Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

| Log in
  1. Follow us on Facebook
  2. Follow us on Twitter
  3. Follow us on Instagram
  4. Follow us on Goodreads
  5. RSS Feeds

  • Home
  • About
    • About CBR
    • Getting Started
    • Cannon Book Club
    • Diversions
    • Event Calendar
    • Fan Mail
    • Holiday Book Exchange
    • Book Bingo Reading Challenge
    • Participation Badges
    • AlabamaPink
  • Our Team
    • The CBR Team
    • Leaderboard
    • Recent Comments
    • CBR Interviews
    • Our Volunteers
    • Meet MsWas
  • Categories
    • Review Genres
    • Tags
  • Fight Cancer
    • How We Fight Cancer
    • How You Can Donate
    • Book Sale
    • CBR Merchandise
    • Supporters and Friends of CBR
  • FAQ
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Newsletter Sign Up
    • Newsletter Archive
    • Follow Us
> FAQ Home
> Genre: Biography/Memoir > Somehow, both Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton

Somehow, both Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton

Henry Clay: America's Greatest Statesman by Harlow Giles Unger

March 14, 2021 by ingres77 Leave a Comment

Were you to ask me, prior to my reading this book, who Henry Clay was, I would’ve been able to tell you that he was an important US politician in the early-19th century who unsuccessfully ran for president a few times.

Which, I suppose, is more of a legacy than most people get.

Born in 1777 Virginia, and launched a legal career twenty years later in Kentucky. He was such a powerful speaker, and so successful in court, that he was elected to the House of Representatives by 1810, and became the youngest Speaker of the House in our nation’s history the following year. A largely ceremonial role in the early days of the United States, Henry Clay was the first to fully empower the Speaker, and he used his position to push legislation that he favored. The most prominent early example of this was the War of 1812, which he forcefully advocated. After serving as Secretary of State to John Quincy Adams, he would serve in the Senate for the rest of his public life

Eventually becoming a central figure in the founding of the Whig Party, Henry Clay pushed a series of domestic policies he called “The American System”, which was centered around internal improvements (like roads) and protectionist tariffs. Among his greatest accomplishments, according to Unger, this American System helped tie the country together to a degree that it preserved the Union long enough for us to get to a point where we even could fight the Civil War that ended not only slavery, but the sectionalism that so divided the nation. Without these internal improvements, the Union wouldn’t have survived (and even with them, there was sharp division). Holding the country together was the driving force of Henry Clay’s life. It informed everything he did in  both the House and the Senate.

Clay was integral in forming the Missouri Compromise, which put off the issue of slavery, but (again) held the nation together.

Which brings us to the issue that kind of decides the fate of every American politician of the era: what did Henry Clay think of slavery?

The easy answer is that he believed slavery was a “grievous wrong to the slave”, and advocated for the equal treatment of free blacks. He supported recognition of Haiti, which existed because a slave revolt overthrew the French colonial power. Clay also helped set up the American Colonization Society, which desired to set up an American colony in Africa for free blacks and deported slaves (who would then be free). The goal wasn’t noble, however. Clay – like many abolitionists – didn’t want a multi-racial society. They wanted to set up a colony in Africa for freed slaves precisely so that those free black men and women wouldn’t live in the United States.

And – most importantly of all – Henry Clay owned (and traded) slaves.

Like Thomas Jefferson and so many others, Henry Clay saw no conflict between the owning of slaves and the belief that blacks should be free. He saw himself as “a good master”, and found nobility in raising Africans to a higher status than they otherwise could’ve had. So it should be no surprise that his avenue for preserving the Union involved a compromise between freedom and enslavement. While this delay of America’s reckoning probably did, as Unger contends, allow for the bonds between the states to solidify, it can’t be denied that it also set us on a road to not properly dealing with our great sin.

Even to this day.

Harlow Giles Unger does a great job here, balancing the praise for Clay’s life in the public eye with the personal failings of the man. He was a great statesman that is largely unknown by the average American. He defended Aaron Burr while also pushing the same financial system as Alexander Hamilton. He was an absolute war hawk that pushed the US into the War of 1812 who was very critical of Andrew Jackson being a famous general elected to the presidency – a position he ran for (and lost) four times. He was an abolitionist who owned slaves. He was a loving husband famous for womanizing. He had a large family that he loved, but spent so much of his time in Washington that his children hardly new him.

Henry Clay was a complicated person, and is absolutely one of the most important and central figures in between the Revolution and the Civil War.

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir, History, Non-Fiction Tagged With: American History, Andrew Jackson, Harlow Giles Unger, Henry Clay, James K Polk, James Madison, James Monroe, John C. Calhoun, politics, Slavery, Whig

ingres77's CBR13 Review No:16 · Genres: Biography/Memoir, History, Non-Fiction · Tags: American History, Andrew Jackson, Harlow Giles Unger, Henry Clay, James K Polk, James Madison, James Monroe, John C. Calhoun, politics, Slavery, Whig ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

About ingres77

CBR13 participantCBR13 CommentsCBR12 participantCBR11 participantCBR10 participantCBR  9CBR 8CBR 7CBR 6

I've been doing this since 2015, and though I'm not going to read a hundred books a year, I plan on doing this for the foreseeable future. I also maintain the Cannonball Read database, and make infrequent updates on our reading habits. View ingres77's reviews»

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.



Recent Comments

  • Singsonggirl on Ye Olde ChildrearingCrap, I can't find it on the TV station's website anymore. But it was made by Austrian TV and was in German anyway. One of...
  • Singsonggirl on Perfume – Patrick Suskind (1985)Aaahhh, this is one of my all-time favourite books! I read the ending as a culmination of all the olfactory and sensory impressions? Like it...
  • narfna on Re-reading Mistborn, Era One – Part I: The Final EmpireA re-read would probably be your best bet if you want to continue because Sanderson is the king of bringing back details and making them...
  • wicherwill on Re-reading Mistborn, Era One – Part I: The Final EmpireMy brother suggested this book, and only recently told me / did I realize there were others as well. I don't remember enough of this...
  • llamareadsbooks on “Mouths always open, minds never so”OMG, that is the PERFECT casting. I was thinking this would make an absolutely amazing, brain-twisting movie. And you are so right about Doka, too,...
See More Recent Comments »

Want to Help Out?

CBR has a great crew of volunteers, and we're always looking for more people to help out. If you have a specialty or are willing to learn, drop MsWas a line.

  • How You Can Donate
  • FAQ
  • Shop
  • Volunteers
  • Leaderboard
  • AlabamaPink
  • Contact

Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
© 2021 Cannonball Read | Log in