in his opposition in the Cincinnati council to saloon licenses, his defiance of threatened violence, his advocacy of unpopular causes, and his refusal to truckle for the presidency. As war-time minister of finance he resisted alluring opportunities for private gain. Though puritanical, he was not a fanatic. His anti-slavery activities were held within bounds; and he never affiliated with the Garrison or Phillips type of abolitionist. The antagonism between him and Wade was of long standing; and he disliked the excesses of the radical school of Reconstruction while partly approving its program. His mental operations were steady rather than rapid; his public statements precise and devoid of verbiage. As a speaker he commanded attention rather by conviction and intellectual force than by the orator's art. His opinions as chief justice were characterized by a practical emphasis upon main principles rather than by brilliance or fondness for legal lore.

[Portions of Chase's elaborate diaries and letters have been published in Robert B. Warden, Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase (1874), in J. W. Schuckers, Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase (1874), and in the Annual Report, American Historical Association, 1902, volume II. The last mentioned volume includes some interesting letters from Chase to Sumner and a large number of letters from George S. Denison, who, as treasury official at New Orleans during the Civil War, wrote in full concerning conditions in Louisiana. The bulk of the original manuscript of the diary, together with letters and miscellaneous material, is to be found in the library of the Pennsylvania Historical Society at Philadelphia; and another large collection of Chase manuscripts (over one hundred volumes) is deposited in the division of manuscripts of the Library of Congress The biographical work by Warden is garrulous, extravagantly eulogistic, and of negligible importance, except as a source book; that of Schuckers, though of somewhat more value, is far from satisfactory. The short volume by A. B. Hart in the American Statesmen series (1899), though not free from error, is the best biography. The amusing campaign biography by J. T. Trowbridge, The Ferry Boy and the Financier (1864), is based in part upon a series of autobiographical letters written by Chase himself; but Chase's recollections were often dim, and Trowbridge drew freely upon his own fancy. A series of letters bearing upon the movement in 1864 to displace Lincoln in favor of Chase appeared under the title "Unwritten History" in the New York Sun, June 30, 1889. The following titles may also be noted: Donn Piatt, Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union (1887); Arthur M. Schlesinger, "Salmon Portland Chase, Undergraduate and Pedagogue," in Ohio Archaeology. and Historical Quarterly, volume XXVIII, no. 2 (1910); Norton S. Townshend, "Salmon P. Chase" (Ibid., volume I, 1887); Elbridge G. Spaulding, A Resource of War: History of the Legal Tender Paper Money Issued During the Great Rebellion (1869); Chas. Warren, The Supreme Court in U. S. History (1922); Hugh McCulloch, Men and Measures of Half a Century (1888).]

J.G.R.

Mr. Chase published a compilation of the statutes of Ohio, with annotations and an historical sketch (3 volumes, Cincinnati, 1832). See “Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase,” by J. W. Schuckers (New York, 1874). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 585-588.



CLARK, Daniel, 1809-1891, lawyer, jurist, organizer and founder of the Republican Party, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire, ardent supporter of the Union. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 625; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 125; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 125:

CLARK, DANIEL (October 24, 1809-January 2, 1891), politician, jurist, was the son of Benjamin and Elizabeth (Wiggin) Clark. He was born at Stratham, New Hampshire, and educated in the district school, Hampton Academy, and Dartmouth College, graduating from the latter in 1834. His father was a farmer and blacksmith and because of limited means, Daniel, like many other young men of that period, was obliged to pay for his own education by teaching school during the winter months. After graduation he studied law, was admitted to the bar, began practise at Epping, and in 1839 moved to Manchester. This town was about to enjoy a prolonged period of industrial development, and he soon acquired a considerable practise. For the rest of his life he was active in Manchester affairs, holding several local offices and trusteeships and between 1842 and 1855 serving five times as representative in the legislature, being in charge of the bill for the incorporation of the city in 1846. He was also active in various business enterprises and was for some years a director of the Amoskeag Corporation. Politically, he was a Whig, and when that party disintegrated he was one of the active organizers of the Republican party. In 1857 he was chosen to serve out the unexpired term of Senator James Bell and, being reelected for a full term, was for nine years one of the prominent figures in Washington affairs. He was an accomplished speaker and debater, ranked by S. S. Cox, a veteran member of the lower house, with Sumner, Fessenden, Seward, Trumbull, and other notables in "a galaxy of ability" (Union-Disunion-Reunion: Three Decades of Federal Legislation, 1885). Early in his senatorial career, in the course of the Kansas debate, he declared, "We have had enough of bowing down, and the people in my region have got sick of it" (Congressional Globe, 35 Congress, 1 Session, App., p. 107). These words are the key to his subsequent course. He was an uncompromising foe of slavery and secession and his attitude in 1861 was criticized by many who believed that reconciliation was still possible. He was prominent throughout the war period and his service on the committees on finance, claims, and judiciary was especially important in view of their war-time responsibilities. In 1866 he failed to receive renomination, apparently largely because of New Hampshire's adherence to the doctrine of rotation in office. On July 27, 1866, President Johnson appointed him United States judge for the district of New Hampshire, although Gideon Welles remarked "On every Constitutional point that has been raised, Clark has opposed the President . . . and has been as mischievously hostile as any man in the Senate" (Diary, 19n, II, 565). Clark resigned from the Senate and spent the remainder of his life on the bench, declining at the age of seventy, because of excellent health, to take advantage of the provisions of the retirement act. He had an excellent standing as a jurist and frequently was called to sit in other courts on the New England circuit. His political activity was, of course, largely at an end but he served as president of the constitutional convention of 1876. He was married twice: on June 9, 1840, to Hannah W. Robbins, daughter of Maxcy Robbins of Stratham, who died in 1844; and on May 13, 1846, to Anne W., daughter of Henry Salter of Portsmouth.

[C. H. Bell, Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894); J.B. Clarke, Manchester (1875); I. W. Smith, Granite Missouri, July 1887; ]. 0. Lyford, Life of Edward H. Rollins (1906).]

W.A.R.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 625:

CLARK, Daniel, senator, born in Stratham, Rockingham county, New Hampshire, 24 October, 1809. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1834 with the highest honors of his class, studied law, and began practice at Epping, New Hampshire, in 1837. He removed to Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1839, and was a member of the legislature for five years. He was elected U. S. senator in 1857 for the unexpired term of James Bell, deceased, and was re-elected in 1861, serving till he resigned in July, 1866. He was president pro tem. of the senate for some time in 1864-'5. On 11 July, 1861, Senator Clark offered a resolution, which was adopted, expelling from the senate the southern senators who had left their seats on the secession of their states. He took an active part in the debates of the senate, and was a steadfast supporter of the government during the civil war. On his resignation, he was appointed by President Johnson U. S. judge for the district of New Hampshire. He was president of the New Hampshire constitutional convention of 1876. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 625.



CLARK, Myron Holley, 1806-1892, Governor of New York State. Supported by the anti-slavery wings of the Democratic and Whig Parties.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 630; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 138)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography1888, Vol. I, p. 630:,

CLARK, Myron Holley, governor of New York, born in Naples, Ontario County, New York, 23 October, 1806. His grandfather, Colonel William Clark, moved from Berkshire county, Massachusetts, to Ontario county, New York, in 1790. Myron was educated in a District school at Naples, attending from three to four months annually, when between six and seventeen years old. After filling several offices in his native town, and becoming lieutenant-colonel of state militia, he was sheriff of Ontario county for two years, and, having moved to Canandaigua, was president of that village in 1850 and 1851, and state senator from 1852 till 1854. During Mr. Clark's first term as senator in 1852–’3, the law was consolidating the several railroads now forming the New York central, and it was largely by his persistent firmness that the provision limiting passenger fares to two cents a mile was adopted. As chairman of the committee on the subject he was influential in securing the of the prohibitory liquor law that was vetoed by Governor Seymour. In the anti-slavery wings of both the Whig and Democratic parties, the prohibitionists, and several independent organizations separately nominated Mr. Clark for governor, and he was elected by a small majority, his supporters in some of their state organizations taking the name of “Republicans." thus making him the earliest state candidate of that party. During his administration a new prohibitory law was passed, and signed by him. It remained in force about nine months, when it was set aside by the court of appeals. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 639.



CLARKE, Freeman, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, elected as a Republican to the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1865); voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Delegate to the Whig National Convention at Baltimore in 1852; vice president of the first Republican State convention of New York in 1854.

CLARKE, FREEMAN, a Representative from New York; born in Troy, New York, March 22, 1809; attended the common schools; went into business for himself at the age of fifteen; began his financial career as cashier of the Bank of Orleans, Albion, New York; moved to Rochester, New York, in 1845; became director and president of numerous banks, railroads, and telegraph and trust companies of Rochester and New York City; delegate to the Whig National Convention at Baltimore in 1852; vice president of the first Republican State convention of New York in 1854; appointed Comptroller of the Currency in 1865; delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1867; elected as a Republican to the Thirty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1863-March 3, 1865); was not a candidate for renomination in 1864; Comptroller of the Currency from March 9, 1865, to February 6, 1867; again elected to the Forty-second and Forty-third Congresses (March 4, 1871-March 3, 1875); resumed his former business pursuits; died in Rochester, New York, on June 24, 1887; interment in Mount Hope Cemetery.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present.

