Congressional Giants. J. Michael Martinez

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      President James Madison had asked the House to provide for 10,000 troops, but Clay thought the number was far too low. Owing in no small measure to Clay’s power, influence, and eloquence, the House agreed to the Senate version of a bill to equip 25,000 men. Congress eventually approved a measure to raise 100,000 militiamen for a 6-month period. The war hawks forced the war on an initially reluctant president, although Madison subsequently understood the virtues of confronting the British in battle.¹²

      Speaker Clay frequently met with James Monroe, Madison’s secretary of state, to plot strategy. The two men agreed that a new embargo should precede military action, although Monroe opted for a sixty-day embargo instead of Clay’s preference for thirty days. Led by John Randolph of Virginia, traditional Democratic-Republicans objected to Clay’s support for a war. Randolph and his brethren feared that an armed conflict would lead to disaster. Aside from the nation’s lack of resources and war-making capability, military expeditions inevitably strengthened a centralized government. The central tenet of the Democratic-Republican ideology was that government power was to be usually resisted and always distrusted, for all governments, no matter how well-crafted or administered, were inherently oppressive and therefore dangerous to the liberties of the people. Henry Clay’s decision to push for war demonstrated that he had outgrown—or betrayed, in Randolph’s view—his party.¹³

      President Madison acquiesced to the embargo in April 1812. Two months later, he asked Congress for a declaration of war. In politics and war, one must be careful what he asks for; he might get it. The hawks believed that the war would end swiftly with an American victory that might allow the United States to annex parts of Canada, which existed under British control. Early in the war, however, American forays into Canada ended in defeat, raising the possibility that the country might lose the war and, instead of gaining new lands, forfeit some of its own territory. In 1814, the British even invaded Washington, DC, and burned important government buildings, including the executive mansion.¹⁴

      Having tied his fortunes to the war, Clay’s public reputation and political power rose and fell in tandem with news reports on the success or failure of the conflict. At the outset, when America’s military expeditions failed to achieve the desired results, Clay and the war hawks were denounced as foolhardy and wicked men whose zeal for blood and glory was exceeded only by their folly. Their reputations suffered mightily throughout 1812 and 1813.

      This is not to say that Clay’s prominence as a public figure sagged as his reputation suffered. President Madison dispatched a five-member commission—composed of Clay, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, Senator James Bayard of Delaware, Ambassador Jonathan Russell, and Ambassador John Quincy Adams—to Europe to negotiate with England on terms for ending the war. Although his foreign policy experience was limited, Clay was included because he was a well-known war hawk, and any treaty he negotiated would gain legitimacy among the pro-war faction in Congress. Initially reluctant to leave the House, Clay finally agreed to participate. He resigned his seat in Congress and set out for Europe early in 1814. The English were in no hurry to deal with their American cousins; thus, the back-and-forth negotiations, or lack thereof, among the peace commissioners consumed the better part of a year. Frustrated with the slow pace—not to mention the constant bickering with Adams—Clay gained an appreciation of the possibilities, and limitations, of diplomacy.¹⁵

      When the negotiators got down to brass tacks late in the year, they came to the same terms that existed before hostilities erupted. Each side agreed to return to the status quo ante bellum. No one lost or gained territory, and yet the British steadfastly refused to stand down from impressing American citizens on the high seas. As a practical matter, however, the war with Napoleon’s France had ended; the British were far less inclined to stop American vessels on the chance that they were aiding and abetting the French war effort. The Treaty of Ghent, signed by the belligerents on Christmas Eve 1814, was not a calamity, but neither did anyone view it as an unassailable triumph.¹⁶

      Clay returned home fully prepared to face constituents angry that so much blood and money had been spent to return to the original position. To his surprise, however, he enjoyed a more favorable reception than he had anticipated. The United States had been bloodied by the war, but, nonetheless, it had gone toe-to-toe with one of the mightiest powers on earth. The United States had not been conquered. To cap off the conflict, Andrew Jackson had led a ragtag group of soldiers in a surprise victory over the British in the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. The peace treaty had already been signed, but the slow pace of communications ensured that no one knew about it at the time. With Jackson’s lopsided victory, Americans emerged from the dark days of the war feeling more optimistic than they had in years. In addition to Jackson, who earned a reputation that would sweep him into the presidency in 1829, President Madison and former congressman Clay became popular figures again.¹⁷

      In his absence, Clay had won another term in the House of Representatives. He stepped into the position intent on retaining his firm hand on the legislative agenda. He also established new standing committees. Now more than ever, these committees would debate and pass legislation as House procedures became institutionalized. Clay exercised the prerogative of appointing committee chairmen and assuring that bills he desired to see enacted were afforded the proper treatment.¹⁸

      The Henry Clay of 1815 was a different man than the one who had embarked on a legislative career before the war. No longer could he subscribe to the cramped view of government he had entertained when he slavishly followed the Jeffersonian party line. Now Clay was a new fellow, reborn as a nationalist who appreciated the role of government in securing the blessings of liberty for the citizenry, to say nothing of posterity. Under his watch, the House considered features of his American system, a series of roads, bridges, and canals. He also championed the creation of a national bank as well as the establishment of a permanent standing army.

      This new man would go on to an illustrious career lasting into the 1850s. His name would become synonymous with “compromise” in an era when the term did not hold negative connotations akin to surrendering one’s principles. One early test of his ability to forge common ground among opponents holding disparate views arose regarding the issue of slavery in newly admitted states.¹⁹

      Slavery had been a contentious issue lurking in the shadows of the American republic since before the Founders declared independence from Great Britain in 1776. In Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, the delegates to the Second Continental Congress skirted over the issue by referring to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without referencing property rights—which southerners took to include chattel slavery. If the document asserted that “all men are created equal,” slaveholders argued that slaves were not men, and therefore no contradiction existed in continuing the peculiar institution in the southern half of the Union.²⁰

      In the Constitution, the Founders could not ignore the issue because slaves composed approximately 18 percent of the population, with the majority congregated south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Ignoring the horrible irony, southerners lobbied to count their slaves as persons so that the South could maximize its representation in the House of Representatives, which was based on population, and thereby ensure that slaves were treated as less than human. Outraged northerners objected. They settled on an uneasy compromise: bondsmen were deemed to be 60 percent less productive than free white laborers; therefore, they would be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation and taxation in the Constitution. It was a devil’s bargain, in the language of a later age, but it preserved the peace long enough to see the nation through a gestation stage of half a century.²¹

      Now the Founders had passed from the scene and the slavery issue had reemerged with a vengeance. Henry Clay was in the thick of it. Late in 1818, he had submitted a petition forwarded from settlers in the Missouri Territory seeking statehood. St. Louis was a growing city, and the territory was an obvious candidate for admission into the Union. The difficulty was that the citizenry СКАЧАТЬ