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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—Kentucky / USHenry CLAY
(1777-1852)
Senate Years of Service:
1806-1807; 1810-1811; 1831-1842; 1849-1852Party: Democratic Republican;
National Republican; WhigCLAY, Henry, (father of
James Brown Clay), a Senator and a Representative from Kentucky;
born in the district known as “the Slashes,” Hanover
County, Va., April 12, 1777; attended the public schools; studied
law in Richmond, Va.; admitted to the bar in 1797 and commenced
practice in Lexington, Ky.; member, State house of representatives
1803; elected as a Democratic Republican to the United States
Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of John Adair
and served from November 19, 1806, to March 3, 1807, despite being
younger than the constitutional age limit of thirty years; member,
State house of representatives 1808-1809, and served as speaker in
1809; again elected as a Democratic Republican to the United States
Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Buckner
Thruston and served from January 4, 1810, to March 3, 1811; elected
as a Democratic Republican to the Twelfth and Thirteenth Congresses
and served from March 4, 1811, to January 19, 1814, when he
resigned; Speaker of the House of Representatives (Twelfth and
Thirteenth Congresses); appointed one of the commissioners to
negotiate the treaty of peace with Great Britain in 1814; elected
as a Democratic Republican to the Fourteenth Congress (March 4,
1815-March 3, 1817); seat declared vacant by the governor of
Kentucky, “caused by the acceptance of Henry Clay to sign a
commercial convention as minister plenipotentiary to Great
Britain”; elected in a special election as a Democratic
Republican to the Fourteenth Congress to fill his own vacancy on
October 30, 1815; re-elected as a Democratic Republican to the
Fifteenth and succeeding Congress (March 4, 1817-March 3, 1821);
Speaker of the House of Representatives (Fourteenth, Fifteenth and
Sixteenth Congresses); elected to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Congresses and served from March 3, 1823, to March 6, 1825, when he
resigned; again served as Speaker of the House of Representatives
(Eighteenth Congress); appointed Secretary of State by President
John Quincy Adams 1825-1829; elected as a National Republican to
the United States Senate on November 10, 1831, to fill the vacancy
in the term commencing March 4, 1831; reelected as a Whig in 1836
and served from November 10, 1831, until March 31, 1842, when he
resigned; chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations (Twenty-third
and Twenty-fourth Congresses), Committee on Finance (Twenty-seventh
Congress); unsuccessful presidential candidate of the Democratic
Republican Party in 1824, of the National Republican Party in 1832,
and of the Whig Party in 1844; again elected to the United States
Senate and served from March 4, 1849, until his death in
Washington, D.C., June 29, 1852; lay in state in the Rotunda of the
U.S. Capitol, July 1, 1852; funeral services held in the Senate
Chamber; interment in Lexington Cemetery, Lexington, KY.
Bibliography
American National Biography; Dictionary of American
Biography; The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American
Law; Clay, Henry. The Papers of Henry Clay, 1797-1852.
Edited by James Hopkins, Mary Hargreaves, Robert Seager II, Melba
Porter Hay et al. 11 vols. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
1959-1992; Remini, Robert V. Henry Clay: Statesman for the
Union. New York: W. W. Norton Co., 1991.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
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