(Congressional Globe; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)



CLAY, Cassius Marcellus, 1810-1903, Madison County, Kentucky, anti-slavery political leader, emancipationist, large landowner, statesman, lawyer, diplomat, soldier, newspaper publisher. Granted land for Berea College, Berea, Kentucky. Prominent anti-slavery activist with Kentucky State legislature and member of the Republican Party. Published anti-slavery paper, True American, in Lexington, Kentucky.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 151, 171; Clay, 1896; Dumond, 1961, p. 258; Filler, 1960, pp. 213, 221, 248, 256, 272; Mabee, 1970, pp. 4, 237, 258-259, 327, 336, 372; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 5, 63, 64, 71, 107, 147, 156, 199; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 380, 619; Smiley, 1962; Wilson, 1872, pp. 628-635; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 503, 577, 639-640; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 18; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 171-173; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 4; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 311-312)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 503, 577, 639-640:

CLAY, Cassius Marcellus, politician, born in Madison county, Kentucky, 19 October, 1810, studied at Transylvania University, but afterward entered the junior class at Yale, and was graduated there in 1832. While in New Haven he heard William Lloyd Garrison, and, although his parents were slave-holders, became an earnest abolitionist. He began to practice law in his native county, and was elected to the legislature in 1835, but was defeated the next year on account of his advocacy of internal improvements. He was again elected in 1837, and in 1839 was a member of the convention that nominated General Harrison for the presidency. He then moved to Lexington, and was again a member of the legislature in 1840, but in 1841 was defeated, after an exciting canvass, on account of his anti-slavery views. The improved jury system and the common-school system of Kentucky are largely due to his efforts while in the legislature. Mr. Clay denounced the proposed annexation of Texas, as intended to extend slavery, and in 1844 actively supported Henry Clay for the presidency, speaking in his behalf in the northern states. On 3 June, 1845, he issued in Lexington the first number of an anti-slavery paper entitled “The True American.” Mob violence had been threatened, and the editor had prepared himself for it. He says in his memoirs: “I selected for my office a brick building, and lined the outside doors with sheet-iron, to prevent it being burned. I purchased two brass four-pounder cannon at Cincinnati, and placed them, loaded with shot and nails, on a table, breast high; had folding-doors secured with a chain, which could open upon the mob and give play to the cannon. I furnished my office with Mexican lances, and a limited number of guns. There were six or eight persons who stood ready to defend me. If defeated, they were to escape by a trap-door in the roof; and I had placed a keg of powder with a match, which I could set off and blow up the office and all my invaders; and this I should most certainly have done in case of the last extremity.” In August, while the editor was sick, his press was seized by the mob and taken to Cincinnati, and he himself was threatened with assassination; but, notwithstanding all opposition, he continued to publish the paper, printing it in Cincinnati and circulating it through Kentucky. This was not his only narrow escape. He was continually involved in quarrels, had several bloody personal encounters, and habitually spoke in political meetings, with a bowie knife concealed about him, and a brace of pistols in the mouth of his grip-sack, which he placed at his feet. When war with Mexico was declared, Mr. Clay entered the army as captain of a volunteer infantry company that had already distinguished itself at Tippecanoe in 1811. He took this course because he thought a military title necessary to political advancement in a “fighting state” like Kentucky. On 23 January, 1847, while in the van, more than 100 miles in advance of the main army, he was taken prisoner, with seventy-one others, at Encarnacion, and marched to the city of Mexico. On one occasion, after the escape of some of the captives, the lives of the remainder were saved by Captain Clay's gallantry and presence of mind. After being exchanged, he returned to Kentucky, and was presented by his fellow-citizens with a sword in honor of his services. He worked for General Taylor's nomination in the Convention of 1848, and carried Kentucky for him. He called a convention of emancipationists at Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1849, and in 1850, separating from the Whig Party, was an anti-slavery candidate for governor, receiving about 5,000 votes. He labored energetically for Frémont's election in 1856, and for Lincoln's in 1860, but took pains to separate himself from the “radical abolitionists,” holding that all interference with slavery should be by legal methods. On 28 March, 1861, he was appointed minister to Russia. He returned to this country in June, 1862, having been commissioned major-general of volunteers, and shortly afterward made a speech in Washington, declaring that he would never draw his sword while slavery was protected in the seceding states. He resigned on 11 March, 1863, and was again sent as minister to Russia, publicly supported the revolutionary movement in Cuba, and became president of the Cuban aid Society. In 1871 he delivered an address by invitation at the St. Louis fair, urging speedy reconciliation with the north, and at the same time attacking President Grant's administration. He was identified with the liberal republican movement in 1872, and supported his old friend Horace Greeley for the presidency. He afterward joined the Democratic Party, and actively supported Samuel J. Tilden in 1876, but advocated Blaine's election in 1884. In 1877 Mr. Clay shot and killed a Negro, Perry White, whom he had discharged from his service and who had threatened his life. Mr. Clay was tried, and the jury gave a verdict of “justifiable homicide.” A volume of his speeches was edited by Horace Greeley (1848), and he has published “The Life, Memoirs, Writings, and Speeches of Cassius M. Clay” (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 503, 577, 639-640.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 18:

CLAY, CASSIUS MARCELLUS (October 19, 1810--July 22, 1903), abolitionist, the youngest son of Green Clay [q.v.], and Sally (Lewis) Clay, was born on his father's estate, "White Hall," in Madison County, Kentucky. His ancestry was Scotch, English, and Welsh; and in him was so strange a mixture of manly vigor, unfaltering honesty, indiscreet pugnacity, and the wild spirit of the crusader, as to make him one of the most remarkable of the lesser figures in American history. When very young he fought his mother, his schoolmaster, and a slave companion; the day before his wedding he caned a rival in the streets of Louisville; and when ninety-three years old, suffering under the hallucination that people were plotting against his life, he converted his ancestral mansion into a fortified castle, protected by a cannon. His career was turbulent in politics, in the army, within the circle of his family, and in all his social and diplomatic relations. In 1841 he fought a duel in Louisville with Robert Wickliffe, Jr.; four years later he so mutilated with a bowie knife Sam M. Brown as to be indicted for mayhem; in 1850 he stabbed to death Cyrus Turner; and in his old age he shot and killed a negro. In all his early political campaigns he carried a bowie knife and two pistols.

Clay was given the best opportunities of his day for an education, first receiving instruction from Joshua Fry in Garrard County, and later under the same master at Danville. He was then sent to the Jesuit College of St. Joseph in Nelson County. He attended Transylvania University for a time, and in 1831 with letters of introduction to President Jackson and to the principal men of note in the East he entered the junior class in Yale College, where he was graduated the next year. He returned to Kentucky and studied law at Transylvania but never took out license to practise. Wealthy and. ambitious for a political career, he was elected to the state legislature from Madison County in 1835 and in 1837, being defeated in 1836 on his advocacy of internal improvements. He now moved to Lexington and in 1840 was elected to the legislature to represent Fayette County. The following year he again ran, contrary to the advice of his distant kinsman, Henry Clay, and was defeated on the question of slavery. Though his father had been a large slaveholder, Clay had early developed a bitter hatred toward the institution, and, inspired by William Lloyd Garrison whom he had heard at Yale College, this hatred became a crusading passion. In his defeat for the legislature he saw the blatant tyranny and implacable opposition of the slaveholders, and he resolved to rid Kentucky of the evil. In June 1845 he set up in Lexington a newspaper which he called the True American and began his campaign. Foreseeing trouble he fortified his office with two four-pounder cannon, Mexican lances, and rifles, and strategically placed a keg of powder to be set off against any attackers. In August a committee of sixty prominent Lexingtonians visited his establishment while he was absent, boxed up his equipment, and sent it to Cincinnati. He continued to publish his paper from this new location, and later, changing its name to the Examiner, he moved it to Louisville.

Although Clay had opposed the annexation of Texas, in 1846 he volunteered among the first of those who were to invade Mexico, believing that since his country was at war it was his duty to fight, and feeling that a military record would help him politically. He fought with bravery in a number of engagements and was taken prisoner at Encarnacion in January 1847. After many harrowing experiences he was set free, returning to Kentucky to share in a resolution of commendation by the legislature and to receive a sword presented by his fellow citizens. In politics he began a strong follower of Henry Clay, but, during the campaign of 1844, became estranged from him on the issue of abolitionism. In the next presidential campaign he supported Taylor from the beginning, and in 1849 he made a determined effort to build up an emancipation party in Kentucky by holding a convention in Frankfort and running for governor. In the election he received 3,621 votes, enough to defeat the Whig candidate. On the birth of the Republican party he joined it, voting for Fremont in 1856 and for Lincoln in 1860. In this latter year he had a considerable following for the vice-presidency. He was on terms of close friendship with Lincoln, and, having been led to understand that he might have the secretaryship of war, was greatly chagrined when he did not receive it. To pacify him Lincoln offered him the diplomatic post at Madrid, which he refused. Later he accepted the Russian post. On his way east he reached Washington in April, at the time when it was cut off and undefended. He quickly grasped the situation and raised 300 men for the protection of the city and government, for which service he might have received appointment as major-general in the Federal army had he not preferred to continue to Russia. In 1862 he was recalled and made a major-general, but he refused to fight until the government should abolish slavery in the seceded states. He returned to Kentucky in the fall of 1862 on a mission to the legislature, did some fighting, and left for Russia again in 1863, where he remained until 1869. He fell out with President Grant and joining the Liberal Republicans supported Greeley in 1872. Disagreeing with the policy of reconstruction, he supported Tilden in 1876, but in 1884 he was for Blaine. After returning from Russia he retired to his estate in Madison County and in his old age, a few weeks before his death, the Richmond court adjudged him a lunatic. He was married to Mary Jane Warfield of Lexington in 1832, but was divorced from her in 1878. On his final return from Russia he brought to his home a Russian boy, whom he named Launey Clay, refusing to disclose his parentage. Shortly before his death he married a young girl from whom he soon secured a divorce.

