Known As The Great Compromiser

Henry Dirt

Exercise you know what compromise means? To compromise means giving upwardly something to accomplish an agreement with someone else. Knowing how to compromise—and when—is an important skill, especially in politics. Henry Clay was known as "The Keen Compromiser." He helped our nation avoid ceremonious war—but only for a time.

Clay, a masterful public speaker, in one case said "I had rather be right than be President." Built-in in a manufactory-boondocks in Virginia, Clay had eight brothers and sisters, withal he managed to move to Richmond, earn a police force degree, and even fill a vacancy in the The states Senate in 1806—all by the age of twenty-nine (which is immature for a senator!).

Throughout his years of public service, Clay served in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. He is best remembered for his attempts to bring well-nigh peace—or compromises-between two opposing groups. He negotiated the treaty with Great United kingdom that concluded the War of 1812. He helped produce the Missouri Compromise (1820), which kept the delicate balance of ability between slave and free states. (It admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine every bit a costless land.)

He arranged the Compromise of 1850 (a complex bill that tried to reconcile North and South on extending slavery into the new territories). Although he did not believe that slavery could be eliminated all at once, he worked toward gradual abolitionism. Dirt and his wife Lucretia owned an estate in Lexington, Kentucky, that required the daily work of fifty enslaved people.

Even though Henry Clay said that he would rather exist right than be president, he wanted to be elected to our nation'due south highest function and ran in several elections. He never won the presidency, but his compromises helped preserve the Union—for a time. Clay died in 1852.