America's Jubilee by Andrew Burstein

Author:Andrew Burstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780307424716
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

Fig. 14b. Henry Clay of Kentucky, portrait accompanying the 1852 obituary address. The statesmanlike pose belies his reputation as a gambler.

Fig. 14a. John Randolph of Roanoke, from Henry Adams’s unfriendly biography. The portrait captures his ambiguous sexuality.

These two nationally renowned men of honor faced each other in a celebrated duel in 1826.

In Clay’s new role as secretary of state, his relationship to Congress was nothing like before. His professional posture was different, his paperwork demanding and, most important, he could not find a means to escape the ghostly corrupt bargain talk, which followed him everywhere. Under these changed circumstances, Randolph’s denunciations of the administration (this time directed from the Senate), as outlandish as they were bound to be, were fated to evoke an intemperate response from the sensitive Clay. Despite his odd appearance, Randolph was not George Kremer, a timid Northerner allergic to the field of honor. He was a son of the South, and reputedly a good shot.

Henry Clay was even more complex than many of his contemporaries understood. Though best known for his bravado, his occasional arrogance, and his all-night poker playing, he had adjusted his roguish image somewhat when in 1820 he determinedly patched together a bleeding Union and became the Great Compromiser. In 1819, Missouri had applied for statehood. New York’s Congressman James Tallmadge kindled a bitter sectional controversy by introducing a resolution that would have made statehood contingent on the emancipation of the territory’s slave population. As impassioned language flew, members of Congress recognized that a heightened struggle for power between Northern and Southern interests was at hand, and the integrity of the Union was called into question. It was imperative that action be taken to defuse the crisis.

At first, Clay rationalized that it would be a good thing to allow slavery to disperse across the West, that somehow this would advance the day when the hated system could be eradicated. He and other apologists imagined that the general increase in white population would drive down the price of labor until slavery could no longer compete. Such logic swayed few. So Congress resorted to a trade-off, whereby Maine would enter the Union as a free state at the same time as Missouri entered as a slave state; future “free” and “slave” states would then be added on the basis of latitude—those north of 36° 30′ (other than Missouri) would prohibit slavery. Clay worked hard to garner the necessary votes, expressing generous concern for both Northern and Southern interests. The two sides reluctantly accepted compromise, owing largely to Clay’s measured tones and his refusal to give up.

This was his greatest moment. In binding the states together again, he had achieved much greater stature than he already owned. Thomas Hart Benton, shortly to become U.S. senator from the new state of Missouri, called him “the Pacificator of ten millions of Brothers.” Those embroiled in the Missouri controversy came to appreciate that Clay’s standard for national conciliation was what America’s founders had desired to effect: a harmonious union that recognized a variety of interests.

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