[A vivid account of Clay' s career is set forth in his Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay; Memoirs, Writings and Speeches (1886), volume I. A second volume was projected but never published. Biographical Memoranda Class of 1832 Yale College (1880) contains sketch "communicated by himself." In 1848 his speeches were brought out by Horace Greeley under the title of Speeches and Writings of C. M. Clay. All of Clay's papers prior to the Civil War were burned during the conflict. Incomplete sketches of him may be found in R. H. and L. R. Collins, History of Kentucky (1874), and Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky (1877). A short sketch is in Who's Who in America, 1901-02. An account of the last days of his life and an obituary appear in Lexington (Kentucky) Leader, July 6-8, 23, 1903. Files of his True American are preserved in the Lexington Public Library]

E. M. C.

Chapter: “Vermont and Massachusetts. --John P. Hale. -- Cassius M. Clay,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

While Mr. Hale was making his gallant and successful fight in New Hampshire, by which he placed himself at once among the foremost advocates of liberty, freedom found another champion, on the very soil of slavery itself, in the person of Cassius M. Clay. Belonging to an eminent family, reared under the influences of slavery, he was identified with it by birth, inheritance, and position. From personal knowledge and his affiliations of family, party, and business, he had spoken during the presidential canvass of 1844 with authority upon the subject of slavery, revealing to thousands the inner life and workings of the system.

Mr. Clay was a native of Kentucky. Educated at Yale; he had soon learned to recognize the difference between the slave and the free States, while the antislavery discussions that were rife during his stay in New England greatly excited his feelings and changed his sentiments; and at an early day he determined to emancipate his slaves. Entering the Kentucky legislature in 1835, he at once introduced and became the champion of a common-school system for his native State. But he soon learned that such a system was incompatible with the presence and power of slavery wherever the latter was established, and was giving tone to the thought and feeling of society.

In 1841 an act was introduced into that legislature for the repeal of a law adopted in 1833 to prevent the importation of slaves into the State. He, of course, arrayed himself against the repeal, and denounced in fitting language this reactionary measure. Such a demonstration from one occupying his position naturally excited surprise, and provoked that kind and style of opposition in which the slave-masters were accustomed to indulge toward any who opposed their policy or condemned their cherished system. But he declared that denunciation could not silence him; that epithets and the cry of abolition had no terrors for him; and that bowie-knives, pistols, and mobs could not force him to desist. He said that his blood was ready for the sacrifice, though he warned gentlemen that he should not be "a tame victim of either force or denunciation." He affirmed that there was a party in the country which was .the advocate of perpetual slavery, and in favor of destroying the Union. He protested against what he termed the treasonable scheme of the disunionists; and he asserted that on the day when this should be seriously attempted or consummated there should be "one Kentuckian shrouded under the stars and stripes; one heart undesecrated with the faith that slavery is the basis of civil liberty; one being who could not exist in a government denying the right of petition, the liberty of speech and of the press; one man who would not be the outlaw of nations or the slave of a slave."

Entertaining such sentiments, and believing that the proposed annexation of Texas was for “the extension of slavery among men," he interposed a most determined opposition. In a speech in December, 1843, in reply to ex-Vice-President Richard M. Johnson, he made an impassioned appeal to the people of Kentucky to enter their solemn protest against this most unholy scheme. He reminded them, if this project was carried out for the purposes for which it was formed, they could no longer cover themselves, when reproached for the existence of slavery, under the plea that it was an entailed evil for which they could not be held responsible. If they supported this scheme, with this the real and avowed object, they would commit themselves anew to the system it was thus proposed to strengthen and extend.

Holding these ideas of annexation, and deeply impressed with the magnitude of the interests at stake and the gravity of the impending peril, he entered with great earnestness into the presidential contest of 1844. He traversed the free States, urging the claims of Henry Clay. He was especially urgent that antislavery men should give him their votes, as the only way by which annexation could be prevented. Affirming that Mr. Clay had virtually pledged himself to oppose the admission of Texas, by making the conditions of his “support such as could not be fulfilled, he contended that they themselves held the power in their hands to prevent it. Among those conditions was the “common consent of the Union." " So long, then," he said, in one of his speeches, "as the vestal flame of liberty shall burn in your bosoms, eternal and inextinguishable, so long is Mr. Clay, three several times, in the most solemn manner, before the nation and all mankind, irrevocably bound to oppose the annexation of Texas to the United States." " Of all men," he continued, " now present I have the greatest cause to take care that I am not deceived in this matter; but I can go --I say it before God and man -- with a good conscience for him, because I believe it will save my country from ruin if we shall secure his election." His labors in the canvass were arduous, his feelings were deeply enlisted in the issues at stake, and his consequent disappointment in view of defeat was very great.

The defeat of Mr. Clay, however, while it made annexation certain, did not discourage him. His spirit rose with the occasion, and his purpose to war against the cause of all this scheming and plotting seemed to be strengthened. Returning to Kentucky, he issued, in January, 1845, an address to the people of his State, in which he portrayed the baleful effects of slavery, even upon that " young and beautiful Commonwealth," to whose " Italian skies " and " more than Sicilian verdure" he mournfully referred as being blighted and clouded by this terrible curse. " Her fields," he says, " relapse into primitive sterility; her population wastes away, manufactures recede from her infected border, trade languishes, decay trenches upon her meagre accumulations of taste or utility, gaunt famine stalks into the portals of the homestead, sullen despair begins to display itself in the careworn faces of men, the heavens and the earth cry aloud, the eternal laws of happiness and existence have been trampled underfoot …Agriculture drags along its slow pace with slovenly, ignorant, and reckless labor. Science, literature, and art are strangers here. Poets, historians, artists, and machinists; the lovers of the ideal, the great, the beautiful, the true, and the useful,--flourish where thought and action are untrammeled… A loose and inadequate respect for the rights of property, of necessity, follows in the wake of slavery. Duelling, bloodshed, and lynch-law leave but little security to person. A general demoralization has corrupted the first minds in the nation, its hot contagion has spread among the whole people; licentiousness, crime, and bitter hate infest us at home; repudiation and the forcible propagandism of slavery is arraying against us the world in arms."

He urged upon them to choose delegates to a convention for amending the Constitution, and to repeat the attempt "until victory shall perch on the standard of the free."
While the struggle was in progress in both Congress and the country for the expansion of slavery, he issued proposals for the establishment of a paper to advocate its “overthrow “in Kentucky. Its publication was commenced at Lexington, and on the 3d of June was issued the first number of the “True American." In it he discussed with great vigor the evils and remedies existing and proposed. The general tone and character of its utterances were very offensive to the slaveholders of the State, whose course he condemned, and whose interests, they felt, he was putting in peril. This indignation was specially increased and intensified by articles that appeared 11 the 12th of August, in which the writer referred not only to the general principles of the contest, but to certain contingencies and possibilities, and which very naturally and very greatly excited their ire.

In those articles not only was emancipation advocated, but the securing of the civil and political rights to the colored people was vindicated. The pride and selfishness of the slave-master, too, was referred to; and the charge was made that, in his esteem, national character, conscience of the people, and sense of duty weighed nothing against that pride and selfishness. The warning, too, was given that the Abolitionists were becoming quite as reckless as the slaveholders themselves; and, when provoked by injustice and wrong, they might manifest something of the same spirit. “It is in vain," it was said,” for the master to try to fence his dear slaves in from all intercourse with the great world, to create his little petty and tyrannical kingdom on his own plantation, and keep it for his exclusive reign. He cannot shut out the light of information any more than the light of heaven. It will penetrate all disguises, and shine upon the dark night of slavery. He must recollect that he is surrounded. The North, the East, the West, and the South border on him, --the free West-Indian, the free Mexican, the free Yankee, the more than free Abolitionists of his own country. Everything trenches upon his infected district, and the wolf looks calmly in upon his fold."

The slaveholders were greatly exasperated, too, by these words: "But we are told the enunciation of the soul-stirring principles of Revolutionary patriots is a lie; that slavery the most unmitigated, the lowest, basest that the world has seen; is to be substituted forever for our better, more glorious, holier aspirations. The Constitution.is torn and trampled underfoot, justice and good faith in a nation are divided, brute force -is substituted in the place of high moral tone, all the great principles of national liberty which we inherited from our British, ancestry are yielded up, and we are left without God or help in the world. When the great-hearted of our land weep, and the man of reflection maddens in the contemplation of our national apostasy, there are men, pursuing gain and pleasure, who smile with contempt and indifference at their appeals. But remember, you who dwell in marble palaces, that there are strong arms and fiery hearts and iron pikes in the streets, and panes of glass only between them and the silver plate on the board and the smooth-skinned woman on the ottoman. When you have mocked at virtue, deified the agency of God in the affairs of men, and made rapine your honeyed faith, tremble, for the day of retributio1ds at hand, and the masses will be avenged."

The establishment of such a paper by such a man, with views so radical and a purpose so determined, was naturally regarded by the slaveholders as a challenge to them to come to the defence of their cherished and menaced system. It was, therefore, doomed from the start. Probably no journal, however mildly and courteously conducted, that contemplated and advocated emancipation, would have remained unmolested. Certainly one with sentiments so decided and uncompromising might naturally expect resistance. It came in the form of a committee, which waited upon him on the 14th of' August, while confined to a bed of sickness, requiring him to suspend the publication of his paper, "as," they say in their note, "its further continuance, in our judgment, is dangerous to the peace of the community, and to the safety of our homes and families."

