Henry Clay

Henry Clay devoted his political career to unifying an increasingly divided nation. While representing Kentucky in the House of Representatives and the Senate, Clay invariably sought a middle course between polarized positions. He became known as the “Great Compromiser” after orchestrating the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which preserved the balance of power in Congress by simultaneously admitting into the Union the slave state of Missouri and the free state of Maine. Toward the end of his life, with the North and South on the verge of armed conflict over the extension of slavery into the new western territories, Clay attempted to resolve the conflict through an ambitious “omnibus bill” that became the Compromise of 1850.

Clay’s personal engagement with slavery presents his penchant for compromise in a less than flattering light. Although he condemned slavery as a “universally acknowledged curse,” he accepted the moral contradiction of being an enslaver himself.