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Senate Years of Service: 1806-1807; 1810-1811; 1831-1842; 1849-1852 Party: Democratic Republican; National Republican; Whig
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Oil on canvas, Giuseppe Fagnani, 1852, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives |
CLAY, 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.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography;
Dictionary of American Biography; 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.
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