His reply was very decided and defiant. Alluding to the phrase in their letter that they had “been appointed as a committee on the part of a number of the respectable citizens of the city of Lexington," he wrote: "I say, in reply to your assertion that you are a committee appointed by a respectable portion of the community, that it cannot be true. Traitors to the laws and Constitution cannot be deemed respectable by any but assassins, pirates, and highway robbers." After reminding them that their meeting was unknown to the laws and Constitution, and that its “proceedings" were secret, and its purposes were “in direct violation of every known principle of honor, religion, or government," he added: "I treat them with the burning contempt of a brave heart and a loyal citizen. I deny their power and defy their action …Your advice with regard to my personal safety is worthy of the source whence it emanated, and meets with the same contempt from me which the purposes of your mission excite. Go, tell your secret conclave of cowardly assassins that Cassius M. Clay knows his rights, and how to defend them."

He then issued an appeal to the people of Kentucky to stand by him in his conflict with the enemies of law in the defence of the civil and political rights of all. On the 18th of August a meeting was called to consider the question of suppressing the “True American." To this meeting he sent a communication, in which he endeavored to remove some false constructions which had been placed upon the articles in question, and in which he made some further statements concerning the purposes and plans of his paper, concluding with the solemn and unequivocal averment that his constitutional rights he should never "abandon."

The meeting, unmoved by his appeal, proceeded to the consummation of the purpose for which it was convened, by choosing a committee of sixty, which proceeded to the office of the offending journal, boxed up its press, and sent it out of the State. It also unanimously adopted an address to the people of Kentucky, reported by Thomas F. Marshall. In this address it was charged that a formidable party had arisen in the North which held that slavery was "opposed to religion, morals, and law," and that the negro was entitled to his freedom. It asserted, too, that the aim of this party was the abolition of slavery in America. It charged Mr. Clay with being in full sympathy with this party; that he had visited the North, and, having been "received there in full communion by the abolition party, caressed and flattered and feasted, hailed in the stages of his triumphal progress by discharges of cannon, and heralded in the papers devoted to the cause as the boldest, the most intrepid, the most devoted of its champions, he returned to his native State, the organ and agent of an incendiary sect, to force upon her principles fatal to her domestic repose, at the risk of his own life and the peace of the community."

Stigmatizing an abolition paper in a slave State as a " nuisance of the most formidable character," a blazing brand in the hands 1of an incendiary or madman, which might scatter ruin, conflagration, revolution, crime unnamable over everything dear in domestic life, sacred in religion, or respectable in modesty, it denounced the " True American " as an example of the worst type of such papers. Representing Abolitionists as traitors to the Constitution, and abolition principles in a slave State as "fire in a magazine of powder," the address urged these considerations as the justification of its authors for the summary measures they adopted.

Mr. Clay also issued several appeals to the people of Kentucky, calling upon them to vindicate their rights, stricken down in his person. But though overpowered, he exhibited the same defiant spirit and unconquerable purpose, as he, dedicated himself anew to the liberty of his country and of mankind, and called upon Americans to “rise up in the omnipotency of the ballot, and peaceably overthrow the slave despotism of the nation."

He re-established his paper, which, though published in Lexington, was printed in Cincinnati. But when the war with Mexico opened, he, to the great regret of many and the sharp censures of others, entered the army; and, under the plea of standing by the flag of his country in the day of battle, volunteered his services for that most indefensible war. After his return he renewed and continued his warfare on slavery until it ceased to exist.

Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 1. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 628-635.



CLAY, Henry, 1777-1852, Kentucky, statesman, political leader, U.S. Senator, Congressman, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 12th, 13th, and 18th Congress, Presidential candidate. Founder of the American Colonization Society and its President from 1837-1852, Vice President, 1833-1837.

(Blue, 2005, pp. 11, 24, 27, 29, 47, 50-51, 55, 123-124, 166-167; Burin, 2005, pp. 1, 14, 17, 22, 23, 25, 27, 38; Campbell, 1971, pp. 7, 10, 203; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 640; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, p. 173; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 27-29, 30, 113, 116, 139, 143, 174, 184-187, 207, 245)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

CLAY, Henry, statesman, born in Hanover county, Virginia, in a district known as “The Slashes,” 12 April, 1777; died in Washington, D. C., 29 June, 1852. His father, a Baptist clergyman, died when Henry was four years old, leaving no fortune. Henry received some elementary instruction in a log school-house, doing farm and house work when not at school. His mother married again and moved to Kentucky. When fourteen years of age he was placed in a small retail store at Richmond, and in 1792 obtained a place in the office of Peter Tinsley, clerk of the high court of chancery. There he attracted the attention of Chancellor Whyte, who employed him as an amanuensis, and directed his course of reading. In 1796 he began to study law with Robert Brooke, attorney-general of Virginia, and in 1797, having obtained a license to practise law from the judges of the court of appeals, he moved to Lexington, Kentucky. During his residence in Richmond he had made the acquaintance of several distinguished men of Virginia, and became a leading member of a debating club. At Lexington he achieved his first distinction in a similar society. He soon won a lucrative practice as an attorney, being especially successful in criminal cases and in suits growing out of the land laws. His captivating manners and his striking eloquence made him a general favorite. His political career began almost immediately after his arrival at Lexington. A convention was to be elected to revise the constitution of Kentucky, and in the canvass preceding the election Clay strongly advocated a constitutional provision for the gradual emancipation of the slaves in the state; but the movement was not successful. He also participated vigorously in the agitation against the alien and sedition laws, taking position as a member of the Democratic Party. Several of his speeches, delivered in mass meetings, astonished the hearers by their beauty and force. In 1799 he married Lucretia Hart, daughter of a prominent citizen of Kentucky. In 1803 he was elected to a seat in the state legislature, where he excelled as a debater. In 1806 Aaron Burr passed through Kentucky, where he was arrested on a charge of being engaged in an unlawful enterprise dangerous to the peace of the United States. He engaged Clay's professional services, and Clay, deceived by Burr as to the nature of his schemes, obtained his release.

In the winter of 1806 Clay was appointed to a seat in the U. S. Senate to serve out an unexpired term. He was at once placed on various committees, and took an active part in the debates, especially in favor of internal improvements. In the summer of 1807 his county sent him again to the legislature, where he was elected speaker of the assembly. He opposed and defeated a bill prohibiting the use of the decisions of British courts and of British works on jurisprudence as authority in the courts of Kentucky. In December, 1808, he introduced resolutions expressing approval of the embargo laid by the general government, denouncing the British orders in council, pledging the general government the active aid of Kentucky in anything determined upon to resist British exactions, and declaring that President Jefferson was entitled to the thanks of the country. He offered another resolution, recommending that the members of the legislature should wear only clothes that were the product of domestic manufacture. This was his first demonstration in favor of the encouragement of home industry. About this resolution he had a quarrel with Humphrey Marshall, which led to a duel, in which both parties were slightly wounded. In the winter of 1809 Clay was again sent to the U. S. Senate to fill an unexpired term of two years. He made a speech in favor of encouraging home industries, taking the ground that the country should be enabled to produce all it might need in time of war, and that, while agriculture would remain the dominant interest, it should be aided by the development of domestic manufactures. He also made a report on a bill granting a right of pre-emption to purchasers of public lands in certain cases, and introduced a bill to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes, and to preserve peace on the frontier, a subject on which he expressed very wise and humane sentiments. During the session of 1810-’1 he defended the administration of Mr. Madison with regard to the occupation of West Florida by the United States by a strong historical argument, at the same time appealing, in glowing language, to the national pride of the American people. He opposed the renewal of the charter of the U. S. bank, notwithstanding Gallatin's recommendation, on the ground of the unconstitutionally of the bank, and contributed much to its defeat.

On the expiration of his term in the Senate, Clay was sent to the national House of Representatives by the Lexington District in Kentucky, and immediately upon taking his seat, 4 November, 1811, was elected speaker by a large majority. Not confining himself to his duties as presiding officer, he took a leading part in debate on almost all important occasions. The difficulties caused by British interference with neutral trade were then approaching a crisis, and Clay put himself at the head of the War Party in Congress, which was led in the second line by such voting statesmen as John C. Calhoun, William Lowndes, Felix Grundy, and Langdon Cheves, and supported by a strong feeling in the south and west. In a series of fiery speeches Clay advocated the calling out of volunteers to serve on land, and the construction of an efficient navy. He expected that the war with Great Britain would be decided by an easy conquest of Canada, and a peace dictated at Quebec. The Madison administration hesitated, but was finally swept along by the war furor created by the young Americans under Clay's lead, and war under the young Americans under Clay's lead, and war against Britain was declared in June, 1812. Clay spoke at a large number of popular meetings to fill volunteer regiments and to fire the national spirit. In Congress, while the events of the war were unfavorable to the United States in consequence of an utter lack of preparation and incompetent leadership, Clay vigorously sustained the administration and the war policy against the attacks of the federalists. Some of his speeches were of a high order of eloquence, and electrified the country. He was re-elected speaker in 1813. On 19 January, 1814, he resigned the speakership, having been appointed by President Madison a member of a commission, consisting of John Quincy Adams, James A. Bayard, Henry Clay, Jonathan Russell, and Albert Gallatin, to negotiate peace with Great Britain. The American commissioners met the commissioners of Great Britain at Ghent. in the Netherlands, and, after five months of negotiation, during which Mr. Clay stoutly opposed the concession to the British of the right of navigating the Mississippi and of meddling with the Indians on territory of the United States, a treaty of peace was signed, 21 December, 1814. From Ghent Clay went to Paris, and thence with Adams and Gallatin to London, to negotiate a treaty of commerce with Great Britain.

