Henry Clay an admired, yet tough statesman

When Henry Clay was 4 years old, British Col. Banastre Tarleton and his troops ransacked the future American statesman’s Hanover County home.

Tarleton’s horsemen smashed furniture, stole food and valuables and slashed and scattered feather beds.

Tarleton’s raid at the home north of Richmond came days before he attempted to seize Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature in Charlottesville in June 1781.

Jefferson and the lawmakers were warned in the nick of time by Jack Jouett, and most escaped capture.

Clay, who later found employment and mentorship under Jefferson’s legal mentor, George Wythe, was shaped by the actions of the cruel British colonel.

Clay never forgot the British raid or Tarleton, whose ransacking left Clay’s home battered and his yard strewn with snow-like white feathers, said biographers David and Jeanne Heidler.

The Heidlers’ fascinating account of Clay’s life, “Henry Clay: The Essential American,” reveals him as a truly national figure admired for his ability to craft national compromises by finding common good among bitterly competing interests.

His fierce nationalism, coupled with strong distaste for bully British power, helped him push the young United States into the War of 1812.

He became one of the most powerful men in America in the period between Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and proved that national interests could trump regional politics.

From 1810 to 1850, he was a charismatic congressional leader and famed speaker. He inspired Lincoln, who consulted Clay’s oratory when the Illinois president framed his first inaugural address in 1861.

Lincoln admired Clay’s ability as a statesman who worked to preserve the Union when regional politics was driving it apart.

Politics, then as now, was no picnic.

Slavery divided the nation through harsh oratory.

As speaker of the House of Representatives and a Kentucky senator — but never president despite three attempts — Clay personified persistence.

A slave owner who, the Heidlers show, had always hated slavery, he helped limit the spread of its harsh curse to free states. He worked to preserve the United States he had seen born in war as a child.

Political leaders of Clay’s era who shared his fear of civil war credit his work creating the slavery-limiting compromise of 1850 with avoiding war for a decade.

In a nation racked by regional strife, the words he spoke in Congress in 1850 mark his grave: “I know no North — no South — no East — no West.”

Americans saw the power of those words in a political system that was becoming dysfunctional.

Perhaps the civic virtues of a man like Clay could help Americans disinfect and rise above the dysfunction that paralyzes our politics.

Even though he could at times be petty and vindictive, perhaps respect for the history of the “Western Star” and the “Great Compromiser,” as Clay was known, could promote a shared goal of crafting policies for common good.

Known early as a “War Hawk,” Clay became a peacemaker whose many achievements included creation of a national bank and infrastructure improvements that expanded the nation’s economic strength.

Maybe America could use more people like Clay willing to say, “I had rather be right than be president.”