Henry Clay? Or Abraham Lincoln?

[LincolnMan]

(05-14-2013 12:20 PM)william l. richter Wrote:  Clay's so-called American System of federal financing of internal improvements, a high import tariff, support of a national banking system, and the colonization of freed slaves back to Africa attracted Lincoln at an early age and caused him to join Clay's Whig Party, much of whose policies became part of the Republican platform of 1860, with which Lincoln won the presidency.

If Clay is unknown today it is the fault of American education on all levels. Clay was instrumental in keeping the early nation together thorough his participation in the Missouri Compromise of 1820-21, the Compromise of 1833 over Nullification, and the Compromise of 1850. He wasn't called the Great Compromiser for nothing. He ran for president three times unsuccessfully (1824, 1836, 1844) and supposedly coined the phrase, "I'd rather be right than president." The joke was that he was neither.

But he, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster were the big 3 in American politics from 1812 to 1850. I would hope that they are not forgotten. Recently there has been much talk on states nullifying Federal laws. I note that the advocates spoke of Jefferson and Madison (the Kentucky and Virginia resolves of 1798) but left out the Hartford Convention in 1814 when New England and the New York Essex Junto tried unsuccessfully to nullify Federal actions in the War of 1812, and nullification's foremost advocate, Calhoun, who proposed how it could be done thereafter. Nullification a la Calhoun led to the attempts of the South to secede in 1833, 1850, and actual secession in 1860-61. Maybe the nation needs a lesson in American history before the more recent Progressives (Wilson and T. Roosevelt, F D Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama) and today's so-called RINO Republicans became dominant.

Henry Clay is still relevant today and as important as ever IMO.

Most informative. Yes, I think Clay is forgotten. I didn't hear anything about him in high school in the late 1960's. One year of American History in college-nothing. Lincoln was barely mentioned, for that matter.