After his return to the United States, Mr. Clay declined the mission to Russia, offered by the administration. Having been elected again to the House of Representatives, he took his seat on December 4, 1815, and was again chosen speaker. He favored the enactment of the protective tariff of 1816, and also advocated the establishment of a U. S. bank as the fiscal agent of the government, thus reversing his position with regard to that subject. He now pronounced the bank constitutional because it was necessary in order to carry on the fiscal concerns of the government. During the same session he voted to raise the pay of representatives from $6 a day to $1,500 a year, a measure that proved unpopular, and his vote for it came near costing him his seat. He was, however, re-elected, but then voted to make the pay of representatives per diem of $8, which it remained for a long period. In the session of 1816-’ he, together with Calhoun, actively supported an internal improvement bill, which President Madison vetoed. In December, 1817, Clay was re-elected speaker. In opposition to the doctrine laid down by Monroe in his first message, that Congress did not possess, under the constitution, the right to construct internal improvements, Clay strongly asserted that right in several speeches. With great vigor he advocated the recognition of the independence of the Spanish American colonies, then in a state of revolution, and severely censured what he considered the procrastinating policy of the administration in that respect. In the session of 1818-’9 he criticised, in an elaborate speech, the conduct of General Jackson in the Florida Campaign, especially the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister by Jackson's orders. This was the first collision between Clay and Jackson, and the ill feelings that it engendered in Jackson's mind were never extinguished. At the first session of the 16th Congress, in December, 1819, Clay was again elected speaker almost without opposition. In the debate on the treaty with Spain, by which Florida was ceded to the United States, he severely censured the administration for having given up Texas, which he held to belong to the United States as a part of the Louisiana purchase. He continued to urge the recognition of the South American colonies as independent republics.

In 1819-’20 he took an important part in the struggle in Congress concerning the admission of Missouri as a slave state, which created the first great political slavery excitement throughout the country. He opposed the “restriction” clause making the admission of Missouri dependent upon the exclusion of slavery from the state, but supported the compromise proposed by Senator Thomas, of Illinois, admitting Missouri with slavery, but excluding slavery from all the territory north of 30° 30', acquired by the Louisiana purchase. This was the first part of the Missouri compromise, which is often erroneously attributed to Clay. When Missouri then presented herself with a state constitution, not only recognizing slavery, but also making it the duty of the legislature to pass such laws as would be necessary to prevent free Negroes or mulattoes from coming into the state, the excitement broke out anew, and a majority in the House of Representatives refused to admit Missouri as a state with such a constitution. On Clay's motion, the subject was referred to a special committee, of which he was chairman. This committee of the house joined with a Senate committee, and the two unitedly reported in both houses a resolution that Missouri be admitted upon the fundamental condition that the state should never make any law to prevent from settling within its boundaries any description of persons who then or thereafter might become citizens of any state of the Union. This resolution was adopted, and the fundamental condition assented to by Missouri. This was Clay's part of the Missouri compromise, and he received general praise as “the great pacificator.”

After the adjournment of Congress, Clay retired to private life, to devote himself to his legal practice, but was elected to the 18th Congress, which met in December, 1823. and was again chosen speaker. He made speeches on internal improvements, advocating a liberal construction of constitutional powers, in favor of sending a commissioner to Greece, and in favor of the tariff law, which became known as the tariff of 1824, giving his policy of protection and internal improvements the name of the “American system.”

He was a candidate for the presidency at the election of 1824. His competitors were John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and William H. Crawford, each of whom received a larger number of electoral votes than Clay. But, as none of them had received a majority of the electoral vote, the election devolved upon the House of Representatives. Clay, standing fourth in the number of electoral votes received, was excluded from the choice, and he used his influence in the house for John Quincy Adams, who was elected. The friends of Jackson and Crawford charged that there was a corrupt understanding between Adams and Clay, and this accusation received color from the fact that Adams promptly offered Clay the portfolio of Secretary of State, and Clay accepted it. This was the origin of the “bargain and corruption ” charge, which, constantly repeated, pursued Clay during the best part of his public life, although it was disproved by the well-established fact that Clay, immediately after the result of the presidential election in 1824 became known, had declared his determination to use his influence in the house for Adams and against Jackson. As Secretary of State under John Quincy Adams, Clay accepted an invitation, presented by the Mexican and Colombian ministers, to send commissioners of the United States to an international congress of American republics, which was to meet on the Isthmus of Panama, to deliberate upon subjects of common interest. The commissioners were appointed, but the Panama Congress adjourned before they could reach the appointed place of meeting. In the course of one of the debates on this subject, John Randolph, of Roanoke, denounced the administration, alluding to Adams and Clay as a “combination of the Puritan and the blackleg.” Clay thereupon challenged Randolph to a duel, which was fought on 8 April, 1826, without bloodshed. He negotiated and concluded treaties with Prussia, the Hanseatic republics, Denmark, Colombia, Central America, and Austria. His negotiations with Great Britain concerning the colonial trade resulted only in keeping in force the conventions of 1815 and 1818. He made another treaty with Great Britain, extending the joint occupation of the Oregon country provided for in the treaty of 1818; another referring the differences concerning the northeastern boundary to some friendly sovereign or state for arbitration; and still another concerning the indemnity to be paid by Great Britain for slaves carried off by British forces in the war of 1812. As to his commercial policy, Clay followed the accepted ideas of the times, to establish between the United States and foreign countries fair reciprocity as to trade and navigation. He was made president of the American Colonization Society, whose object it was to colonize free Negroes in Liberia on the coast of Africa.

In 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected president, and after his inauguration Clay retired to his farm of Ashland, near Lexington, Kentucky. But, although in private life, he was generally recognized as the leader of the party opposing Jackson, who called themselves “National Republicans,” and later “Whigs,” Clay, during the years 1829-’31, visited several places in the south as well as in the state of Ohio, was everywhere received with great honors, and made speeches attacking Jackson's administration, mainly on account of the sweeping removals from office for personal and partisan reasons, and denouncing the nullification movement, which in the meantime had been set on foot in South Carolina. Yielding to the urgent solicitation of his friends throughout the country, he consented in 1831 to be a candidate for the U. S. Senate, and was elected. In December, 1831, he was nominated as the candidate of the National Republicans for the presidency, with John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, for the vice-presidency. As the impending extinguishment of the public debt rendered a reduction of the revenue necessary, Clay introduced in the Senate a tariff bill reducing duties on unprotected articles, but keeping them on protected articles, so as to preserve intact the “American system.” The reduction of the revenue thus effected was inadequate, and the anti-tariff excitement in the south grew more intense. The subject of public lands having, for the purpose of embarrassing him as a presidential candidate, been referred to the committee on manufactures, of which he was the leading spirit, he reported against reducing the price of public lands and in favor of distributing the proceeds of the lands' sales, after certain reductions, among the several states for a limited period. The bill passed the Senate, but failed to pass the house. As President Jackson, in his several messages, had attacked the U. S. bank. Clay induced the bank, whose charter was to expire in 1836, to apply for a renewal of the charter during the session of 1831-’2, so as to force the issue the presidential election. The bill renewing the charter passed both houses, but Jackson vetoed it, denouncing the bank in his message as a dangerous monopoly. In the presidential election Clay was disastrously defeated, Jackson receiving 219 electoral votes, and Clay only 49.

On 19 November, 1832, a state convention in South Carolina passed an ordinance nullifying the tariff laws of 1828 and 1832. On 10 December, President Jackson issued a proclamation against the nullifiers, which the governor of South Carolina answered with a counter-proclamation. On 12 February, 1833, Clay introduced, in behalf of union and peace, a compromise bill providing for a gradual reduction of the tariff until 1842, when it should be reduced to a horizontal rate of 20 per cent. This bill was accepted by the nullifiers, and became a law, known as the compromise of 1833. South Carolina rescinded the nullification ordinance, and Clay was again praised as the “great pacificator.” In the autumn of 1833, President Jackson, through the secretary of the treasury, ordered the removal of the public deposits from the U. S. bank. Clay, in December, 1833, introduced resolutions in the Senate censuring the president for having “assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the constitution and laws.” The resolutions were adopted, and President Jackson sent to the Senate an earnest protest against them, which was severely denounced by Clay. During the session of 1834-’5 Clay successfully opposed Jackson's recommendation that authority be conferred on him for making reprisals upon French property on account of the non-payment by the French government of an indemnity due to the United States. He also advocated the enactment of a law enabling Indians to defend their rights to their lands in the courts of the United States; also the restriction of the president's power to make removals from office, and the repeal of the four-years act. The slavery question having come to the front again, in consequence of the agitation carried on by the abolitionists, Clay, in the session of 1835-”6, pronounced himself favor of the reception by the Senate of anti-slavery petitions, and against the exclusion of anti-slavery literature from the mails. He declared, however, his opposition to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. With regard to the recognition of Texas as an independent state, he maintained a somewhat cold and reserved attitude. In the session of 1836-’7 he reintroduced his land bill without success, and advocated international copyright. His resolutions censuring Jackson for the removal of the deposits, passed in 1834, were, on the motion of Thomas H. Benton, expunged from the records of the Senate, against solemn protest from the Whig minority in that body.

