Henry Clay: The Essential American (reviewed)

Henry Clay: The Essential American
David S. & Jeanne T. Heidler

David S. & Jeanne T. Heidler (2010). Henry Clay: The Essential American. Random House: New York. 595 pages.

This book covers the entire life of Henry Clay (1777-1852), best known perhaps as the “Great Compromiser” for his role in shaping the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the later Compromise of 1850 that allowed California and Texas into the union as a free state and slave state, respectively. Both compromises attempted to meet some of the salient issues of the North-South conflicts with measures that partially reconciled thru compromise some of the most salient bones of contention between the slave-holding South and the more industrialized North. The book gives ample attention to Clay’s role as first a U.S. Representative and later a Senator — and his three unsuccessful attempts to become President of these United States (1832, 1840, 1848). His relationships with the Presidents during his career from Madison to Filmore are treated with some care — especially his interactions with John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, and Andrew Jackson. The book is quite naturally focused on trying to understand events as they were experienced by Clay — but the authors attempt to be fair to Clay and his friends and enemies. Andrew Jackson does not come out very well — but that is probably because Jackson’s undying enmity towards Clay [primarily a result of Clay’s role in electing John Quincy Adams in the election of 1824] probably represented Jackson’s greatest personal weaknesses. As portrayed in the book Jackson could not forgive a slight or a wrong real or imagined. Clay’s relationships with the other members of the Great Triumvirate (Daniel Webster and John Calhoun) are also given a good deal of attention. In sum, it is a book which is both a history of Henry Clay of Kentucky and a history of the United States from approximately 1810-1850. In other words, it is a history of the United States in the four decades before the terrible scourge of history brought on a decade a conflict and then our great Civil War.

But there is something else which makes this an unusual history book. For the Heidlers’ book is not merely a political history. Thru out the book the authors attempt to provide some insight into Clay’s personal history. Continual allusions to Clay’s interactions with every one he meets — political contemporaries (rivals & comrades), friends, family, slaves and strangers all get their due. One theme, of course, is his family life. Married for 52 years, he and his wife had 11 children — but they outlived most of the children. Only one of the 5 girls survived until adulthood - and she then died in childbirth. Tho he lived to be 74, Clay’s health was not always very good. Indeed, it appears that he eventually died of tuberculosis — called ‘consumption’ in those days as his last several years were increasingly marked by his coughing and, especially towards the end, his loss of weight. While not written with the flair of a novel — the authors are working from the incomplete record of letters an diaries and do not ‘fill in the details — the book manages to provide a moving portrait of the man as he lived with his successes and failures, joys and pains.

For me, personally, however, probably the most important theme of the book is its portrayal of Clay’s relationship with slavery — more precisely his conflicted and complicated relationships with actual slaves. Clay was a slaveholder. Furthermore, while as a young man he made some strong statements about the slave trade — once he became involved in politics, his criticism of slavery was always tempered. He did believe that slavery was immoral and would not last and he remained adamantly opposed to Southern talk of nullification secession, but he essentially viewed slavery as the bargain the country had made. He also opposed the abolitionists on a number of issues. Indeed, Clay’s views in many ways were similar to Abraham Lincoln’s before the Civil War [Lincoln’s views of the ‘Africans within our midst’ evolved during the Civil War, perhaps especially due to his interactions with Frederick Douglass as well as the exigencies of war]. For several decades Clay was a supporter of returning slaves to Africa — proposing several times that slaveowners might be bought out. He presumably was involved personally in several slave purchases — but it appears that most of the slaves in his household had been inherited or were a consequence of marriages. Some other aspects of Clay’s activities include the following. One, he sometimes bought separated family members so that they were united with slave relatives in the Clay household. Two, he freed several slaves on different occasions and in his will (several times with accompanying financial gifts or wages). And, finally, he was remarkably indifferent to the problems of runaway slaves - he simply was not interested in pursuing them. There is one instance of sending some money to a runaway slave who decided to return, but it appears that once a slave ‘upped the ante’ to the point of running away — Clay did not seem constitutionally disposed to follow the issue much further. In sum, while the evidence presented by the authors make it quite clear that Clay consciously had accepted the country's bargain with the peculiar institution — it is clear that the bargain ate at him in conscious and unconscious ways.

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Of course, with the benefit of hindsight it is not too difficult for us to see that Clay’s valiant but vain attempts to stich up the discordant forces unleashed by slavery would be unavailing. Still, I found the Heidlers’ treatment illuminating. It is not really useful or intellectually honest to try to read too much into how others ‘should have done’ in a situation which is so very different from the moral environment and climate of a current historian or current reader. The Heidler’s treatment seems to reach a defensible balance between our need to know about the past and our need to remember that even tho relevant, the past was different in significant ways. To me it is quite clear that the legacy of slavery still effects us [seen perhaps most clearly in our prison system], but neither the present nor the past are morally simple.

In ending I switch to a different theme. It would be interesting if we could come back a few decades from now and see how our descendants view the terrible disparities in health care which caracterize these United States of the early 21st Century.