Henry Clay

Born in Virginia in 1777, Clay moved to Kentucky to practice law and entered politics as a Democratic-Republican, winning a House seat in 1810. Elected Speaker in early 1811, he pushed the country into the War of 1812, then helped negotiate the peace at Ghent in 1814. Back in the House, he crafted the American System - infrastructure, a national bank, protective tariffs - and in 1820 shepherded the Missouri Compromise through a sectional crisis over slavery. He finished fourth in the 1824 presidential race, threw his support to John Quincy Adams in the contingent election, and became Secretary of State - a move critics called a "corrupt bargain." He lost the presidency again in 1832 to Andrew Jackson, largely over the bank question, then helped defuse the nullification crisis with the Tariff of 1833. Passed over for the Whig nomination in 1840, he finally won it in 1844 but lost narrowly to James Polk. His son died in the Mexican-American War that followed. Returning to the Senate in 1849, Clay brokered the Compromise of 1850, his last attempt to hold the seams together.