Martin Van Buren was elected president in 1836, and immediately after his inauguration the great financial crisis of 1837 broke out. At an extra session of Congress, in the summer of 1837, he recommended the introduction of the sub-treasury system. This was earnestly opposed by Clay, who denounced it as a scheme to “unite the power of the purse with the power of the sword.” He and his friends insisted upon the restoration of the U. S. bank. After a struggle of three sessions, the sub-treasury bill succeeded, and the long existence of the system has amply proved the groundlessness of the fears expressed by those who opposed it. Clay strongly desired to be the Whig candidate for the presidency in 1840, but failed. The Whig national Convention, in December, 1839, nominated Harrison and Tyler. Clay was very much incensed at his defeat, but supported Harrison with great energy, making many speeches in the famous “log-cabin and hard-cider ” campaign. After the triumphant election of Harrison and Tyler, Clay declined the office of Secretary of State offered to him. Harrison died soon after his inauguration. At the extra session of Congress in the summer of 1841, Clay was the recognized leader of the Whig majority. He moved the repeal of the sub-treasury act, and drove it through both houses. He then brought in a bill providing for the incorporation of a new bank of the United States, which also passed, but was vetoed by President Tyler, 16 August, 1841. Another bank bill, framed to meet what were supposed to be the president's objections, was also vetoed. Clay denounced Tyler instantly for what he called his faithlessness to Whig principles, and the Whig Party rallied under Clay's leadership in opposition to the president. At the same session Clay put through his land bill, containing the distribution clause, which, however, could not go into operation because the revenues of the government fell short of the necessary expenditures. At the next session Clay offered an amendment to the constitution limiting the veto power, which during Jackson's and Tyler's administrations had become very obnoxious to him; and also an amendment to the constitution providing that the secretary of the treasury and the treasurer should be appointed by Congress; and a third forbidding the appointment members of Congress, while in office, to executive positions. None of them passed. On 31 March, 1842, Clay took leave of the Senate and retired to private life, as he said in his farewell speech, never to return to the Senate.

During his retirement he visited different parts the country, and was everywhere received with great enthusiasm, delivering speeches, in some of which he pronounced himself in favor not of a “high tariff,” but of a revenue tariff with incidental protection repeatedly affirming that the protective system had been originally designed only a temporary arrangement to be maintained until the infant industries should have gained sufficient strength to sustain competition with foreign manufactures. It was generally looked upon as certain that he would be the Whig candidate for the presidency in 1844. In the meantime the administration had concluded a treaty of annexation with Texas. In an elaborate letter, dated 17 April, 1844, known as the “Raleigh letter,” Clay declared himself against annexation, mainly because it would bring on a war with Mexico, because it met with serious objection in a large part of the Union, and because it would compromise the national character. Van Buren, who expected to be the Democratic candidate for the presidency, also wrote a letter unfavorable to annexation. On 1 May, 1844, the Whig national Convention nominated Clay by acclamation. The Democratic National Convention animated not Van Buren, but James K. Polk for the presidency, with George M. Dallas for the vice-presidency, and adopted a resolution recommending the annexation of Texas. A convention of anti-slavery men was held at Buffalo, New York, which put forward as a candidate for the presidency James G. Birney. The Senate rejected the annexation treaty, and the Texas question became the main issue in the presidential canvass. As to the tariff and the currency question, the platforms of the Democrats and Whigs differed very little. Polk, who had the reputation of being a free-trader, wrote a letter apparently favoring a protective tariff, to propitiate Pennsylvania, where the cry was raised. “Polk, Dallas, and the tariff of 1842.” Clay, yielding to the entreaties of southern Whigs, who feared that his declaration against the annexation of Texas might injure his prospects in the south, wrote another letter, in which he said that, far from having any personal objection to the annexation of Texas, he would be “glad to see it without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon fair terms.” This turned against him many anti-slavery men in the north, and greatly strengthened the Birney movement. It is believed that it cost him the vote of the state of New York, and with it the election. It was charged, apparently upon strong grounds, that extensive election frauds were committed by the Democrats in the city of New York and in the state of Louisiana, the latter becoming famous as the Plaquemines frauds; but had Clay kept the anti-slavery element on his side, as it was at the beginning of the canvass, these frauds could not have decided the election. His defeat cast the Whig Party into the deepest gloom, and was lamented by his supporters like a personal misfortune.

Texas was annexed by a joint resolution which passed the two houses of Congress in the session of 1844-’5, and the Mexican War followed. In 1846, Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, moved, as an amendment to a bill appropriating money for purposes connected with the war, a proviso that in all territories to be acquired from Mexico slavery should be forever prohibited, which, however, failed in the Senate. This became known as the “Wilmot proviso.” One of Clay's sons was killed in the battle of Buena Vista. In the autumn of 1847, when the Mexican Army was completely defeated, Clay made a speech at Lexington, Kentucky, warning the American people of the dangers that would follow if they gave themselves up to the ambition of conquest, and declaring that there should be a generous peace, requiring no dismemberment of the Mexican republic, but “only a just and proper fixation of the limits of Texas.” and that any desire to acquire any foreign territory whatever for the purpose of propagating slavery should be “positively and emphatically” disclaimed. In February and March, 1848, Clay was honored with great popular receptions in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, and his name was again brought forward for the presidential nomination. But the Whig national Convention, which met on 7 June, 1848, preferred General Zachary Taylor as a more available man, with Millard Fillmore for the vice-presidency. His defeat in the convention was a bitter disappointment to Clay. He declined to come forward to the support of Taylor, and maintained during the canvass an attitude of neutrality. The principal reason he gave was that Taylor had refused to pledge himself to the support of Whig principles and measures, and that Taylor had announced his purpose to remain in the field as a candidate, whoever might be nominated by the Whig Convention. He declined, on the other hand, to permit his name to be used by the dissatisfied Whigs. Taylor was elected, the Free-Soilers, whose candidate was Martin Van Buren, having assured the defeat of the Democratic candidate, General Cass, in the state of New York. In the spring of 1849 a convention was to be elected in Kentucky to revise the state constitution, and Clay published a letter recommending gradual emancipation of the slaves. By a unanimous vote of the legislature assembled in December, 1848, Clay was again elected a U. S. Senator, and he took his seat in December, 1849.

By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, New Mexico and California, including Utah, had been acquired by the United States. The discovery of gold had attracted a large immigration to California. Without waiting for an enabling act, the inhabitants of California, in convention, had framed a constitution by which slavery was prohibited, and applied to Congress for admission as a state. The question of the admission of California as a free state, and the other question whether slavery should be admitted into or excluded from New Mexico and Utah, created the intensest excitement in Congress and among the people. Leading southern men threatened a dissolution of the Union unless slavery were admitted into the territories acquired from Mexico. On 29 January, 1850, Clay, who was at heart in favor of the Wilmot proviso, brought forward in the Senate a “comprehensive scheme of compromise,” which included (1) the speedy admission of California as a state; (2) the establishment of territorial governments in New Mexico and Utah without any restriction as to slavery; (3) a settlement of the boundary-line between Texas and New Mexico substantially as it now stands; (4) an indemnity to be paid to Texas for the relinquishment of her claims to a large portion of New Mexico; (5) a declaration that slavery should not be abolished in the District of Columbia; (6) the prohibition of the slave-trade in the district; and (7) a more effective fugitive-slave law. These propositions were, on 18 April, 1850, referred to a special committee, of which Clay was elected chairman. He reported three bills embodying these different subjects, one of which, on account of its comprehensiveness, was called the “omnibus bill.” After a long struggle, the omnibus bill was defeated; but then its different parts wore taken up singly, and passed, covering substantially Clay's original propositions. This was the compromise of 1850. In the debate Clay declared in the strongest terms his allegiance to the Union as superior to his allegiance to his state, and denounced secession as treason. The compromise of 1850 added greatly to his renown; but, although it was followed by a short period of quiet, it satisfied neither the south nor the north. To the north the fugitive-slave law was especially distasteful. In January, 1851, forty-four senators and Representatives, Clay's name leading, published a manifesto declaring that they would not support for any office any man not known to be opposed to any disturbance of the matters settled by the compromise. In February, 1851, a recaptured fugitive slave having been liberated in Boston, Clay pronounced himself in favor of conferring upon the president extraordinary powers for the enforcement of the fugitive-slave law, his main object being to satisfy the south, and thus to disarm the disunion spirit.

