![]() He is famously known as the Great Compromiser. Henry Clay engineered three compromises to keep the Union together. Yet he only emancipated 7 of his enslaved people and he colonized none of them. He was actively engaged in the organization that enabled this process, the ACS, the American Colonization Society. Clay believed that they should go the land of their father: Africa. He had supported colonization – the transporting of freed Black Americans to Liberia. ![]() ![]() While it is likely that Clay had an internal struggle with the institution of slavery, time after time Clay chose to maintain and uphold it. He seemed to decry slavery while continually buying, selling, and owning human beings. As Henry Clay became a landowner and ever wealthier, his views shifted. These views remained somewhat unchanged throughout his life.īut ultimately these sentiments proved hollow. The difficulty always has been how to get rid of it.” He wrote publicly of his support for gradual emancipation. He called it “a curse on the master” and a “grievous wrong on the slave.” He said that slaves were “rational beings.” In the 1830s, he wrote a friend: “That slavery is unjust and a great evil are undisputed axioms. While Clay never believed in the equality of the races, he did say that slavery was wrong. While his personal and political views often seemed contradictory, his actions rarely were. The defining issue of Henry Clay’s time – and of his career – was slavery.
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