Henry Clay Sr. was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He unsuccessfully ran for president in the 1824, 1832, and 1844 elections. He helped found both the National Republican Party and the Whig Party. For his role in defusing sectional crises, he earned the appellation of the “Great Compromiser.”
As a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Clay won election to the Kentucky state legislature in 1803 and to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1810. He was chosen as Speaker of the House in early 1811 and, along with President James Madison, led the United States into the War of 1812 against Great Britain. In 1814, he helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which brought an end to the War of 1812, and then after the war, Clay returned to his position as Speaker of the House and developed the American System, which called for federal infrastructure investments, support for the national bank, and high protective tariff rates. In 1820 he helped bring an end to a sectional crisis over slavery by leading the passage of the Missouri Compromise. Clay finished with the fourth-most electoral votes in the multi-candidate 1824-1825 presidential election and used his position as speaker to help John Quincy Adams win the contingent election held to select the president. President Adams then appointed Clay to the prestigious position of secretary of state; as a result, critics alleged that the two had agreed to a “corrupt bargain”.
Despite receiving support from Clay and other National Republicans, Adams was defeated by Democrat Andrew Jackson in the 1828 presidential election. Clay won election to the Senate in 1831 and ran as the National Republican nominee in the 1832 presidential election, but he was defeated decisively by President Jackson. After the 1832 election, Clay helped bring an end to the nullification crisis. During Jackson’s second term, opponents of the president including Clay, Webster, and William Henry Harrison created the Whig Party, and through the years, Clay became a leading congressional Whig.