After the adjournment of Congress, on 4 March, 1851, his health being much impaired, he went to Cuba for relief, and thence to Ashland. He peremptorily enjoined his friends not to bring forward his name again as that of a candidate for the presidency. To a committee of Whigs in New York he addressed a public letter containing an urgent and eloquent plea for the maintenance of the Union. He went to Washington to take his seat in the Senate in December, 1851, but, owing to failing health, he appeared there only once during the winter. His last public utterance was a short speech addressed to Louis Kossuth, who visited him in his room, deprecating the entanglement of the United States in the complications of European affairs. He favored the nomination of Fillmore for the presidency by the Whig national Convention, which met on 16 June, a few days before his death. Clay was unquestionably one of the greatest orators that America ever produced; a man of incorruptible personal integrity; of very great natural ability, but little study; of free and convivial habits; of singularly winning address and manners; not a cautious and safe political leader, but a splendid party chief, idolized by his followers. He was actuated by a lofty national spirit, proud of his country, and ardently devoted to the Union. It was mainly his anxiety to keep the Union intact that inspired his disposition to compromise contested questions. He had in his last hours the satisfaction of seeing his last great work, the compromise of 1850, accepted as a final settlement of the slavery question by the national conventions of both political parties. But only two years after his death it became evident that the compromise had settled nothing. The struggle about slavery broke out anew, and brought forth a Civil War, the calamity that Clay had been most anxious to prevent, leading to general emancipation, which Clay would have been glad to see peaceably accomplished. He was buried in the cemetery at Lexington, Kentucky, and a monument consisting of a tall column surmounted by a statue was erected over his tomb. The accompanying illustrations show his birthplace and tomb. See “Life of Henry Clay,” by George D. Prentice (Hartford, Connecticut, 1831); “Speeches,” collected by R. Chambers (Cincinnati, 1842); “Life and Speeches of Henry Clay,” by J. B. Swaim (New York, 1843); “Life of Henry Clay,” by Epes Sargent (1844, edited and completed by Horace Greeley, 1852); “Life and Speeches of Henry Clay,” by D. Mallory (1844; new ed., 1857); “Life and Times of Henry Clay,” by Reverend Calvin Colton (6 vols., containing speeches and correspondence, 1846-’57; revised ed., 1864); and “Henry Clay,” by Carl Schurz (2 vols., Boston, 1887). — His brother, Porter, clergyman, born in Virginia in March, 1779; died in 1850. He moved to Kentucky in early life, where he studied law, and was for a while auditor of public accounts. In 1815 he was converted and gave himself to the Baptist ministry, in which he was popular and useful. — Henry's son, Henry, lawyer, born in Ashland, Kentucky, 10 April, 1811; killed in action at Buena Vista, Mexico, 23 February, 1847, was graduated at Transylvania University in 1828, and at the U.S. Military Academy in 1831. He resigned from the army and studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1833, and was a member of the Kentucky legislature in 1835-’7. He went to the Mexican War in June, 1846, as lieutenant-colonel of the 2d Kentucky Volunteers, became extra aide-de-camp to General Taylor, 5 October, 1846, and was killed with a lance while gallantly leading a charge of his regiment. — Another son, James Brown, born in Washington, D. C., 9 November, 1817; died in Montreal, Canada, 26 January, 1864, was educated at Transylvania University, was two years in a counting-house in Boston, 1835-’6, emigrated to St. Louis, Missouri, which then contained only 8,000 inhabitants, settled on a farm, then engaged in manufacturing for two years in Kentucky, and afterward studied law in the Lexington law-school, and practised in partnership with his father till 1849, when he was appointed chargé d'affaires at Lisbon by President Taylor. In 1851-’3 he resided in Missouri, but returned to Kentucky upon becoming the proprietor of Ashland, after his father's death. In 1857 he was elected to represent his father's old district in Congress. He was a member of the peace Convention of 1861, but afterward embraced the secessionist cause, and died in exile. [Appleton’s 1900].

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 173-179:

CLAY, HENRY (April 12, 1777-June 29, 1852), congressman, senator, secretary of state, was descended from English ancestors who came to Virginia shortly after the founding of Jamestown but did not rise to any position of importance in the colony. His father, John Clay, was a Baptist minister, who moved from Henrico County to the frontiers of Hanover County in search of a district more hospitable to the practise of his religion. His mother was Elizabeth Hudson, who came of a family of no greater prominence than the Clays. Henry Clay was born in the midst of the Revolution in a region overrun by war, in that part of Hanover County generally referred to as The Slashes. He was the fourth son, and next to the youngest child, in a family of eight-three daughters and five sons. Of these children only two sons besides Henry lived far beyond the age of maturity. His father died in 1781 leaving the family little more than the respectability of his name. As Henry was only four years old at the time the influence of his father could have affected him very little. To his mother he owed much. He always held her in affectionate remembrance. His formal education consisted of three years before the master of The Slashes log school, Peter Deacon, whom Clay always pleasantly recalled. In 1791 Clay's mother married Henry Watkins, a man who came to regard his step-children kindly and who took a particular interest in Henry. He moved the family to Richmond where he was a resident, and soon secured for Henry a position in a retail store kept by Richard Denny, where the young clerk remained for a year. Feeling that Henry's capacities recommended him for a higher position, his step-father secured work for him in the office of the clerk of the High Court of Chancery, and here Clay remained for the next four years, until 1796. Though somewhat ungainly in appearance, he attracted attention by his open countenance and industry, and thereby recommended himself to Chancellor George Wythe. who made him his amanuensis to copy the court's decisions when not busied in the clerk's office. In his contact with Wythe, Clay secured good counsel and intelligent direction of the reading which he had begun in Denny's store. All his surroundings and his proclivities suggested to him the 3tudy of law. This he began in 1796 in the office of Attorney-General Robert Brooke, and within a year he secured his license to practise. During this time he lived in the home of the Attorney-General and had unusual opportunities to meet the people of prominence in the Virginia capital. While his introduction to Richmond had been far more fortunate than he could have had reason to expect, he felt that conditions were settled there and competition too keen. The same lure that had drawn so many others to the new state of Kentucky also tempted him. Added to this was the fact that his mother was now living there, having left Virginia the year Kentucky became a state. In 1797 Clay moved to Lexington, the outstanding city of all the West in culture and influence. His reputation as an attorney-at-law was soon made and his clients became numerous. As a criminal lawyer, he came by common consent to have no equal in Kentucky. It has been repeatedly stated that no person was ever hanged in a trial where Clay appeared for the defense. He used every trick in argument and procedure in addition to his great skill as an orator. Infrequently he appeared as prosecutor for the state, once serving under protest for a short time as attorney for Fayette County, but by preference he usually acted for the defense. It was not long before the law became to him the means to a much more important end, the regulation of the political and constitutional relations of Kentucky. His first appearance in a political capacity was in 1798 when he followed George Nicholas in a denunciation of the sedition law before a great throng in Lexington. This speech, which was never forgotten by those who heard it, was a fitting introduction to his new constituents. In 1803 in a contest against Felix Grundy, he was elected to the legislature, where he continued until 1806. He had by this time become typically Western in his point of view, and when it seemed that the United States might at the last moment be cheated by Spain out of the prize of Louisiana, he became as greatly excited as any other Kentuckian over the possibility of marching on New Orleans. In this new community, so little acquainted with the sanctity of law and of established usages, Clay generally took a conservative stand. In 1804 when a fight was made to repeal the charter of the Kentucky Insurance Company in which banking powers had been secured by a stratagem, he championed the cause of the corporation by arguing that a contract was involved and could not be broken except by the agreement of both parties; and in 1807 when the animosity against […].

In the Missouri Compromise debate the dangers of a divided country first rudely shocked the nation, and propelled Clay into a new role, which he was to play thereafter. The essence of the struggle to him was not the extension or restriction of slavery, but the continuance of the Union of equal states. If Congress could lay restrictions on slavery in Missouri, its power might extend to any subject. Herein lay the fundamental danger to the Union. Through the compromise suggested by Senator Thomas, Clay saw the question practically settled, and in 1820 he returned to Kentucky to look after his private affairs, and to be absent from much of the session beginning in the fall. Trouble broke out anew when Missouri sought to exclude free negroes from her boundaries. Clay hastened back to Washington in January 1821 and succeeded in pushing through the House a compromise plan, substantially the same as that which Senator Eaton had introduced in the Senate. He returned to Kentucky at the end of the session, in March 1821, not to reappear in Congress until he should come as an avowed candidate for the presidency. His private affairs in Kentucky engaged his attention for the next two years, during which time he enjoyed the almost universal acclaim of Kentuckians. In 1822 a joint meeting of the legislature nominated him for the presidency, and other states soon followed. He was also reelected to Congress, where he served from 1823 to 1825, being again the choice of that body for speaker. He now set about consolidating a national program calculated to secure his election. It was during this period that he developed fully his American system of protective tariffs and internal improvements. The tariff bill of 1820 had., failed, but in 1824 he secured the passage of the highest protective tariff enacted up to that time. In the presidential election of 1824 he received the smallest number of votes cast for any of the four candidates and was thereby eliminated by the Constitution from those to be voted upon by the House, which body chooses the president when no one receives a majority of the electoral college. Clay had carried Kentucky by an overwhelming vote against Jackson, his nearest competitor, who had received a plurality in the nation. Jackson had grievously wounded the feelings of Kentucky in 1815 when he had accused the Kentucky troops at New Orleans of cowardice, but even so he was much more attractive to Kentuckians than Adams, whose enmity shown at Ghent was well known. The legislature instructed Clay to vote for Jackson when the House should take up the election of the president, instructions which Clay ignored by voting for Adams and effecting his election. For this rebellious conduct Clay suffered his first eclipse in Kentucky, temporary though it was. Jackson and his friends were furious, charged Clay with making a bargain with Adams, and when Clay accepted the secretaryship of state were irretrievably convinced of his duplicity. Clay and his friends labored throughout the rest of their lives to disprove this slander, but it dogged his tracks in every subsequent campaign. When he returned to Kentucky he found considerable hostility, but the warmth of the welcome extended by his friends soon convinced him of the solidarity of his position. He bitterly attacked Jackson, and repeatedly asked how the winning of a military victory and the possession of an imperious and dictatorial spirit could possibly be a recommendation for the civil leadership of the nation. Yet many of Clay's friends could never shake off the feeling that the alliance with Adams was a most unnatural one.

As secretary of state, Clay was thoroughly loyal throughout to the Administration. He served the full term and perhaps never spent a more miserable and uninteresting four years in all his life. He was by nature opposed to the routine of administrative work, finding his chief delight in the excitement of debate and parliamentary maneuvers. Much of the time he was ill, and but for his loyalty would have resigned. No problems of great importance in foreign affairs arose, though he made a host of minor commercial treaties. The best-known incident of his incumbency was the Pan-American Congress, in which he sought to have the United States participate. The enemies of the Administration started an acrimonious debate in Congress over the

If Clay had revived the idea of retiring to Ashland and settling down to the stock farming which he so much enjoyed, he was soon dispossessed of the thought, for his reception in Kentucky was, so vigorous as to constitute a mandate for the presidency in 1844. Enthusiasm for him was equally marked throughout the rest of the country. The. year he retired from the Senate, two years before the election, various states began to nominate him. He made a few trips out of Kentucky, notably one to the states north of the Ohio. In Dayton it was estimated that 100,000 people gathered to hear him. Long before 1844 it was conceded that Clay would be the Whig nominee, and it was no less an accepted fact in Clay's mind that Van Buren would receive the Democratic nomination. When Van Buren chanced to visit Ashland, the two prospective candidates appear to have agreed to eliminate the question of Texas from the campaign. Accordingly, on the same day in the latter part of April, after Clay had made a trip through the lower South, both he and Van Buren issued statements opposing immediate annexation (for Clay's letter, see Niles' Register,LXVI,152-53). A few days later Clay was nominated by acclamation in the Whig national convention. Van Buren, however, lost the Democratic nomination to Polk, as the Democrats were determined on expansion. The apparent enthusiasm of the country for annexation and the widespread impression that he was favoring the abolitionists, led Clay to restate his position in what came to be called the "Alabama letters." In these he declared that slavery was not involved one way or the other in the Texas question, and that he would be glad to see Texas annexed, if it could be done "without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just and fair terms" (Ibid., LXVI, 439). Owing to this ill-advised maneuver, Clay lost New York, and thereby the election, to Polk. "Never before or since has the -defeat of any man in this country brought forth such an exhibition of heartfelt grief from the educated and respectable classes of society as did this defeat of Clay" (James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States, 1902, I, 84).

Polk's success brought annexation, at the hands of Tyler, and war with Mexico. Clay felt that the declaration of war was an outrage, yet after war was declared he supported it. His favorite son, Henry, was killed at Buena Vista. Much concerned over the ultimate outcome of the war, Clay made a speech in Lexington on November 13, 1847, in which he called upon Congress to disclaim any intention of annexing Mexico and to announce the purposes of the war. During this period of retirement he made two trips to the East and was received with almost unbounded enthusiasm in New York, Philadelphia, and in other cities. Again the clamor began to arise for his nomination in 1848. Convinced of support, he announced his candidacy in April 1848. But there were many Whigs who felt that he could not be elected, and some of these were in Kentucky. A Kentucky Whig wrote John J. Crittenden, January 2, 1847, that "the Whig party cannot e:icist, or with any hope of success, so long as Mr. Clay continues his political aspirations" (Mrs. C. Coleman, Life of John J. Crittenden, 1871, I, 266). Crittenden's desertion brought to an end a long-standing friendship. General Zachary Taylor was nominated, and Clay, disconsolate because he did not control even the Kentucky delegation, felt that the Whig party had destroyed itself by its own act. The folly of nominating a military hero who had no qualifications for civil leadership had been repeated. Clay definitely refused to take part in the campaign.

After Taylor's election, when the problems growing out of the war and the sectional struggle had nearly driven the country to disunion, he returned to the Senate (1849) in a last effort to ward off disaster. Spurning Taylor's weak course, he set forth in detail his plan for gradual emancipation in the Pinde letter of 1849 and introduced in the Senate his well-known series of resolutions. In the debate in the Senate he made his greatest and last effort to save the Union, begging the radicals, in both North and South, to abandon a course which could mean only disruption. He particularly warned the South against secession, declaring that no such right existed and that 'he would advocate force in opposing it. Clay hoped that the compromise measures would definitely settle the sectional struggle; but to make doubly sure he with forty-four other members of Congress signed a pledge to oppose for public office anyone who did not accept the settlement. In the summer of 1851 he returned to Kentucky by way of Cuba, hoping the Southern climate would help a racking cough with which he was now afflicted, but he found no relief. In the fall he was back in Washington, determined, it seemed, to die in the service of his country. On the following June 29, death-closed his career. His remains were taken to Lexington by way of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, amid national mourning. He was buried in the Lexington cemetery.

No man in American public life has had more ardent supporters or more bitter enemies than Clay, and no one has depended more for his happiness on the friendship of the people. His mastery of Kentucky's emotions and reason was complete and lasting on every public question except that of slavery. Kentucky absorbed his strong Unionism but refused to adopt his plan of emancipation. Clay obtained much pleasure from his Ashland home with its six hundred acres and fifty slaves; but however often he might resolve to abandon public life, the importunities of his friends and his love of debate changed his mind. When his home was in danger of being sold for his debts, unknown friends throughout the country raised $50,000 with which they settled his obligations. He was not by nature a religious man, though he joined the Episcopal Church in later life (1847). He fought duels, but he afterward came strongly to oppose that method of vindicating honor. In common with his contemporaries, he played cards, was fond of horse-racing, and liked good liquors, though he did not drink to excess. Jn appearance he was tall, with a high forehead, gray eyes, and a large mouth. His voice was engaging, and in debate he employed every movement of his body with grace and skill, even using his snuff box to great advantage. His personal magnetism was remarkable; he seemed never to be without a proper word or expression, and always seemed to be perfectly at ease. Enthusiasm and warmth characterized his speaking, getting the best of his reason at times and leading him into untenable positions. His knowledge was not characterized by the profundity of Webster's, nor did he have the philosophical powers of Calhoun or the acquaintance with the classics which Adams and Sumner possessed. But in his understanding of human nature, in his ability to appeal to the common reason, and in his absolute fearlessness in stating his convictions, he was unexcelled by any of his contemporaries. He was married in 1799 to Lucretia Hart, a daughter of Colonel Thomas Hart of Henderson's Transylvania Company, by whom he had eleven children-six daughters and five sons. All his daughters and one son died before him. Another son became insane from an .accident. Of the others, Thomas H. Clay was minister to Guatemala •under Lincoln and died in 1871; James B. Clay was charge d'affaires at Lisbon under an appointment from Taylor, was later elected to Congress, and died in 1863; and John M. Clay became a farm.er and was the last surviving member of the family, dying in 1887.

[The letters and papers of Henry Clay are voluminous. Many of them have been scattered among his descendants, but the largest single collection is in the Library of Congress Among his published letters and speeches are the following: Richard Chambers, ed., Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, in the (Congress of the U. S. (1842); Daniel Mallory, ed., Life and Speeches of Henry Clay (2 volumes, 1843); Galvin Colton, ed., Private Correspondence of Henry Clay (1856); Works of Henry Clay (6 volumes, 1856, republished, with additional, matter, in 7 volumes, 1896),. and Monument to the Memory of Henry Clay (1857). The principal biographies of Clay are: Geo. D. Prentice, Biography of Henry Clay (1831); -Epes Sargent, Life and Public Service of Henry Clay (1842, republished with additions, 1848); Cahrin Colton, Life and Times of Henry Clay (2 volumes, 18 46); Calvin Colton, The Last Seven Y ears of the Life of Henry Clay (1856); Carl Schurz, Henry Clay (2 volumes, 1887); Thos. H. Clay and E. P. Oberholtzer, Henry Clay (1910); Jos. M. Rogers, The True Henry Clay (1902). An estimate of Clay's service as speaker of the House of Representatives is in M. P. Follett, The Speaker of the House of Representatives (1909) and H. B. Fuller, Speakers of the House (1909). The ancestry of Clay has been most fully set forth by Zachary F. Smith and Mrs. Mary Rogers Clay in The Clay Family (1899), being no. 14 of the Filson Club Publications.]

E.M.C.



CLAYTON, John Middleton, jurist, born in Dagsborough, Sussex County, Delaware, 24 July, 1796; died in Dover, Delaware, 9 November, 1856. In 1829 he was sent to the U. S. Senate, and in 1831 appointed a member of the convention to revise the constitution of Delaware. In 1835 he was again returned to the Senate as a Whig, but resigned in 1837 to become Chief Justice of Delaware, an office which he held for three years. From 1845 till 1849 he was again U. S. Senator, and at the latter date became Secretary of State under President Taylor. He was elected a senator for the third time, and served in that capacity from March, 1851, until his death.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 646:

CLAYTON, John Middleton, jurist, born in Dagsborough, Sussex County, Delaware, 24 July, 1796; died in Dover, Delaware, 9 November, 1856. He was the eldest son of James Clayton (a descendant of Joshua of that name, who came to America with William Penn) and Sarah Middleton, of Virginian ancestry. The pecuniary disasters consequent upon the war of 1812 reduced his father from affluence to comparative poverty, and it was only by making the greatest sacrifices that he was able to send his son to college. He was graduated at Yale in 1815, studied law at the Litchfield Law-School, began to practise in 1818, and soon attained eminence in is profession. In 1824 he was sent to the Delaware Legislature, and was Secretary of State. In 1829 he was sent to the U. S. Senate, and in 1831 appointed a member of the convention to revise the constitution of Delaware. In 1835 he was again returned to the Senate as a Whig, but resigned in 1837 to become Chief Justice of Delaware, an office which he held for three years. From 1845 till 1849 he was again U. S. Senator, and at the latter date became Secretary of State under President Taylor. He was elected a senator for the third time, and served in that capacity from March, 1851, until his death. He early distinguished himself in the Senate by a speech the debate on the Foote resolution, which, thou merely relating to the survey of the public lands, introduced into the discussion the whole question of nullification. His argument in favor of paying the claims for French spoliations was also a fine instance of senatorial oratory. One of his most noted speeches delivered in the Senate was that made in 1855 against the message of President Pierce vetoing the act ceding public lands for an insane asylum. While Secretary of State he negotiated in 1850 the treaty with the British government, known as the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which guaranteed the neutrality and encouragement of lines of interoceanic travel across the American isthmus. In 1851 he zealously defended that treaty in the Senate and vindicated President Taylor's administration. From 1844 Mr. Clayton cultivated a tract of land near Newcastle, which in a few years he made one of the most fruitful estates in that fertile region. Mr. Clayton was always accessible, and was noted for his genial disposition and brilliant conversational powers. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 646.

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.